I’m thinking constantly about distance and closeness; individuation vs attachment. The depth of Noah’s devotion to me blows my mind. He’s obsessed with me after a decade of marriage, but not really in a creepy stalker sort of way. In a way that means that he cares what I want and will religiously center me in his decisions. That is both terrifying and wonderful as his therapist suggested.

Noah centering me as much as he does means I kinda have to center him as much, which is complicated.

I have spent ten years doing an awful lot of work to try and make Noah happy. I really have. I’ve tried to create a safe and secure little home where he doesn’t have to do that much work to have a really nice experience. I’m a pretty damn rad home maker.

But it isn’t all that I am. A long time ago I heard a little truism-quote “Women marry men hoping they will change and men marry women hoping they never will.” Sometimes that feels kind of true. Noah has changed during our marriage and I celebrate those changes and I’m grateful. I’ve changed and it seems to be… more of a problem.

Noah adapts to me then it kinda sucks if I keep changing.

We are in a weird spot. I was starting to try and do the hard work of changing out of the young-kid stage because I believe that’s a fairly unique stage in life. I shut everything down for a baby. Other people know how to attach to an infant and still participate in the world and I am a stunted loser. If I’m going to get to know my baby I have to eliminate most distractions and just sit with the baby.

My attention is a fascinating topic.

Recently I’ve been thinking very hard about my ADHD diagnosis and what it means about many of the PTSD symptoms I’ve had all my life. I’ve been told and told and told that I’m trying to extinguish these PTSD symptoms. What if they are ADHD symptoms and permanent? How much effort have I put into trying to change parts of my behavior/personality that can’t really change?

Shit.

For all that I don’t try to conform to be “normal” much… I have put a tremendous amount of time and energy into changing and trying to be a better me. How much of that time and effort was completely wasted because psychiatrists wouldn’t bother to give me accurate diagnosis because surely all of my problems come from trauma.

This is far more upsetting to me than it might seem.

I feel like I have wasted literally decades of therapy trying to extinguish behaviors that are permanent parts of my anatomy and I need to learn to manage instead of just thinking I’m fucked up and I need to be fixed.

Maybe I’m less broken and more nonstandard than I’ve ever been allowed to think.

That actually hurts very very very much.

I’ve seen 21 therapists and probably another 9 psychiatrists. No one has ever seen this. That sucks.

When I needed accommodations there was always this cloak of “Because you are so Fucked Up” whereas my kids get to grow up with behavioral and emotional support and get told, “Meh every brain/body combination needs something different. This is what you need. Ok.”

The amount of shame I have always felt about my inability to focus the way other people wanted me to. It was always claimed to be about me being damaged.

Brain damage.

How much of it is brain damage and how much of it is innate?

How much of it is because of my father’s behavior and how much of it is because of both of my parents genetics?

I was thinking about something recently. My father’s suicide. You know what? In some way… him doing that was a really kind, generous thing. Know why? Because we got money. Lots of it. When he died my mom started getting his social security. That was the most stable money my mom had access to in my childhood. It was four or five times what he irregularly sent in childhood. His death was one of the fortuitous events that let me stabilize around 17/18.

If he had lived; if he had gone to prison… things would have been different. They would have been bad.

He died a month after I turned 17 and that money let me go to a stable school for a year and build bonds with people, many of whom I still know.

I honestly believe that part of the reasons rape victims are prevented from prosecuting is because the system knows that recognized victims get help and financial support and the government doesn’t want that many new sources of financial obligation.

We are an ungenerous nation.

I am an ungenerous person. I do generosity wrong. I do it to fill a hole in myself instead of focusing on filling what other people need. I do it from a place of insecurity, fear, and trying to earn the right to take up space and resources.

It’s not really generosity if I do it because I have to.

Shiny change of topic. I think I know what I want to talk to my psychiatrist about. I’m not going to be starting any new drug regimes staring down a pregnancy. But I want to have a seriously outlined, well thought out plan to handle my next end-of-early-childhood-stage emotional boredom explosion. Cause it’ll happen as sure as rain.

My impulses go towards sex. Always have. But not sex with Noah because frankly there’s not much novelty left there. Marriage is like that.

So what the fuck do I need to do?

I need a whole series of plans for how to manage this. I will want Plans A-J at least. I will need them in writing with directions on how to bail out of a plan into the next plan when things break down.

Because that’s how plans go.

That’s how I go.

I fail a lot. I fail at a lot of things. The only reason these failures do not end my progress is because I always have another plan. I live by my plans. I live for my goals and I rigorously follow some kinda path towards them. I don’t make it to completion on every plan. Sometimes I just fail. Like the around-the-world trip. I had $40,000 saved towards it. Now that’s been rolled into my bathroom. Because we aren’t going around the world. We are having babies.

It’s one or the other.

Being a mother is the best route to happiness I have found in this life. I am going to follow that trail to its end. I’m not done.

And I picked Noah as a breeding partner, quite frankly. He didn’t ask me to spend my life hanging out with him. He asked me if I wanted to be his slave and have children with him.

We are still talking about that first part. What does it mean in the overall light of our parenthood and my unwillingness to be submissive in front of my children? But hoo boy we were serious about the kids part.

We like our kids and they are sunbeams of happiness.Their needs are met. They are getting the support they need to thrive. Not much makes me fee more like I am doing my life right.

We all set our own standards of judging ourselves. I judge myself based on how I parent. I’m not perfect. I fuck up. I am not always kind or generous.

I was thinking recently about how most strong leaders are raised in adversity. I don’t think my kids will grow up to be genuine leaders despite both of them saying they want to be president. I just… I doubt it. They just haven’t yet figured out that there are lots of ways to help people other than being president.

I think that’s ok. I talk a lot about the path they will need to take if they are serious about any career. It’s kind of remarkable that both of them have buckled down to daily academics with nary a whimper. I have not been this… pushy with book work ever. Now they both sit at the table and just plug it out, cheerfully. “I want x. This is the process. Ok.”

I feel like a terrible terrible person for admitting this, but I’m going to anyway. I have the strong suspicion that Youngest Child is far more globally gifted than Eldest Child. Eldest Child is starting to catch up on academics and Youngest Child is standing nearby looking over her shoulder and telling her all the answers.

Reminds me of me and my older brothers.

This is going to be interesting to watch. Eldest Child is precociously verbal and has a ridiculously strong EQ but academics are more of a slog. She isn’t coordinated. She is strong and she has endurance… but she’s still not comfortable with her body.

Youngest Child (oh crud the kid will need a new nickname) is fast and has endurance and they are coordinated and they pick up academics at the rate of whoever is standing near them because they want to be able to follow along and be right. This kiddo is much more emotionally stormy. They don’t understand their own emotions or other peoples emotions as well. They try really hard though, but despite tons of modeling and support… this is just hard for them.

We all have what we struggle with.

It is fascinating to me to look at my kids and see the distribution of my genetics. I have some prodigious athletes in my family. I’ve started talking to Youngest Child about going to middle school for sports. If you want to be good in high school and get a college scholarship for sports… start playing in middle school. I mean, ideally try lots of sports to see what you like in grade school.. but seriously start in middle school. And the kid will probably have an easy adjustment to school style academics.

Eldest Child… would love the social aspect of school and would fail academically. I think she will do fine in college. I don’t think she has the attention span to switch topics on demand like earlier levels demand. She gets frazzled and can’t follow things. She needs a very controlled pace. She can’t have distractions (like other fascinating people nearby) because she can’t focus. I do suspect she has a learning disability but I’m not entirely sure which one or if I’m handling it right. I’m handling it ok enough that it is mostly masked but I feel confident it will become more obvious how I’m failing her with time.

It’s remarkable what watching them causes me to forgive in myself. “You’ve got to work with what you’ve got kid. No point in longing for what someone else has.”

We’ll see. We’ll see. They are both fascinating to me. I assume children are fascinating like this to most parents. I certainly get told similar breakdowns of traits from most of my friends.

I have subsumed a lot of my identity into trying to figure out how to meet the needs of my children because through this process I will learn to identify my own needs and figure out what I need to be doing to meet them. I sure wish I could do this faster. It’s a process.

How does that interlay with all the kinky sex I wish I was having? Sigh.

I don’t know yet. It’s complicated. One of the shrinks I say keeps saying “It’s not complicated it is complex” which is a distinction that… I really just don’t buy into. La la la la.

Saying complexity is good and complication is bad seems like a shitty way to treat a language.

Yeah, anyway. Good morning.

I believe with all my heart and soul that an advanced first world nation should supply a living wage to all citizens just for existing. You never know which poor kid will grow up to be a genius who can change everything. So support everyone.

To me it seems like self interest. Enlightened self interest, but whatever. I’m selfish as fuck. I think every citizen should be able to feel like their housing and food are secure so they can fucking think about other things. I think we will grow like nothing ever seen if we do this.

Can you imagine what it would be like if a country as advanced as us let the collective brainpower of a generation sit around and think in safety?!?!?!!? So many problems would get solved because people have time and bandwidth to do so.

Just about exactly one year ago today I picked up a hitch hiker in New Mexico. She was young. After a while, given contextual clues, I picked up that she was Navajo. She was trying to get from one reservation to another reservation in Arizona. Her only means of transport was walking or hitchhiking. 100 miles through the desert. At night. Oh honey. I’m going to drive you the whole way because I couldn’t live with myself for dropping you off in the desert in the middle of the night. I am not a monster.

I asked her what kind of work she does and she hung her head. She said, “I don’t have a job.” I laughed and said that just because no one is paying her that doesn’t mean she isn’t doing work. I don’t get paid for most of the work I do; it is still work.

She looked flabbergasted.

I think of this a lot.

I’m having one of those days, where for no reason at all, I feel like everything I do is pointless and I’m stupid and I’m not all the way back to worthless, but I’m having a day. Maybe I’m in the PMDD window? I’m on day 21 of my cycle. 31 day cycles certainly happen for me.

I don’t know. All I know is it is hard to feel like I’m being stupid and wasting time and refusing to do work that matters.

We live in a world that says ones value is largely calculated based on ones ability to earn money. I… I really kinda suck at that. Sure I can manage money like a bad ass. I can’t earn it though. I’m well aware that if I had picked a partner who also wasn’t good at making money… I would have had a very different life.

I’m having a hard time believing that this much time and effort on my house is really appropriate. I feel like I am doing something bad.

It is a frightful amount of money. I feel like I should settle for something 1/6 this price and do something worthy with the money. Too late.

I’m selfish. So very selfish. I want this. I spend a lot of time in my bathroom.

Unworthy.

People in Flint Michigan do not have clean water to drink. People in Haiti are struggling to pick up the pieces of their lives. 1 in 4 children in my county go hungry.

I’m part of the problem.

I’m not working to improve the lives of humanity. I’m… building a rad bathroom. Hey, if you want to come over and take a bath you can. I’ll share.

I’m feeling petty and small for needing to have a setting that reflects what I see in my head. All of life is a stage and I need specific stage dressings.

How do we figure out who we are? Is it based on our actions? Our relationships? What other people see in us?

How much do intentions matter vs effect?

Tricky.

My house is weird right now, because things can’t get put away right, yet. But when I’m done it is going to be incredible. There are different areas and different purposes and it is highly evocative of far away places. So as you are doing whatever you are doing, you always have the option of day dreaming. It is lovely.

I’m very close to thinking I have the prettiest house I’ve ever seen. And I’ve been in a lot of expensive houses. I’ve seen what wealthy people find pretty. Ugh. No. Not for me.

I have planted a jungle of plants in the yards. It is quite impressive how much diversity and color there is in the yard.

I feel so much potential in this tiny little space.

But that feels small and petty and selfish.

Things are plugging along fast here at Wonderland. We no longer have a bed frame. We gave it to a buddy. Our mattress is back on the floor because now we have enough room to put a twin mattress next to us and a crib mattress at the foot of our mattress so we don’t have to fight so often about the kids wanting to be in our room.

I give up on trying to force independence for a few years. They’ll sleep without us someday. True this makes sex inconvenient. Which is why Noah put a lovely lock on the garage door. Once the tile is out of the way we will have a great bed in the garage for sex. It’ll be grand.

I understand why they want to be close to us while sleeping. It makes sense to me. I don’t feel like trying to sever that closeness. We all love to reach out a hand or a foot just to make contact.

Something like 13%(ish) of 8-12 year old kids sleep with a parent every night. I slept with my mother until I had boyfriends or girlfriends in my bed.

We are maintaining a separate bedroom for them. Everyone has their own sleeping space. But sometimes people sleep on the couch. Because they want to. Sometimes people sleep on the floor in the living room. Because they want to. Sometimes everyone wants to sleep in the grown up bedroom. Because they want to.

This isn’t anxiety related at all. It’s kind of fascinating. I have proven to myself that we can force sleeping alone. But it’s not that much fun for anyone so why am I forcing this? One of the top 10 best things about the road trip was getting to sleep with the kids basically every night. The only nights I didn’t were when Noah was there and we wanted some privacy.

Middle of the night sex isn’t what it once was for me. I don’t feel the need for the same level of privacy. If I want to elbow him and crawl out to go to the garage for a while… we can do that.

What am I confused about though? That’s why I started writing.

I’m confused because some of the most beautiful people I know are told frequently that they are ugly. I don’t get it.

I’m confused because I feel like I’ve been having sex for over three decades and I’m only starting to sorta get what sex might actually be.

I’m confused because I don’t understand what slutty means to my identity and how descriptive or prescriptive I need it to be. I don’t know why this is so much of me.

I’m confused because I don’t know what fucking color to paint my house. I can make a strong case in several directions.

I’m confused because now that I have this shiny ADD diagnosis… I can’t do much about it because I’m about to get pregnant. I can’t try any medications. Well, I could. But I choose not to.

I’m confused because I wonder which of the choices I’m making that are the-best-I-can-make are very wrong. That’s always true. It always happens. No one ever makes the Right Choices. Everyone makes the best-choice-they-can-make-that-minute. It’s based on so many factors and complications that… it’s huge. It just is. People do the best they can. Maybe not their ultimate best given specific training and feedback and effort on a thing but they do what they can given who they are and what they have and what support they have and what resources they have and the education they have and the family they have and…. It’s complicated. Some of these choices we make, that are the best we can do, are wrong.

My shrink told me that in her opinion… as long as I don’t blow up the boat in the same way again… maybe all the stepping out wasn’t so bad. Specifically because it made us talk about some sex stuff we have been avoiding for years but mostly because… that kinda helped push us into having more kids. And she thinks that given how much I wanted kids… it wasn’t too high a price to pay.

Learning experiences often hurt.

Now that the decision is made I feel confused and freaked out a little by having a baby. My head is spinning in circles of, “My house is not baby set up” and I’m feeling panic. But we’ll figure it out.

I’m thinking about how much I have enjoyed being touched less. I’m thinking about how much I enjoy not sharing my boobs. Oh god.

Hey, I’m just doing a bit more to help my lifetime diabetes and breast cancer rates go down…

Oh god.

What am I doing? My back god damn hurts. This is going to suck ass through a straw.

I’ll figure it out.

But I’m so excited I can barely wait till January to get started… but we need to for a variety of reasons.

Oh good golly I hate birth control.

Yes, condoms can be sexy. They are also extra friction, which I hate. Even with lube; I know. Don’t give me the commercial, ok? I’m spoiled.

Life calls.

Well, it is official. I have ADD. I’m having some distinct mixed feelings about this. My therapist and psychiatrist both tried to uhhh “explain” why I didn’t get this diagnosis when I was younger in very CYA ways. “Well it is very hard to tell ADD and trauma apart.” “You didn’t show signs of distress.” Wait, whut?

She meant that I am very smart and I was able to pass grades in school so clearly I am totally fine.

But what the ever loving fuck?

I’m finding that I’m still having trouble shaking the strapping down during the second surgery. I keep feeling tightness in my body and when I check in with that part of me, I feel scared.

My shrink said, “It’s natural that you feel this way. Being strapped down like that is a major violation.” It wasn’t the second time. They were trying to keep me from falling off an operating table. That’s not a major violation. It was a major violation when they strapped me down just because they didn’t like my mood. I wish my body would forget. Not all strap-downs work the same way.

I’m having a lot of thoughts about intimacy, sex, love, wanting, keeping score, forgiveness… and I’m totally not ready to write about any of them. Oh the potential fall out.

My heart hurts.

I want my house back. It’s been so fucking long and I’m going stir crazy. I think I only have another week of major construction work before they start on tiling. Oh that would be lovely. I want my floor back in the garage. I want to have a play room so my kids can get their shit off the living room floor. Right now… the living room is the only place to play and we all think that sucks.

I haven’t been inviting people over. There isn’t space.

I am feeling weirdly kinda thrilled about Eldest Child and I both having an accurate diagnosis at this point. That means a lot of my weird rigidness around creating order is… a very functional adaptation to problems we actually have. I’m not just a fascist bitch. YAY! I’ve run across several mentions in the past few days that we all need separate work spaces and I think I’ve decided how I’m going to make that work space wise. Desks in every damn room. So, kid sized desks in the play room and in the sleeping room (which will have room once most of the furniture is taken out like we have scheduled to do…) and the coffee table in the living room and the red table in a corner of the garage where you can’t see Noah. Which will give me four work spaces for little people. Perfect when we have the Bonus Kids.

Cause I’m just a few weeks away from giving every one dedicated work time every day. Because I’ve almost got the bones in place for that.

The littlest two are too young for academics so they can work on art. Play Doh for hand eye acuity or drawing or painting. Sure, why not. I’ve got just about everything in the house. But the littles need their own work so they leave the biggest kids alone for a little bit. Eldest Child is kinda annoyed with me over having to do academics at the rate she is currently doing them. I said, “Hey I asked you if you wanted to start catching up in second grade and you said, ‘Naw wait till next year’ so that means you have a lot to do in one year. Take your medicine.”

I’m not entirely sure we are unschooling any more given that I’m trying to teach the habit of working every day so I mandate structure more than we used to. We are still studying the stuff she asked to study. She picked out the books she’s plowing through… not me. I’m just enforcing the creation of habits.

You are your habits.

I’ve always gotten my planning done in bursts. Noah has been working on developing the habit of checking in every Sunday with long lists of life-preparation-shit. I’m trying to join him and after a few weeks or months I’m going to push the kids to do it as well. Planning out your week just makes everything flow more smoothly. But I need to try and build the habit myself before asking the kids. Too much is changing for them. I need to change me before I can change them.

They both plan like I do at this point: in bursts at random times. It is wonderful for me to listen to them plan things out though. They think like me. It’s incredibly validating. They think about different scenarios and fall backs and logistics and… Oh my babies. You make my heart soar.

I’m a nerd.

I can’t figure out what to do with the bottom left corner of this mosaic. I hate what I have tried so far. Grouse, whine, fuss. Ok, maybe I don’t hate it… but it’s not right yet. I love how I’ve managed to create the idea of differing distances and scale and perspective. I’m a genius.

And so humble.

We’ve been slowly putting all our investment stuff on Mint. As more of our money becomes visible to me…

Holy Fucking Shit.

We have managed to save/pay down debt at the rate of over $100,000/year every year of our marriage. Given what else we’ve done… I’m both terribly impressed with how I’ve managed to stretch the money that far and ashamed I haven’t done better. Especially over the past few years as his salary has been so incredibly high.

I can only afford to do this because Noah happened to pick the most lucrative hobby of his generation as a seven year old kid, he was white, and he came from family money which allowed him to go to one of the best schools in the country.

Privilege is a mother fucker.

Next year, given that I won’t be traveling I hope I pay off/save a combined total of $150,000. (Specifically: investments go up by $50,000, debt will go down by $100,000. That will leave me with ~$60,000 left of debt. I’ll pay that off the next year.) That still, uhh, leaves us a lot to live on. More than I could earn in a year.

Either the year after that or maybe the year after that… we’ll probably hit a million dollars in investments.

Before I’m 40.

My shrink spent a while today trying to tell me that because I am so accomplished how could anyone have been able to tell that I had ADD? I’m so… capable.

I have found some fucktastically effective coping methods, it is true. What could I have done if I had better/more effective support? It’s either terrifying in a good way or maybe a let down. Noah tells me pretty frequently that he thinks I have not come close to my potential yet and he looks forward to seeing what that means.

Resilience. This word keeps coming up. What the fuck does resilience even mean? Don’t give me a text book definition. I can rattle that shit off. But what does it mean feeling like? Cause I’m resilient like fuck and I still feel like a loser.

I had structural power on my side, but that isn’t effective for everyone who has it. Most white people who start out poor like I did do not manage to leap frog to the other side of the socio economic spectrum. Try something. Fail. Get up and try something else. Fail. Repeat.

That’s resilience. It is being willing to try something else after failing. Holy shit I’ve failed so much.

I think I fucked things up with some friends. I think it is my fault. I’m not angry at anyone about the cock up. This is on me.

But I’ll try again. Maybe I won’t pester them, boundaries matter, but I’ll try again in life. It’s a long life. There are a lot of god damn people in the world.

I am propelled forward in life by this deep aching need. A need for love and connection and respect and to be treated well. These are not things I was handed easily or automatically. I’ve had to work.

Try. Fail. Try again.

Sometimes when I hear men complain about how unfair it is that they have to work hard to learn social skills I want to scream and break things. It has been so hard for me. I have fucked up over and over and over and it has been god damn painful.

No sympathy from this corner, buddy.

I have believed all of my life that my brain worked differently than other peoples and I’m getting increasing feedback that I was right. Yeah, things that might be easy for some people are genuinely harder for me.

I ALWAYS GOD DAMN THOUGHT SO.

But you know what, I got this far without outside help figuring out how to help me. That’s pretty good.

*pat self on back*

Good job, self. You aren’t a completely worthless shitpile. Well done.

I was sitting in the back yard recently and I thought, “Well done past self. You were so awesome to do all those hundreds of hours of work. It has really paid off.”

I need to find a balance between work and rest. My future health will depend on me pacing myself and I totally get into work-a-holic periods where I wreck my body. I can’t keep doing it. I need to get this cycle more predictable and workable and sustainable.

My body hurts so much. And there isn’t a lot of point in working hard to make it hurt less before the big work is done because I’ll just hurt myself again in a day.

I have about 14 hours of detail work left in the kitchen. I have to finish the mosaics. I have to paint the play room. I have to empty everything out of the shed so it can be moved then I need to reorganize it because damn my system collapsed. Then I need to sort most of the stuff in the entire house and put it away.

I seriously hope we are done before Christmas.

I’m not sure we will be done with the arbitration which kinda sucks. Sigh.

I am so very weary. Why am I not sleepy?

Can’t sleep. Future will eat me.

Not to mention that this election cycle is awful. The internet is a sad place to be. I should probably stop reading Twitter until after November 8th.

I have filled out my ballot. I’m good.

There’s not a thing on this earth that could make me vote for Trump. Sweet sunny Christmas no.

I’m clearly going to have leftover tile. I’m going to talk to local art teachers. I’ve got enough stuff for several full classes to make reasonable sized mosaics if the tiles were broken up. I’m not sorry I didn’t end up using everything. I’m glad I had the variety. I am really excited about finishing winter. This is going to be so pretty. I have a lot of sparkly tiles. Let it snow; let it snow; let it snow.

I’m over you, autumn. That tree was a motherfucker.

But it’s so prettttttty.

I will be happy that I get to look at you. Making you was still evil.

I’m going to try again on sleep.

I have to sit very still because I probably popped the artery with an increase in blood pressure. The nose is sensitive and the blood vessels aren’t buried deep and increases in blood pressure puts strain on thin closures. Given that I lost a whole bunch of blood clots in the last bleed that were quite large, one the size of a golf ball… I’m not done healing from the original surgery most likely.

It was really stupid to dive into a pool. I take responsibility. I thought three weeks was long enough. He said 3-4 weeks for exercise. Then I looked online (after my first nose bleed) and saw that swimming is supposed to be held off for 6+ weeks. Whoops.

It’s my fault.

Yeah… I know.

So I have an appointment this Friday with my surgeon and I’m supposed to stay as still as I can manage until then. That’s 10 solid days of sitting.

I FEEL LIKE I AM ABOUT TO EXPLODE WITH EXCESS ENERGY.

I need to be cleared for driving a long way on Friday. The following Tuesday I have appointments in Oakland/Berkeley I want to keep. I will find out the results of the ADD testing and I’ll get a genetic test done to see part of why I am so wacky when it comes to my medication responses. I hear that these days they have better ways of trying to tell why a person is wacky. We’ll see.

I am scared that the genetic testing will be, “We don’t know why you are so reactive to medications” followed by “You must be making it up” when I have a consistent 20 year history of having abnormal physical reactions to medications. Well, not even abnormal physical reactions. All of my reactions to medications follow known potential side effects. I just get the unusual and extreme side effects. They are always listed on the package as possible but the doctor says, “My other patients don’t respond this way. It is weird that you do.” BUT THESE REACTIONS ARE LISTED ON THE PACKAGE. WHY DO YOU SAY IT IS WEIRD THAT I HAVE THESE REACTIONS WHEN THEY ARE LISTED ON THE GOD DAMN PACKAGE?!

I’m going to stop and say again: my recent ER visits went fantastically well. I am going to hold on, in my mind, to this image of doctors getting to do exactly what they are trained to do and doing it well. They weren’t threatened by my weird reactions so they didn’t shame me even a little. Shit happens and everyone did their job well.

Doctors are not always shitty.

But psych patients try the patience of doctors. Psych patients try the stamina of doctors and they don’t like it.

Whyyyyyyyyy am I so treatment resistant to many of the things doctors want to throw at me to solve my problems? I think it is because solutions are way more complicated than that. I think that if my body had settled down and tried to “behave” more when doctors gave me pills… I wouldn’t have fought so hard to change every aspect of my life. I think that on some subconscious level I knew that the solution to my problems had to come in relationships and life experiences and genuinely figuring out how to stop acquiring more ongoing trauma… Pills would have prevented me from having the fierce drive to change everything in my life. I would have been more apathetic. More accepting. That would have been bad.

Maybe I had every negative side effect because feeling more-ok with not-okness would have been devastating to the overall curve of my life.

I really don’t know. I know that I try things. I know that I follow directions for how to “get better” and deal with my issues and… only some of the things work.

Mostly what has worked has been getting away from ongoing traumatization. Mostly what has worked has been finding a partner who will help me and be with me and adapt to my needs. Mostly what has worked has been having children and proving to myself that I can be a good mother. I have some value. I have some ability to do good things.

Being a good friend has helped. Seeing that I have resources to share has helped. Not feeling like I am just a pathetic eternal sinkhole of need.

If medication had worked when I was 15 and I had learned how to conform better to what was happening…. would I have prosecuted my father? Would I have pushed so hard to get the fuck out of high school?

If medication had worked when I was 19 would I have worked so hard to find coping methods? Would I have finished college and left my Owner? Or would I have… reverted to a mean? I don’t know for sure. I know that having an intense amount of drive is a lot of what kept me pushing to find new things.

If medication worked better now would I try so hard to find more books to read, more strategies to employ, more reasons to make things work on my own?

I don’t choose to have the reactions to medication that I have. I just have them. I just document them. It would be easier if I could stop doing research and working and just… coast on some extra help from a pill. But it hasn’t worked for me.

I fucking wish it would.

I’m not saying that other people who can take medications are lazy or not trying hard to improve or aren’t doing work or…

I’m talking about my journey with my individual issues. I’m a deeply flawed person. I ain’t judging you. Glass houses and all that shit.

Noah has been extra schmoopy lately. Like, schmoop on turbo.

Noah gets up in the morning because of me. Noah works all day because of me. When Noah is resting for a few minutes, he comes to cuddle up to me before returning to working. Because I’m really the whole center of his world. Yeah yeah, kids, but no. I’m it.

My mama told me that whenever two people are in love one person is more in love than the other person and that person is at a disadvantage.

I feel like my relationship has gone back and forth and right now… Noah loves me more. And I have not been honoring the gift he is giving me. I have been hurting him with that. I have been allowing him to be at a disadvantage. God damnit if I’m not proving my mama right. Fuck and shit and craptastic.

Noah does love me like I’m his favorite Disney princess. (A reference to a thing that happened online and I’m not giving context.) Noah loves me like I’m his favorite person of all time.

I need to stop being such a fucking asshole and I need to work on appreciating what I have more. I need to figure out how to fall more in love. I need to honor the fact that I am treated way better than I deserve. I need to honor the fact that Noah has changed his whole god damn life for me.

Noah gives to me the way my female friends give to their male partners. With an open hand. Without demand that I earn his love in return.

God damn how did I get so lucky in this lifetime? Sometimes people tell me that of all people I deserve what I have now. No. That’s not how it works. It doesn’t matter how shitty my childhood was. No one could possibly deserve what I have now. I just have it. Because life isn’t remotely fair.

Given how much my head still hurts, it is easy to remember that sex is off the table for a while. I have been feeling a lot of urge to snuggle and kiss though.

DO YOU KNOW HOW GOD DAMN AWESOME IT IS TO BE ABLE TO BREATHE THROUGH MY NOSE WHILE I’M KISSING?! IT’S LIKE A WHOLE NEW WORLD!!!!

I’m very excited about this breathing through my nose business.

Noah is earning a lot of adoration lately. He’s being so very nice. He’s doing so much stuff. I’m kinda compulsive about working. In order to persuade me to sit on my ass… Noah is doing most of my chores. Not all of them (and that’s ok) but enough that I really don’t have justification to get up and work. The stuff that I’m not doing right now is stuff that can wait. He’s doing everything that can’t wait.

I feel like a princess.

Why doesn’t everyone get to have a partner who will treat them the way that Noah treats me? Ok, minus the kinky sex. Not everyone is into that part. But the support, the love, the attention.

I wish everyone got to be loved the way I am loved. It feels like magic.

I strongly dislike medically mandated rest. I get prescribed rest every few years. Usually by doctors who are greatly exasperated by my work load. To them I say: STOP JUDGING ME.

But when I get told to sit on my ass or else I try to listen. So I’m up to day four. I was told this time that I should sit for at least a week. The surgeon would prefer longer but I whined.

This means having a baby is put off by several months. It’s just not on the table yet. Feck. Like, don’t think about it till December or January. From October. That makes me very sad right now.

Other things I can’t consider doing right now: painting, gardening, cleaning out the shed for the remodel (the construction workers are going to to move it but it needs to be emptied first), cleaning my house (luckily Noah did this part yesterday so I feel less twitchy on this front), typing all that much (my arms are enflamed like a motherfucker), exercising, sex at all for a while, masturbating, driving, socializing…

I’m feeling very fussy right this minute.

But I’ve sat still through Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Where is my fucking medal.

I wasn’t still for a solid three days after the first surgery. This may be part of my problem. I’m trying to do better after this burst artery business. That was kinda scary.

I think I’m up to four near death experiences. Three medical one psychological. The first was the pit bull bite. I could have died from blood loss then if I hadn’t been near a good hospital. I’m a truly lucky bitch. The second was when my father held a gun to my head and asked me if I deserved to live. Psychologically… that fucks you up forever. That’s almost dying. Third was bleeding out during my second labor. That was really scary. And now the fourth was having an artery burst in my nose.

The doctor said: “No way can you go to Las Vegas this week. Imagine what would happen if you started bleeding in the middle of the desert.”

Oh yeah. I’d die. Because this isn’t a game. Oh.

I’m kinda like a cat, counting up my lives.

Only five to go. Time to stop fucking around with this mess. The near misses will be scarier later. And that’s not including the times I’ve done stupid things like letting someone hang me with a noose.

I haven’t traditionally had a lot of care with my life.

But I have these kids now. Things have changed. I really want to see what kind of grown ups they become. I’m endlessly fascinated with them. I get tired and need time off, sure, but I don’t get sick of knowing them. I didn’t think parenting would be this wonderful.

It’ll be more wonderful when my house isn’t being forking remodeled. But progress is being made! They are more than four weeks into the work now. In a supposedly 6-8 week project. Windows arrive in ten days. I’ve had no windows in the front of my house since February. It’s getting cold again. Which makes six weeks unlikely but eight weeks possible. I’m crossing my fingers.

Hey, that means I can’t consider getting pregnant till the remodel is over. Sigh.

One of my friends sent me this link to a private island for sale in Scotland. If I sold my house I could probably cover half of it. Holy fucking shit. That’s… kinda mind blowing.

Sex is so weird. I’m transactional with it and I’m getting to the point where that is a serious problem for me. So I’m teasing my friends about something and not writing about their situation because tact but it made me think about myself. If I wanted something and Noah told me I could have it if I blew him every day for a year… he would wake up with a mouth on his cock every morning for 365 days. If I wanted something and that was the price…

Price. Should things have sex as a price? Everything has a price. For years now I’ve paid the price of sex for Noah’s good humor. And just recently when I stopped having sex with Noah (mostly for medical reasons) he’s… had trouble in the ways we predict. So I feel like I’m being derelict in my duties to provide sex. And I’m feeling bitter that I must. So using sex to pay for things is complicated.

Will I do it? Sure. I’m a pragmatist. Will I be long term happy about it? Well that’s a different question. It kinda sounds like I’m joking about the pragmatism thing, but I’m not. I’ve had a crazy lot of sex for pragmatic reasons. A long time ago I overheard a sex worker saying, “Every woman is a sex worker, but only some of us are smart enough to get paid.” I’m not sure if she was quoting someone else. I…

I don’t understand how sex works for other people. For much of my life sex was currency. I’ve used it for lots of things. These days mostly to keep Noah happy. That’s mixed.

What did I find out during my slutting around this year? I discovered that I still have oceans-deep wells of desire inside of myself but they are not accessed when I am having sex for someone else.

That’s useful to know.

It isn’t that I don’t desire Noah. I want to spend my time with Noah. I like Noah very much. But we have a lot of sex for him when it doesn’t work for me. That’s… psychologically damaging. It means I partition off that the sex I have with him isn’t for me. I’m not saying it is his fault; I’m saying it happens.

Do you know what else I learned about slutting around this year? I can’t keep doing it. It’ll fuck Noah up in a way I’m not ok with being responsible for. It won’t kill him. It may not even cause a divorce. But it would kill his spirit and I’m not going to do that. I owe Noah better than that this lifetime. He’s been very good to me.

I don’t think I can be monogamous. But I can’t do what I was doing. This is going to be tricky to work out and take years.

I hurt him. I hurt him in a way that is going to take serious repair work. I did that. I fucked that up. I am as big of an asshole as I sound when I say: “I didn’t think it would hurt him that much.”

Well, it did.

I did. I hurt him that much.

And he’s still all in. Because we don’t really get a second chance with someone else. We’re done for. This is our shot in life. This is the one chance we get to do this right. So either we ride the waves and figure out how to improve shit… or we give up on this fairy tale. This belief that we, fucked up people that we are, can be loved and completely accepted in this lifetime.

We are both hard. We are not people who would find a second replacement life and just make it work. I know people who have great second marriages. I know people who rebuild life into third and fourth marriages.

I can’t do that. I could be something different, but I don’t think I could ever try again. And with the whole kids thing… this is our one chance to have an intact family. We have high stakes. We don’t have families that love us to fall back on. Noah is closer than I am, but not that much.

I know. I’ve seen the last twelve years of his life. I know he doesn’t really have anyone to fall back on other than me.

I know.

I have good friends, the most amazing friends… but I’d have to figure out how to stand alone too. I don’t have a family to fall back on. My friends give me what they have to give. They are my friends.

I’ve seen the difference in the lives of my friends. They have families. My chance at that is with Noah and my kids.

And I did a lot to fuck it up this year.

I also learned that Noah is right. I will never run out of sex or dating opportunities. I just won’t. Whether I look for them or at them is a different matter. It’s kind of an interesting thing to try and internalize. I am attractive enough. I am interesting enough. I am educated enough. I am snotty and entitled about how I am treated enough…

I will always have a high market value. That’s… not something I expected this lifetime.

I will never seriously deal with an ain’t-shit-man again.

It isn’t like they will never hit on me. But I won’t put up with that kind of crap. I have too high of standards and that is Noah’s fault. I think I won the husband lottery. He’s an absolute pain in the ass who wouldn’t work for most people very well… but he’s god damn perfect for me. He is willing to adapt and help and give in a way that… most men really won’t.

But I get how he would be hard for someone else. Totally true. I’m no picnic so I don’t complain about him being work.

Even when I’m just looking around the house at the murals… most people wouldn’t have let me do this. Steve would have said no. My Owner would have said no. Puppy would have said no. They would have said I was “destroying the value of the house.”

Noah tells me to have fun.

I also learned this year that Noah isn’t much better at telling me no than I am at telling him no. That’s good to understand. He will let me hurt him. If I’m going to avoid hurting him I need to just know where the boundaries are. He isn’t going to enforce them.

I also pushed my luck enough to find out that a few things are ok that I would have assumed weren’t. It wasn’t entirely bad. There were things that worked out ok.

There were things that weren’t ok. Absolutely every step of dealing with the Quiet One was mishandled and fucked up.

I’m feeling kinda glad in retrospect that since I fucked up so badly with someone I made sure it wasn’t someone who was deeply entrenched in my life. I kept good boundaries with my friends. Noah isn’t upset with any of our long term friends over this experiment. I get why he had the feelings he had about the Quiet One.

He doesn’t have to veto.

In this process we also got to the point of understanding what “veto” actually meant. And why it exists. Because this year we had to revisit what it means and why I’ve done it in the past and god damn if I wasn’t right.

I’m a fuck up. But that doesn’t make me wrong every time.

Life is really complicated like that.

Today I am still stuck in a chair. Eldest Child is off with the Bonus Family. The kids asked if they could visit separately this time. It sounded fine to the adults. I’ll play more games with Youngest Child. Noah will probably read to us.

Luckily this isn’t a day where I can fuck much up. I’ll just… sit in a chair. Or on the couch. Maybe both at different times. Woo.

Recently I’ve been thinking about the fact that I have come a long way in terms of my behavior with my kids. I am far better at reacting. I’ve had practice. I’ve developed much greater patience. I think I have managed to do it through simple brute force. I’m feeling kinda proud of myself because I think the person I was who taught in a high school ten years ago is not the person I am now. I had distinctly more limited patience at the time. I’m doing what I want to do.

I don’t know another way of learning. I’m not good at the subtle. I’m good at broad strokes and insistent demands: “No, not like that. Like this.”

I am shocked at the ways in which I have changed my behavior. Pleased, yes, but shocked. It’s only when I stop and think about how far I’ve come that it really hits home. When I think about myself in the present I feel impatient with all the ways I am still failing to meet the metrics I set for myself.

I honestly believe that having my children mirror back my behavior is the single most… motivating experience of my life. I want to do better because I want to give them better because I want them to be able to do/have/be better.

At Stanford they started asking Eldest Child about adult goals. What’s your plan A? Be president. What’s your plan B? …. crickets.

I talked to her yesterday about this. I said, “You know… being president is a lot of pressure and work. You could instead help elect presidents” and her eyes grew wide. Yessssssss. She’s very excited about this prospect.

I think maybe she absorbed a bit too much The West Wing as an early child. She’s kind of ridiculously interested in politics. She is very clear that she wants to be in government because she wants to help people and government is a way to help huge swathes of people at once. She’s given up on being a doctor. “You can only help one person at a time that way.”

I understand, kiddo.

She is both a lot like me and a lot more subtle than me. I hope that having a mother like me isn’t a deal breaker for a future political life. I won’t apologize for existing nor for writing about sex for decades.

Oh, in other news, speaking of family embarrassments: my in-laws are coming to town. Thankfully not to our house. They are coming to San Francisco. For one night on their way to a four month cruise. Because they enjoyed the last cruise they were on so much. The one that was like 2-3 weeks after ours. Ours that they said they couldn’t go on because they couldn’t be away from home.

I….

Bon voyage motherfuckers. It’s ok with me if you don’t come back.

Would I have been happier with them on the cruise with us? Probably not. But I feel like I truly don’t ever need to put effort in again. I’ve done so in a variety of ways. I’m… getting what they feel like back which is mostly a middle finger. I’m done trying. It’s throwing good energy after bad.

I don’t think I’m going to get anything positive back from them this lifetime. They’ll send the shit they feel like sending whether it works for me or not. They will request attention when they want it and I don’t need to care. Hey, they will be on their cruise ship through their Christmas/anniversary/birthday rush this year. Maybe we don’t have to send presents.

Awesome.

In a side note, this lady makes kids music that works in the same way as a lot of my little songs I sing with the kids. Yay for not having to invent everything for yourself.

I’m feeling weary. This remodel won’t be done till Thanksgiving. I’m so tired. I want to be able to clean my house in a way that is low stress and easy. That requires getting more space. Somewhere to put all this bathroom and closet stuff. Erf and uggg. (The towels will be living in the bathroom.) The linens will probably have to be stored in the garage, which won’t suck for laundry simplicity. I love my garage. I feel like the garage amount of space is what makes this house usable. I think I would go bananas if I were actually limited to 960′ sq (approximately). Our house is just a bit under 1,000′ sq. I measured but I no longer remember the exact number. It’s very early in the morning. I am back to not sleeping that well. But with the garage, and the new bathroom addition we will be up to 1, 520′ sq. Practically a palace.

Hey I lived in a one car converted garage with my mom. My house feels… full of potential and space to me. It’s all about what you’re used to. Auntie’s houses were bigger… but there were so many more people. Sure they had a 3,000′ sq house… but twelve people lived there. It didn’t feel spacious. It felt dirty all the damn time.

Auntie isn’t the sort to make other people do things.

One of my friends has a saying: “Do you want a lazy mama or a crazy mama?” Whereas I don’t say it to my kids… I do think it on a regular basis. My kids work. I can’t be Auntie. I’m raising workers, not shirkers.

We have a fun Busytown: What Do People Do All Day book. It is… hilariously Marxist. “Everyone is a worker!” It includes how Mommy works and how a kid is supposed to work. There is so much indoctrination material available if you just cull stimuli properly. I feel downright Machiavellian sometimes when I think of how I’m constructing my library.

Kiddos “found” a “new” book yesterday in the house cause I’m getting some shelves freed up so I am spreading the books out so they are more useable again….. It’s a process.

But library tending: I’m serious about my library. I have all kinds of books designed to be valuable in a wide variety of settings for people of diverse personalities and ages. I pretty much have something for everyone. I back a lot of Kickstarters for interesting books. Things you can’t buy in stores (yet… hopefully someday they make it).

And I got to absorb Sarah’s library. That was a diverse thing of beauty. She’s been collecting fabulous books for longer than me. I understand why carrying it around is hard at this point. She can visit it anytime she wants. She can have anything she wants back, forever. But I get to read them in the meantime. I’m pretty thrilled.

I have the next few years cut out for me. That feels so lovely.

Guess what Eldest Child doing academics means? It means… I sit next to her, prodding… for the whole time… or…. there are some fantastic doodles and no work done when I get back.

It’s a good thing I have worked with a lot of kids who need similar support. It’s not that unusual. There was a boy I hometaught when he was suspended from school for behavior violations who needed to be forking spoon fed everything but then he could perform just fine. He was in a bunch of low level classes because he couldn’t pay attention to save his life… but he was bored. He could have been in harder math, English, science… but he had to have someone spoon feed him. It’s an attention problem.

When these kids are learning something because they want to learn it… they are flippin incredible. When an adult tries to say, “This is what you must learn now” then… it comes in painstaking inches.

I had the worst time trying to learn multiplication tables. I think that they started trying to teach them in grade four but I didn’t pick them up until… grade eight I think? Not until I started doing more interesting math and I started multiplying more often and I just picked them up.

I need exposure through use instead of sheer memorization. I need to develop the ability to picture a larger story in my head so I can replay it and watch my hand form the answer on the paper. I visualize my memories like that. I don’t remember hearing things all that well. If I just read something it is better than hearing it…. but I learn best when I remember doing something myself.

And sometimes… I need to be spoon fed or I just can’t learn something. Because I just can’t keep my attention on it.

I took an ADD test yesterday. I stared at a computer for twenty minutes pressing a space bar. I made a lot of mistakes. If the dude sitting behind me was taking notes he heard the progression through shoot to fudge to crap to shit to fuck. I started out trying to be good. And I was pretty much dancing in my chair. Because I do that when I’m just sitting and trying to focus like that. My body twitches and jerks and I hear music in my head and I wiggle accordingly. (In my head I was hearing: Try Everything from the Zootopia soundtrack. Shakira gives me life.)

Given that a lot of the test is about measuring movement…

I don’t get my results for weeks. Because an expert has to read the printouts and I don’t have an appointment for a while. Wheeeee.

I should schedule a follow up for the nose surgery. There’s something a little weird on one side… and I’m still producing blood every day. I’m so sick of medical appointments. And then I want to get pregnant?!?!?!

I’m… not thinking. Baby fever makes you stupid. Biology is a bitch. I’ll do it. I’ll go. I’ll do what I’m supposed to do.

Baby. Baby. Baby.

It’s truly not a sane urge.

Having kids with Noah is wonderful.

There’s so much I want to do and try. Time to get busy.

I want to write about yesterday and I don’t. I’ve started and stopped a bunch of sentences. It was a pleasant, mellow day. But for some reason I’m having trouble writing more than that.

I tried so hard to not make the Stanford appointment about me. But they ask so many questions about family history it wouldn’t have been possible to avoid talking about my background entirely. Basically, “When I was 17 I decided I was going to have kids and I was going to homeschool them. I had horrible experiences in almost all of the 25 schools I attended before I dropped out at 16 and I was going to make sure my kids have different lives. So I spent ten years preparing and I worked at all levels of education so I could learn from the inside how I should act over the years with my children.”

This is what I wanted to do with my life. So at 35 I’m stable and have been for ten years. My life varies a lot, but it varies in developmentally appropriate ways for my kids. It’s not that I am a perfect parent (there is no such thing) but I adapt to the needs of my children as my job. So I’m doing really well for someone like me. I attribute a huge chunk of this to Noah’s money making abilities. It’s real easy to feel safe and to make a safe home when you have buckets of cash coming in.

Only it isn’t easy for everyone even under those circumstances. I’ve worked really hard for this. I’m a hard core behaviorist and I believe the most important person I have to work to change is myself. As a parent and a teacher you have power to shape the children/students under you influence but you don’t have ultimate control over them. The only person you have control over is yourself.

They believe that if my Eldest Child had different parents or if she were forced to go to school… she would have behavior and emotional problems. I agree. There’s nothing like explaining for an hour just how fucking hard your kid is to show you that… someone else would have had a harder time.

I came into this expecting difficult, emotionally disturbed children because I understand that trauma is passed down in DNA. I understand that my children are going to be sensory seeking, high energy, highly emotional little beings who need to be taught how to manage themselves.

I have cleaned up so many huge messes. I have been so damn patient with establishing routines within the chaos. We have highly changeable lives so there is a lot of chaos… but there’s a surprising amount of order too. We don’t have a life that would work for other people, but we are very happy. Someday, as my children’s needs change… our life will change. But for now we are doing very well.

Yes, I understand that I need to be more consistent this year that Eldest Child is doing serious academic time every week day. Do you realize I’m only going to insist on an hour a day with half an hour for each subject? That’s all I think she needs right now and how much you wanna bet she will be caught up by the end of the school year?

So far this year I’ve been kinda wishy washy. It’s October. It’s time to get serious about that hour. I’ve been enforcing it 3-4 days a week for a few months. It’s time to settle into an hour a day as just a matter of course. That’s totally easy to do. My kid rolls out of bed and into her chores because she understands that means she has more influence on what she does for the rest of the day and she likes that control.

I enforce it with a smile (most of the time), but we start the day with chores. We are workers, not shirkers. That was one of the phrases the doctors were struck by. They wrote it down to use as a reference later. I’m feeling kinda cocky about that.

Life is full of work. If you want a happy, productive life you must be a worker. Shirkers are people who refuse to do their fair share and they make life harder for everyone around them. Being a worker/shirker isn’t about money at all because I don’t earn money. Clearly I do work. 

I’ve just gotta say, I feel grateful that I know so many hard-working-women so that my kids don’t expect that all mothers have to be stay-at-home. Every family has to do what is right for them and that is decided among a lot of different factors. There are benefits and drawbacks to every option in life and what you pick needs to be based on what you as an individual need and want and have to offer.

There is no “right way” to be.

Some people need to send their kids to school so that the kids can be around trained professionals all day who can provide more consistency and stimulation than they can provide. Some people need to keep their kids home so that the kids can have more stimulation. Every family is coming from a different place.

I wish that these choices didn’t so often rest on privilege, but they do. Homeschooling isn’t cheap. There are people who do excellent jobs with far less money than I have at my disposal. I have watched some of it. I’ve been very impressed. There are ways to solve most problems if you have either time or money to throw at the problem. I have both.

Life isn’t fair. I mean, I could try and say that I have such an awesome life because it is payback for my childhood. But what does that mean for the vast majority of kids like me who don’t end up here? It’s not that I worked harder. I had different opportunities and help.

Life isn’t fair.

Sometimes folks express that they find it annoying that my children “remind” adults about what the rules are. This bothers people. I love it. I will be more consistent as the years go by because I am listened to all the time and people around me feel free to remind me of what I said I’d be living up to. I have created a system where growth is mandatory. There are too many external motivations. I believe seriously in working to extinguish behaviors. I have done so with many of my behaviors.

Goodness gracious I don’t even swear like I used to.

I still do in writing. Cause I can.

I’ve worked on lots of things. I had to. I could see the reflection of my behavior in my children and I knew that trying to alter their behavior had to start in modeling. Do you know how much pressure that is? Everything I want to teach… I have to model.

I’ve had people seriously ask me why I think my kids will be readers if I don’t enforce reading. I laughed and said my children will read out of self defense. And it turns out it is working. What I mean by self defense is: my children have a lot of time to fill. They live with someone who says consistently “Only boring people get bored. I can find work for you.” They don’t get bored. They are masters of directing their own time and attention. It’s what they do. They can’t watch a screen unless everything is cleaned up (which has a twofold benefit: they clean up after themselves and they are eager to go through their stuff and do frequent purges to keep the time they spend cleaning small) and they aren’t up for doing that every day.

I am not an entertainment device. If you need to direct your attention, look around you. I have seeded this house with things to do. Get busy.

A lot of what I have seeded this house with are books. Books on topic after topic after topic. Books both well chosen and random because who the hell knows what you will want to look at next.

My children will read. Even pre-reading they spend hours a day with books. I’m not too concerned. If there is a difficulty, we’ll figure out how to fix it. Because that’s just what we do.

Do you realize we pre-seed our kids with the idea that they will need to find and use a therapist at some point in their lives for some reason? We talk about occupational, physical and emotional therapies. “Something will come up. It does for basically everyone at some point. When you run into something you can’t fix for yourself… there are people who work in trying to help fix that. We’ll find the help you need.”

A successful/interesting life is usually the work of building habits. Your habits are what carry you through when you aren’t really thinking about other things. Many people who know me for extensive periods of time have no idea about my mood fluctuations. They think that they know that I’m a little moody. Then at some point they will read something I’ve written and kind of freak out. That’s happened a bunch. My mood fluctuations are extreme.

I have made a very conscious habit of being cheerful. I default to smiling (and I practiced in front of a mirror till my auto-smile affected my eye muscles so that it “appears real”) and being chatty and talkative even when I feel like shit and I’d like to be hiding behind my bed crying. There are times when my facade is thinner than usual… I know I can be brittle and sharp sometimes. But I have the habit of cheerfulness.

It is something I require of myself because there is no other facade I can maintain so blindly, without consideration of who I’m interacting with. Everything else I manifest is more complicated and requires more calibration for audience…

But I’m cheerful backed up with the strength of personality of a speeding train. Partially because I’m forcing that fucking cheerfulness over a mountain of fuss. It takes a lot of force.

So sometimes I jump the track and get kinda sideways. It happens.

Do you know why living in a torn apart house is a forking nightmare? Because I can’t have a “yes” house this way. My children have to ask before touching all kinds of things and they have to ask for help finding things and… I’m going insane.

Usually I have my house set up such that I can take them on a tour and then… they don’t need my assistance much at all any more. They know the conditions of using different items: must be on the table, must have all other games put away before you take it out, only an outside toy, etc

We periodically go to a craft store and the kids walk through the store with a budget and spend every penny on art supplies. We always have stuff to do. An endless variety of stuff. And when my house isn’t torn apart… it’s all neatly organized in a way that is easily accessible to them.

I’ve gone through a number of attempts at organizing before I’ve gotten to the point where I can manage my kids specific attention needs. It’s been a lot of work. I’ve figured out what they use with what. I’ve put things in places where they are easy to clean up. This has been my job. I worked retail and I grew up with a mother who worked retail. I’ve been having conversations about why things are organized the way they are since I was a little kid. Anything can be systematized. And no one can pack a moving truck more tightly than my mother. But I’m good.

It’s a spatial/visual awareness thing.

Noah and the kids are not… as able to organize for themselves. I have high hopes for Youngest Child. They have some natural talent in this direction and I think it is fabulous. But the kid is still in the stage where these kinds of potential talents must be nurtured with the softest of blowing and modeling and talking through why you do things… and no pressure for the kid to just get it right.

My kids won’t have god complexes.

They are going to be fucked up somehow. That’s inevitable. Just… not like me. Cause that’s kinda the best any of us can do.

I hate that I am happy about the validation from Stanford. I feel like an asshole for caring. I should be validated by the happiness of my children. They aren’t anxious. They are weird as fuck because they haven’t been shamed out of a variety of odd behaviors. I’m not going to say what any of them are because… that feels like crossing a line. But they do some odd shit and they’d take flack for it at school.

They fill their time in ways that don’t hurt nobody. I’m fine with them being weird about it.

I’m not sitting in a position where I ought to be judging someone else for being odd. Know what I mean?

I spend a lot of time sitting in my back yard on the swing. I have surrounded myself with green. It has taken years to build this in my little suburban box backyard. This little pretense of nature in a well manicured suburb. It’s time to trim the trees. Sigh. One. More. Thing. But it is so much fun. I’ve been sneaking back yard work in lately. It makes me happy. I have so many plans for this place. And most of them can happen slowly over many years. I don’t seem to be going anywhere.

I need to find some words for what is going on in my head. I’ll start with saying that fake nails are evil. When they come off, my fingertips are sore for weeks and it makes typing very uncomfortable.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this whole “trying to love myself” thing I’ve been supposedly working on this year. How am I doing on it? I don’t know. Noah asked me what I got out of the experiment earlier this year with stepping out. That’s complicated.

I learned that my orgasm response isn’t as changed as I thought it was. I just don’t react to my long-term relationship the way I respond to sex with new people. Not even just new people, my submissive isn’t a new partner–but he is someone I am not enmeshed with. There’s a lot of individuality there.

I learned that Noah is a lot more attached to me than I really understood. Maybe I should have understood that to start with, but I didn’t. I genuinely didn’t know I would hurt him to the degree that I did. Now I know.

I have managed to get to the point where I don’t have a constant drumbeat of “worthless whore” in the back of my brain. That’s good. That’s progress. That’s a huge fucking deal after decades of trying to drown out that voice any way I could. I wouldn’t say I have high self esteem, but I have a kind of void in my head where I am waiting to see who and what I will be.

I learned that when I get past the breeding period, my identity as a public pervert is really really really important to me. I’m not ok with just being a private player. I am an exhibitionist and being part of the pervert community matters to me. That is not something Noah has ever cared about in the same way. Noah doesn’t need community affirmation of his identity in the way I do. That’s probably healthier but… I am what I am. Given that we are restarting this whole breeding thing I have more time to kind of step back. I don’t feel the same urge when I’m pregnant or when I’m caring for a tiny baby.

I’ve been thinking constantly about why I need to have more children, why can’t I be satisfied with helping some of the many children who need help in the world? It’s complicated. I still would like to foster someday. But fostering will not be about taking someone else’s child and making them mine. It will be about helping someone else’s child. I love my Bonus Kids. They are fantastic. I’m grateful I get to love on them and teach them and spend time with them. They aren’t mine. They aren’t part of me.

I feel so very damaged by not having a biological family who would love and embrace me. The children of my blood and my body give me a mirror in which to look at myself with love. I haven’t had a lot of that in my life. My children are mini-me-not-me’s. They take my characteristics and Noah’s and they mix them up in complicated ways and they become these separate individual people who are worthy of love. They give me a way to see myself as possibly worthy of love. If pieces of me are deserving of love in these other shapes, maybe I am too.

I know people who have been adopted and I know people who have adopted children. I am not trying to cast aspersions on their lives or choices. I am saying that I am broken. I am saying that I have limits. I am saying that I would be one of those assholes who would adopt and always see their adopted children as different from their “real” children. I don’t want to do that to a kid. That would be so fucking mean. Fostering isn’t the same as adopting. I think I could be a very good foster parent. I think I would be a horribly bad adoptive parent and I don’t want to inflict that on a child who already has to deal with the pain of separation from their birth mother.

I don’t want to be responsible for hurting another being like that and I’m fairly certain I would.

I know people who have adopted and had biological children. They are wonderful parents. I admire them and seek to learn from their kind hearts. My heart is small and broken and pathetic. I am not the wonderful person they are. I am a selfish asshole.

I feel deeply ashamed of being so limited. I feel ashamed of my inability to love and care for people not born of my body in the same way I love my biological children. I feel ashamed of how small and selfish I am. I need to see myself in my children in order to give and give and give the way I have. I feel ashamed of the fact that I am as good of a mother as I am because I am trying to reparent myself. I give to my children because I wish someone had given to me and that feels terrible. I would not be able to do the same thing for another child. That’s a failure in me.

I feel ashamed of this limitation in the same way I am ashamed of how small my life is. I have so much privilege. So much security. So much safety and… I don’t help very many people with it. I don’t do that much with my life.

I am a mother and a wife. I stay home and I hide in this little cave.

My friends are not so pathetic. They are part of the world. They have jobs. They have connections to community organizations and they interact with something bigger than their own life.

I feel ashamed of how small and self-involved my life is.

But I’m really and truly not able to take anything else on at this point and be good at mothering. I feel so ashamed of this fact. I read. I study. I try to prepare for a future in which I will be able to actually help people. I pray that I get to that future and I pray that all this god damn study will be of real value in the world. I don’t feel like I am of value now. I have managed to silence the drumbeat of “worthless whore” but I still fear that I am a waste of resources.

Noah’s surgery went well. After a tense conversation with the anesthesiologist who said “Oh I think we’ll do the same thing that failed last time only we’ll use more of the same drug!” we said… errrr… are there other options? Noah got a spinal and stayed awake through the surgery to eliminate the risks involved in general anesthesia. As a result today he is feeling way better than he did the day after the attempted surgery. Which, to me, means that Noah made the right choice in skipping the general. But I can’t believe he stayed completely still through three hours of someone sewing up his vas deferens. That’s a man who is serious about wanting more kids. Holy shit.

After the surgery I commented that it went fast–only three hours of sewing. He joked, “My crotch is more complicated than a maramé plant holder and less complicated than a cable knit sweater.” The surgeon heard this joke, nodded sagely, and said, “That’s true.” I found this exchange hilarious.

I feel guilty as fuck about this whole process. There are good reasons to not have more children. The only reason to have them is because I want them so bad I physically ache most of the time with longing. I want to meet these people. The people who could be part of me and possibly love me even though I am such a deeply flawed human being. My children love me. I know we haven’t hit the rocky teen years yet… but I know children who hate their parents long before the age of eight. It’s not even rare.

My kids and I get along. It’s not that we never have conflict… but we figure it out. It is shocking to me that parenting is going so well.

I don’t feel deserving. I don’t feel worthy of what I have. But life doesn’t look at deserving as it figures out who gets what. You get what you get.

This morning I went to the grocery store and watched the checkers publicly humiliate a woman who is a chronic shoplifter. As I watched this process I thought to myself, “That could be me.” I am not better than her. I am not more deserving of humane treatment just because I have a credit card. I despise the fact that I live in a world that only affords people humanity if they have money. I feel disgusted for the part I play living in this world. I’m going to call the store manager today and have a chat about the store’s policies. I know they have to deal with shop lifters. They don’t have to publicly degrade them. That fucking sucks. That isn’t necessary.

Why do we treat people so badly just as a matter of course?

Why can’t I adopt children and love them and take care of them and share the unfair quantity of privilege I landed in? Because I fucking suck.

I am tired. I’m sore. My nose fucking hurts still. But I’m gleefully breathing with my mouth closed. Like magic.

I just… I’m just tired.

Twelve days ago I waited for this surgery with barely a nudge of anxiety. Today I’m anxious as fuck. Noah isn’t going under general anesthesia this time. They are giving him a spinal instead. It means we will have to sit in recovery longer. I’m sorry to the lovely friend who will end up hanging out with our kids longer.

I’ve been feeling really… blocked when it comes to writing/talking lately. I’m not blaming anyone else. I go through periods where I feel like I just can’t write about what I’m feeling. I don’t know how to ensure I’m properly understood. I don’t want to give more cannon fodder to the opposite of what I’m thinking/feeling.

I feel like I don’t know what I feel enough to say what I feel. And I’m kinda frustrated with things going poorly because I can’t express myself right.

Better to deal with the problems that come with saying nothing at all.

Too much is in limbo. My nose is still healing and I’m still restricted because of that surgery. The house remodel is still ongoing and has been for years. The stress is really getting to me. I emailed the med doctor I’m mad at because I want testing done and starting from scratch with a new person will suck; I don’t particularly want to work with her anymore but I also don’t want the hunt for a new person.

I’m freaking out because the first attempt at a vasectomy reversal failed. I’m scared the second try will fail and I won’t want Noah to try a third time because… it’s not meant to be.

Noah remembers him getting a vasectomy as a mutual decision. I remember bitterly saying that if something happens to Noah I am going to try again for another kid and that’s why I didn’t get fixed. Even though it would be risking my life.

I’m feeling overwhelmed with bitterness that my parenthood decisions are often out of my hands and yet Noah is telling people that these are mutual decisions.

I’m freaking out because the kids keep telling people we are going to have a baby as if I’m already pregnant and I don’t know if I’m going to be able to get pregnant and…

I’m getting really really upset about all of this. It feels really bad.

I am tired of living in a house that is staged and squashed and having to fit around work. I want to just go back to living and it is months until that will be true. I don’t know if I’m setting this house up to handle more babies or if I’m done having babies.

This is hurting me so much. I would like to spend the day sobbing. Because I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to prepare for. I feel stuck and frustrated and helpless. My body is not under my control. My life isn’t under my control.

I am so frustrated I could scream and scream and not stop screaming for days.

I need to take a moment to be grateful for the delightful progress happening in my nose. Even with the gauze pads I’m still able to breathe through my nose with a speed and force never-before-felt. This is good. When I irrigate the area I get hardly any blood clots now. This is excellent.

I uhhh kinda lost my patience with the toys getting spread out everywhere because of our lack of a toy room and I rearranged the kid sleeping room. This was probably not a wise thing to do in the week post surgery but since when am I wise? I put Youngest Child’s bed side by side with Eldest Child’s bed so there is no walking space at all and I put ALL THE DOLLS under the top bunk. This means that none of the stuff can be accessed easily and no one will be able to play with the doll stuff much till the remodel is over because there is so much of it shoved under there. I don’t care I don’t care I don’t care. I’m tired of not being able to walk in the garage.

Doing this freed up space in the garage so I could work on moving more stuff out of the bathroom and play room because construction should start in there very soon. AKA… I did need the storage space so moving the toys wasn’t mean it was kinda necessary because otherwise I would have had to put the bathroom stuff… I don’t know where. It’s getting kinda hard to have about 1/3 of my house unusable when normally I use every inch. It’s going on a year of this. I’m getting kinda frustrated.

But the new construction company is moving on lickety split and the roofing company has a meeting today. Yay!

I should call the engineering company. Of course. Sigh.

My throat still hurts. I have a headache like whoa (I haven’t taken a pain pill yet and I still have a huge stash of pain pills) and I’m dizzy and my stomach hurts. My body keeps saying, “Hey wench, know that resting you are supposed to do? WHY DO YOU PERSIST IN MOVING LOTS OF SHIT AROUND YOUR HOUSE?!”

Because I’m going more than a bit nutty. And this does have to get done. Doing it all frantically next week won’t go better.

But… I feel like crap.

My back says “Hey wench. You haven’t been exercising and guess what is bad for you?”

Yeah yeah… not exercising. I know. Ouch.

To switch topics to other heavy body load topics: I think our first fertile period of trying for pregnancy will be in November. Maybe. If we can get a few other things lined up. Otherwise December. That will give us a three month window after the trip and a lot of the Zika concern says wait a month. So I think I can stop feeling nervous about that any minute here. Neither of us showed signs of illness and we are waiting through a reasonable incubation period.

Hopefully… that’s just not a problem we need to fret about.

I got almost eleven hours of sleep last night. I still feel exhausted. Healing is obnoxious.

I’m not taking good care of my garden right now. I’m so tired. But life goes on.

This morning I feel like my skin is paper thin. I’m tired of hashtags. I’m tired of seeing the police murder citizens. I’m tired of unashamed bigotry. This election cycle has been one long series of seeing that many people in my country are foul and mean spirited.

How can you hate an entire group just for not being like you? I don’t understand that.

“Weird” is someone else’s normal. Weird just means you haven’t done it/eaten it/seen it enough times yet. Keep at it. Soon it will be normal.

Does that mean violence is normalized? Too much so.

I feel so tired.

I didn’t rest yesterday after the surgery and I didn’t sleep almost at all the first night. Luckily last night I got more sleep.

I was also able to schedule lunch with a friend (thank you for inviting yourself over!), dinner with my submissive, and I need to respond to an email from a dear old friend.

How can life be so wonderful and so terrible all at the same time?

Today… I need to be more relaxed. I’m probably going to shut my computer. I know that there is a whole world of pain out there. I can only deal with the pain in my nose today. I know I’m shallow. I’m out of bandwidth. My head hurts so much. Oh, I should go take a pain pill. Wheeee. I also need to acquire toilet paper and pancake mix. That’s probably enough to aspire to for today.

I have a Bonus Kid. I may have to take Eldest Child in for a haircut if Noah gets selected for jury duty.

Yeah. That’s enough for today. My heart hurts and I can’t absorb more without ending up hiding behind my bed and crying.

I don’t know how everyone gets up and faces this world every day. It is so fucking sad.

I was talking to a friend online. She expressed horror that someone could buy food and throw it away without eating it. She is currently at a point in life where… one does not throw away perfectly good food you just spent money on.

I get it. I’ve been there. In some weird ways… I’m kinda still there. If I order a salad and they put fish on it instead of the chicken I’m willing to eat… I eat every bit other than the fish and feel extreme guilt about not eating the fish. It’s not cool to throw away perfectly good protein! But I wasn’t in a space where I could put it in a box and wander around until I found someone who would be willing to eat it. So I threw it away.

I get the existential horror of throwing away food and I get being rich enough that I don’t have to eat all the food I buy.

This is a complicated matter. It plays into health, weight, the right to enjoy eating, as well as financial issues.

She started “When I am rich I will never forget being poor”. It’s true. You don’t forget. Well, I don’t forget. I’m sure there are people who do.

But it is complicated. I tell my children that it is better to throw food away than eat when you do not feel hungry. That’s a militant position I hold. Because my children are unlikely to ever genuinely go hungry. That is a position of staunch privilege.

For me, such issues go along with thoughts about racial issues as well. I tell my children that if they are in trouble, a police officer will probably be fairly reasonable with them. I also tell them that unless they genuinely want a person of color to die, never call the police over an issue with a person of color. It is simply not safe. I tell my children flat out that police officers do bad things and they have legal cover for doing so. Do not invite them into doing more bad things or you share the blame.

To me recognizing where you sit, the world you live in, the choices you have to make… are all tied up. They are tied up in race, privilege, access to help… these things are so big. I’m sure I make mistakes but I’m doing what I can to be a better person.

Not a good person. That’s not a race you ever win. Sometimes I have conversations with people and they tell me defensively, “But I’m a good person.” Bah. Your faves are problematic. I’m problematic. You are problematic too and you don’t want to look at how.

I love you anyway, just so it has been said. It’s ok with me that you fuck up. I’ll probably call you on it if I’m in the room when you do something fucked up… but that won’t change the fact that I love you and think you are important.

I’m trying to learn how to love me. I’m trying to learn how to think I’m important. But I cannot be and never will be more important than anyone else. I will have access to more privilege than most people… that’s not the same thing. Going forward I am going to have an easier life than the vast majority of people who have ever been born.

That doesn’t change that I can be a real piece of shit.

Is someone bad for throwing away food in an area of Oakland nearly blanketed by homeless people? No. But I wouldn’t do it. I would take time out of my schedule and hunt up someone who needs the food more than me. Not because I’m better. Because that is something that is important to me because of my existential issues.

This isn’t a contest. There are people who do far more good in the world than me. I shouldn’t stop doing good things because other people are better. I shouldn’t stop doing good things because other people have more access to privilege and the ability to help than I have. I have to be who I am and where I am.

I’m rich by the measures I would have used as a child. There are still people in this world who would scoff at my “richness” and point out all the things I can’t do at my income bracket. That’s a choice. I choose to stay childlike in this regard. I’m rich. I don’t have “when I get rich” hanging over my head. Sure, I have lottery fantasies… but most of my lottery fantasies revolve around things like college scholarship funds and halfway houses.

I…. don’t actually need more than I have. I have everything I need and more. I have extra. Sure, this year as I hemorrhage money on a house remodel and a trip to the Caribbean and I have surgery and Noah has surgery and…. I could cheerfully find more ways to spend money. I… don’t care. I don’t need more. I’ve paid for this year. Ok, I’ll be paying it off for another few years if you include the house remodel. That is turning out to be kinda brutal. But I’ll pay it off at this income bracket and be jim dandy fine. I’ll wince. I’ll angst. I’ll have feelings… but I’ll be ok. Noah will be ok. My kids college funds will still grow. Shit dude, we are looking at having to come up with new college funds.

And I don’t god damn need more money for it. I’m fucking rich.

So what will I do when I’m rich? I’ll hand off money. Lots of it. Will it make my budgeting more fussy? Yes. But I’m going to do more as the years go by, not less. I’ll find a way to trim my expenses and I don’t need a fancy new car and I will save for years and years before I travel… like I always do.

Because I could be a selfish piece of shit or I can try to make the world a teeny tiny bit better. I’m not rescuing anyone. I’m not solving their problems. I’m saying, “Hey. I see you. I know this is inadequate but it is what I can give right now. Keep trying. You matter.”

It sucks. It isn’t good enough.

I know.

I can do what I can to hand off tools in life. Tools that help people find the resources they need that can actually solve their problems. I can’t solve anyone’s problems but mine.

Goodness that sucks. But it is true.

I can’t save Black people from violent police. I can’t be that savior. But I can tell my children not to call the police on people of color. I can choose to not report Black men who do stupid illegal shit in front of me because they aren’t actually hurting me and I don’t need to wreck their lives. I can teach my children that Black Lives Matter and we need to write our congress critters about police reform. I can talk about how we live in a horribly unjust society. I can talk about how much I believe in reparations. The current citizens of this country owe a debt to the people we murdered, enslaved, and removed from their ancestral lands. We can’t pay it back to the folks who are gone. We can just pay their children.

And we need to fucking do it if we want to think of ourselves as a great nation. The longer we build our “greatness” on exploitation, slavery, and murder… we are nasty, disgusting vile creatures. If you think slavery is over: google “Prison inmates on strike” and tell me again that slavery is over.

This is all connected. Having options. Having the ability to “choose” what you “want” to do is… not really a luxury everyone is afforded and it god damn should be.

You shouldn’t have to “when I get rich” fantasize about helping people. It should be something that folks can do. But many really can’t do much because of the circumstances of their lives. They don’t have the time to walk all over and look for someone to take extra food because they are working multiple jobs. They don’t have the money to give it away. They don’t have they don’t have they don’t have…

I am not shaming anyone. I’m really not. I didn’t hand out money like this in the past. I wasn’t so fierce about giving away food. I wasn’t so ready to help when I was poor. I don’t think I am a better person now. I think I am in a different situation with access to different abilities. That doesn’t change how I should be judged.

Maybe the fact that I work harder on my language now is a mark in my favor, but probably not. Maybe that’s a self indulgent thing I do to try and be accepted and loved. Am I really more careful about my language because I’m better or because I am… more hurt by people hating me for existing. I’ve lost my ability to shrug it off.

I know that rich white people are shit. I’m one of them and I know lots more of them and…. yeah. It’s complicated. Are they all shit? Define shit.

Are they all problematic as fuck? Yes. Unequivocally.

Do I hate them? No. I love many of them, tolerate others, and can’t be bothered to think about others.

I have to be willing to think about someone a lot in order to hate them. A lot of the uberprivileged people I know get thought about way the fuck too much and they expect to be centered in the thoughts of people around them because their lives have always worked that way and…. yeah. I’m not going to do that for you. I’m not going to care enough about you to think about you much.

I’m rich enough that I don’t have to.

That’s the piece of being rich that is most important, in my opinion. You no longer have to care that much about the opinions of most people. Unless you are working hard to get richer and you need to suck up to those people. I’m really not about that life. I… understand that other people need to be. I’m sorry.

If I needed to work I’d have different opinions. I’m very sure. I know that my incalcitrant behavior is a function of privilege. God awful, horrible privilege.

I’m sorry for that too. I think such pissiness should be available to everyone. I’m not rich enough to make that possible though. Life fucking sucks.

I’m trying to help where I can. I know it isn’t enough. I know it is fucking pathetic compared to what needs to be done. It is all I can do. I’m sorry.

Noah’s surgery on Friday didn’t happen. He had a negative reaction to the first drug they gave him as an anesthetic. He started coughing violently when he should have been falling asleep and aspirated stomach fluids.The anesthesiologist shoved a tube down his throat and suctioned him because pneumonia sucks.

They did not proceed with the surgery. Because he persisted in coughing blood up all day by the evening the anesthesiologist called to check in and just about begged us to go get a chest x-ray because his reaction was extreme and unusual. We did. We left the house around 8pm and got home around 3ish. That was after waking up at 4 in the morning to get ready to leave at 5am for the surgery.

That was a long day. The kids slept through most of the ER wait time. They are little troopers.

Noah is fine. The blood was probably from throat irritation from the quick intubation.

The crazy part is Noah is going to try again. Because yeah, he wants to have more kids. This journey we are on blows my mind.

I slept late today, Saturday and napped through a lot of the day. I have surgery on Monday to fix my nose. Oh yay. And on Tuesday I have an appointment for genetic testing so that my med doctor can get a better idea of why I metabolize drugs so weird.

Oh it’s an exciting week. I’ve made painting progress! The bathroom remodel is going!

Just keep moving. I’ll drop some balls, sure, but I’ll keep enough in the air.

Also: Eldest Child has reached the age of academics and is… cooperating. Just cheerfully adapting to math and reading and writing and specific science study being part of the routine. It’s just another chore. Sure, no trouble.

Youngest Child keeps asserting “I’m not old enough for academics yet. I don’t have to yet.”

Yes, yes I know. I didn’t make your sibling at six. At seven I start suggesting occasional academic work. At eight I start insisting. You are on track kiddo, don’t fret.

Eldest Child has gone through and demonstrated proficiency on almost all the first grade skills I was certain I needed to see mastery of in the last month or so. There is a little bit left to cover, but not much. She’ll be done in September. I think the second grade skills I’m worried about will take us 2-3 months. If she keeps up this trend she’ll be working on fourth grade skills by the end of third grade. Having entirely skipped academics for years when her peers were being forced.

God damn I’m feeling validated.

Are my children perfect? First: define “perfect” but…. probably not. They are little shitheads. Like they should be. But I like them. I like them so very much. They are learning things in the ways I hoped they would be able to learn. I started planning for this for years before I had read research to back up my perspective. I totally went and looked for confirmation about my methods. I have found it in research and in my personal experiences. Sure I’ve read research saying it is impossible too.

I just… pay less attention to that research. Like most people.

There are a lot of people who were happy to tell me that “coddling” my oldest child by providing as much cuddling and nursing as she wanted will prevent her from ever being independent. I’ll stop laughing in a few years.

Does she want to go to school yet? No. But she knows that she will want to in a few years. She already can see the ways she will want to pull away and be independent. We talk about it. I feel so lucky that my kids get to pull away as they feel the desire instead of having to adapt to the expectations of others.

I need to order a few more books. Apparently there is a new trend in gifted education focusing on children as asynchronous learners. Hey, gimme that confirmation. I was way ahead in some areas and dramatically behind in others; the same is true of my children. Strangely I would say that Youngest Child is less asynchronous. Kiddo is not as startlingly advanced but also has fewer areas of noticeable trouble.

Eldest Child… she’s all over the map developmentally. They say of early potty learners that the children aren’t trained the parents are. I would say that Eldest Child hasn’t yet been trained in how to accommodate all of her asynchronous learning needs… but I’ve been trained. She and I talk about how my expectations of her are sometimes very advanced and strict… because she is capable in that area. When I talk to her about my expectations on different stuff she rarely indicates she thinks I’m pushing hard. When she does I’m happy to chill out.

Things like not expecting her to sit still very often. That’s been a serious thing. It’s why she didn’t move into a seat belt booster seat till eight. She wasn’t able to sit still earlier than this in a way that made me feel comfortable in a car. Which isn’t to say that I feel all children must be in a five point harness till eight.

But my kid’s developmental maturity is asynchronous. There are areas where she is impulsive in ways that can be a serious problem and I come down like a box of hammers because I had the same impulsive tendencies and I can point at the specific problems I’ve had for the rest of my life because of that impulsiveness.

Sometimes I seriously wonder if I’m hurting her because I’m not letting her fuck up in all the ways I fucked up so she won’t be learning the lessons I learned.

We all fuck up our children.

I’m not a perfect mother. Not by any measure. But I am getting to parent in the most ideal circumstances I can imagine. That’s just fucking luck. Yeah I prepared for it… but I’ve known other people who prepared and didn’t end up where they wanted to go.

Noah’s willingness to adapt to me and to provide the life I want to have is not something one can plan around. Holy shit I’m lucky.

Noah continues to be the only person I really ought to look to for determining my wacky ass course in life. He will be the only one walking the path with me.

Thank you, honey.

I had a very positive session with my therapist yesterday. She commented that she thinks that my behavior and attitude are night and day different since the journey. I’m more willing to look at positives and less phased by negatives. She says she rarely sees people have such extreme impact from one journey.

I worry about clinical statements like that. Why are some medications so intensely full of impact and why do some make me want to die? Most of the ones prescribed by a medical doctor make me want to die. It feels like the medications are all designed to decrease my feelings of possibilities. Conform. Be smaller. Don’t want so much. Shut up.

The medications I can get through more alternative settings all seem to be designed to cause me to think about new possibilities. I fucking live for new possibilities.

I have incredibly different entire body responses to the narrowing or the widening of possibilities.

I need to believe I can change and that I can change people. Or I can’t see a point in living. Even though stasis at this point would be stasis at by far the happiest point in my life so far. I don’t anticipate later periods in my life being happier than this time. I really don’t. But I’ll figure out how to change more people.

That’s something to live for.

I don’t see a lot of room for “worthless” in the future I’d like to have. I’m not saying I’ll ever stop being an asshole. I’m not saying I’ll stop hurting people as I learn. But I’m not going to run out of “stuff to give”. I’ll take breaks and be selfish sometimes. That’s part of the balance.

As always when I’m on the East Coast I talk to a Disney employee (or a few) about how much better Disneyland is. They can rattle of the reasons. They know they are not the real magic. “I travel out there at least once a year to remind myself of what the real magic is.”

It is about how immersive the experience is. It’s about how much there is to see and think about while you do things.

My house is getting towards being an immersive experience. I’m not done yet. I don’t have the spoons to finish the whole house this calendar year. Sooooo tired. I actually did a few hours of painting yesterday. Woo. I have a bunch of shelves back and today I can put the cabinet doors on to block off the chemicals. Woo. Now we can allow people (with small children) back in our house.

I really hope I finish the kitchen before I need to finish the mosaic. I’m trying to push myself. I’m so glad I did all that lay out work already. So glad. Soooooooo glad. I’ll have to fill in gaps and I’ll do it while talking to the tile installers. It will go faster and be more fun. After they are done with the bathroom I need to hurry up and paint in there and in the playroom. Because I want to not have a ton of paint to store. Right now… my paint collection is a little out of control and getting old. Time to use it up and start fresh in a few years. And I’d really like to be done by Thanksgiving. I STARTED THIS DAMN PROJECT IN JANUARY.

Because of the color palette I work with I don’t work with low VOC paint. I need to air out the house before I get pregnant. As another consideration.

Oh good grief.

So what does it mean to want to change the world? I’m not going to invite millions of people to my home, but there will be a lot of people. And most of them tell me that seeing what I do inspires them.

Why do I do the things I do? Because I see the possibility of them in my mind and it makes me crazy to not change what is to look more like what it could be.

That’s why I plant plants. It is why I paint. It is why I homeschool my kids. It is why I want to be who I want to be sexually. Because I can. Because it is something I need to be.

I’m sorta frustrated with my massage therapist telling me that instead of having more children we should fly to a foreign country and “pick out a baby”. Adoption is complicated and transracial adoption even more-so. I understand that multiple people in your family did exactly that so you know it is possible.

I’m not judging other people doing it. I’m saying I wish you wouldn’t tell me to do it. I think it is complicated. It is a set of complications I think I would fail at living up to. I deal really well with the set of issues that comes up dealing with my dna’s set of trouble. I’ve researched the shit out of that. But I am afraid that I would not put as much energy into tracking down everything I really would owe a child. I’m going to skate with my younger kids. It is going to be a very different parenting experience. I don’t know exactly what it will be like, but I know it won’t be hard the way the first set was.

It isn’t because of the help Eldest Child thinks she is going to offer. Ha. It will be because of the presence of the older kids and Noah working from home. It’s just different.

I should start chores. I have my monthly visit with Taylor today. That should be fun. It usually is.

I don’t need to change the big wide world. I don’t need to be a big fish. I’m happy in small ponds.

I woke up early enough that I have a prayer of getting this down before the kids wake up. I’ll hurry.

The cruise was fun. The most obnoxious part was my fault and that was related to just how many appointments we needed to have before the vow renewal. That got really old because we kept finding out “You have an appointment in 45 minutes. Stand around and wait.” And in order to get my hair done I had to go in for a pre appointment. And after the pre appointment she wanted me to go find internet (we didn’t have a phone or a computer between us) and get pictures because she wasn’t comfortable winging it from my description. That was the big fuss between us and Disney.

If that is the fuss… it was an easy trip. We adults didn’t get enough sleep because we were up until 11 or 12 every night and we were up before 7 most days.

I should describe the ceremony day. It was placed on my friend’s birthday which kinda sucked. I’m sorry about that. I got my hair done before my friends, which was sorta sad because I didn’t get to hang out and chat with anyone before the ceremony. Noah and I helped each other get dressed (we will do so lots in the future… might as well start then). He went upstairs and I… stood around my room alone for a long time. Eventually the coordinator came and got me and put me in the elevator that was being held all fancy-like for me. (The only elevator on the boat that goes to the top deck.)

It’s a small room called the Overlook. There is a fabulous view. I said I was cool with the piano player just doing Disney songs. I’m not going to fuss about that part. Bonus Daughter got to be the flower girl, my girls loved their entrance moments (hilarity), and I felt like an idiot trying to be formal. It was funny. The opening of the ceremony was the Disney standard non-denominational ceremony for vow renewals. They’ve got that down pat.

We interrupted to do our own vows. (Afterwards the piano player said they were the most real vows he had ever heard. It was kinda funny.) Our vows were… very us. We are careful to promise what we can deliver on. After that it was funny for us to take the rings off our fingers and hand them across to do the Disney-branded-ring-exchange. It was cute. The pictures are fun. I’m particularly charmed by some of the pictures of me with the kids. Because I would be. I like lots of the pictures with me and Noah. It was really fun to gussy up and take pictures.

Our buddy took our kids overnight. Which was rough on his only child who isn’t use to disruptive twerps making noise (aka my kids). Gah. We are so obnoxiously loud. Thank you for suffering for us.

It was nice to have a night in the room alone.

We ate at the sit down restaurant once and otherwise we lived at the buffet for breakfast and lunch. After the first few days were a sugarpalooza I exercised my fascist control tendencies and the children had to eat vegetables and fruit before protein before deciding if they had room left for sugar. Because I like to believe I have some influence on these things, I want to point out that my kids never had a serious temper tantrum. They got enough sleep, rest, and exercise that when I was all, “You know we have to take care of our bodies–vacation or not.” They nodded and agreed I was right.

We didn’t manage to overlap with our friends much. We had breakfast one morning with the dad/kid duo and otherwise we saw folks at dinner. That was a bit hard for me. We just couldn’t get on a schedule to spend time together. The one time Noah walked off to have fun with the other dad I tried to join them after a bit and couldn’t find them. So I just… didn’t have adult hangout time on the boat outside of dinner.

But I liked the boat. I tended to avoid the big crowds so I wasn’t in the pool much during the day. We enjoyed the water slide that goes over the side of the boat. I went on that with youngest child a bunch. I read a huge fat book. I rested. I guess I got what I was there to get. I didn’t sleep enough, but I definitely rested my body from my normal frenetic working pace. That was great.

We tried out the Disney version of a fancy pants tea party. I never ever need to pay for it again. I make as good of tea food. It was mostly a small show with two folks doing songs from Beauty and the Beast with a doll and charm bracelet/necklace an visits from Princesses. We are really spoiled with all our local tea houses in the bay area. The food on the boat just wasn’t impressive and given how we feel about tea as a part of our social rituals… we want good tea food. Not to mention that one of my kids snapped the head off the doll just a day or two later. So this effectively massively expensive doll… yeah. It wasn’t spectacular.

Mostly the kids sat there with cupcakes with a giant pile of frosting. There was 2 or 3 times as much frosting as cupcake. This was the big deal. Yeah…. we’ll pass. We do better tea parties at home.

I’m going to preen a bit about that. Although I don’t perform as Mrs Potts.

And I’m going to look forward to giving a tea party after this damn remodel is over. I’ve been to tea parties from coast to coast and in other countries. I know what makes a good tea party and mostly… I can do it well.

Sometimes I feel quite agog over the skills I have picked up this lifetime. I never thought I’d be this damn prissy. I can coax a whole room full of wild children through tea party manners so they practice their fine motor skills and etiquette. This is my idea of a good time.

What happened to me?

I don’t know, but I’m having fun.

My kids spent some time in day care… but not a lot. They wanted to hang out with us. Even when they went they usually didn’t stay long. (Youngest child skipped one dinner and that was fine with me. They eat in a more casual environment at kid care and I understand needing a break from manners.)

I strongly suspect that is part of how I get such good manners from my children. I understand that it is a performance and that they need breaks. I coax it, watch the performance and then give notes; then I pat them on the head and encourage them to let loose during off times. I’m stage managing them.

It isn’t the relationship everyone wants to have with their kids, but it kinda is what I’m doing with my kids. Recently a friend and I were discussing manipulation. They were expressing that they aren’t a fan of it. I said I manipulate people. That’s why I’m such a good teacher. They said I don’t manipulate I manage or guide them. (Emphasis mine.)

I giggled. Yes, I’m such an intensely good manipulator that people will find other ways of describing and defining it so that they can justify it. Yup. And yes, I am manipulating people basically all the time. I want to cause people to have positive feelings around me and I am an intense, difficult person. I carefully select from an internal menu of possible personality configurations and decide which elements are most likely to cause this person to have positive feelings. I have quite a range.

That’s manipulation. I’m not mean spirited about it. I don’t think I’m being “phony”. I’m being selective about how I manifest in front of people because there are real consequences to not being careful. I’ve paid the price of not filtering. I’m going to god damn filter for the rest of my life and I don’t feel ashamed. Yes, I manipulate people.

I mean you can try to put a fancier word on it to justify it so it doesn’t sound bad because people don’t like the word manipulate… but I try to be honest here. This is where I drop my filters and just tell the truth.

Yes. I manipulate people.

I have the potential to traumatize people every day. I have an overtly forceful personality and a host of topics that are normal and casual for me that could hurt people all day long. I’m very careful how I talk to people. I don’t see it as bad. I see it as trying to learn how to meet people at the level they can meet me at. I get through life by having fairly defined sub groupings of personality traits that I understand that others can handle. How do I decide that people can handle them? I test them in the field, of course.

There are days I can’t muster up the bandwidth to do a good job in choosing. If I have to be social on those days I tend to stand in the corner and not talk much. Like a clock that hasn’t been wound. It isn’t fixed to go in the proper groove so it just… stands there doing nothing. Of course on those days I take breaks from the corner to go find somewhere private and cry for a while. Then I find a corner again.

It is as predictable as weather.

On the trip Noah was reading me The Diamond Age out loud. The kids listened to some of it. Eldest child asked me, after hearing a section on tricky people, why a certain uncle doesn’t come around anymore. I was more honest than I have been in the past. I said, “He believes a few things and wants the right to do things that I don’t think he should do. So I asked him to stop coming around.” “Like what?”

Deep sigh. “Well he believes that all children must be submissive to adults. Remember what submissive means? No? It means you must do as you are told. You must be obedient.”

My kiddo flat out said, “Fuck that!”

I couldn’t have said it better, sweetie.

I continued, “He believed it, and he believed that when you turn 18 it is ok for him to ask you for sex.”

She sputtered. “But but… he’s our uncle, and he’s olllllllllllllld.”

In that moment I felt vindicated. Yes. I can do this. I can teach this. I can win.

My children will not grow up thinking that incest is normal or acceptable.

Even though my family teaches that. I can teach something different. My children understand that they own their bodies. They can kiss who they want when they want. It is up to them to decide. When they grow up and are ready for sex… I’m very confident they are going to be able to figure that out. These kids will point out if you guilt trip them and say stop it. They will probably not grow up to tolerate pestering.

They may end up a statistic because a man feels enraged by not getting their attention.

That’s a real worry in this world. Toxic masculinity is a real problem. I’m not saying every man is like this. I’m saying there are some men who are poisoned by their own beliefs about what being a man is.

Yes yes there are problematic women too. Can I go back to blathering about my vacation now?

After the cruise we stayed in an Airbnb in Orlando with the worst mattresses ever. Oh god my back hurt. And we spent a horrifying amount of money. The rental van was hit and got a big ding in the bumper. That was $500 extra. Oh yay. Universal Studios and Legoland together… I’m not going to admit how much that was. And mostly… it wasn’t worth the money. I didn’t like Legoland Florida for the same reasons I don’t like the World. It’s too damn big and spread out and hot and not shaded and… It’s a concrete oven.

Orlando, I think we need to break up. Ok, Potter stuff (we only saw Diagon Alley–I wasn’t up for paying for an extra park to see Hogsmeade although in retrospect given that we paid for express and could have done that instead… ahh hindsight.) was fantastic. Mostly I’m not into Universal’s theming or visual appeal. It’s ugly. Diagon Alley wasn’t labeled. You had to just… walk into a random building. It was beautiful. They air conditioned the shit out of this little place so you felt like you walked into England. (This is terrible for global warming. They air condition the outdoors in Florida enough to feel like England.) The buildings were beautiful. I hear they hired imagineers to get the look right. It is perfectly dilapidated yet functional and sturdy. Even the colors are just right. The shops are staffed with appropriately wacky people with funny voices and odd gaits. I don’t know if they are acting or if they just hired people with a variety of disabilities that result in different gaits. If so, I think that is awesome.

I sound like a mean bastard. People were real. In the variety of manifestations that is usually hidden or minimized. I don’t mean funny voices to be mean. I mean they sounded like a group of witches and wizards who have been allowed to grow up not hearing voices on tv they are supposed to sound like.

In most of life if someone has a very high or squeaky voice,they try to minimize it in some way. Here, they were the greater at the door and very prone to speaking a lot. It was delightful.

The food was quite good as well. The butterbeer was awesome. We are going to have to make that. But the price… unbelievable. I was kind of sick to my stomach all day. It wasn’t worth the price.

The best part of the Orlando leg was the grown ups hanging out in the kitchen getting drunk and playing Guillotine. That was hilarious and fun. Vero Beach was fun. The kids got to feel a warm ocean. Noah and I dove through waves we maybe shouldn’t have been playing in. The sea was pretty rough. We enjoyed the pool. Then we had a day in the room to rest then we came home.

That was pretty much our summer vacation.

Ok, Eldest Child would not stop yelling at her seatmate (yeah yeah, he was playing in a pestering way) so I told her she had one more warning before she was grounded the next day. Of course he pestered again so she had to yell at him.

We talked a lot about what the options really had been. We came up with lists. I think that next time… she’ll remember that she has options.

Am I always nice? No. I follow through on what I threaten so I’m not always nice. But… the day in her room wasn’t that bad. She did come out when she wanted to put something away. I spent a bunch of the day visiting in the doorway. We don’t really isolate for time out. Isolation hurts. But I will limit your movement a lot. Why? Because as you’re stuck there all day I’ll talk to you over and over about what your other options in that moment were. Yes, it is Monday morning quarterbacking. I know.

But you know what else I know? We are going to be on a lot of planes in her life. I know she’s flat encouraged me to have more kids and she’s going to have to deal with little pests. This is a problem that will come up again many times. I feel like making sure she remembers this time will pay off.

I gave her a solid dozen warnings before I said, “Ok I’m done. If you yell again you are spending tomorrow in your room.”

A dozen forking warnings.

I get to have a limit. I also moved her from her spot so she couldn’t be near her buddy any more and she was near a parent. It means I spent the rest of the flight unable to see anyone I knew. It really didn’t suck for me.

We all got through it jim-dandy-fine. We want to stop traveling for a bit. (Uhm it turns out we are going to Las Vegas because we had vacation points to use or lose because some folks changed plans earlier in the trip and… unless someone else wants to go to Las Vegas? I could change the name on the reservation if someone else wanted to go…Oct 16-19 I think? I’m in the back yard in the dark and the paper is inside…)

Anyway! We are not traveling in 2017. Not even to see the cool comet. Hmmm. Maybe the trip to Las Vegas could overlap with us not having a toilet in the house. That would be awesome.

I guess that is how I spent my summer vacation/tenth anniversary.

Oh I’m so glad to be back in Californian hot weather. It is down right pleasant.

This morning we started off with a half an hour run. The kids are getting to the point in martial arts where they are frustrated about not having more physical skill and strength than we have, so they asked if we could start more frequent exercise to build up. Yes! Sounds delightful.

Kids have unpacked their stuff. “Grounding” is pretty lightweight this time because Eldest Child is allowed to walk in and out in the service of cleaning up. I told her that I want her to think hard on how behavior needs to adapt in different locations and why and that’s the part I care about the most. Being inconvenienced by not being able to play all over will help you direct your thoughts.

I’m about 90% unpacked. I cleaned the kitchen (we left a serious disaster–I was so tired). I’ve pushed through a couple of loads of laundry and I have two to go. Unloaded, loaded, and unloaded again the dishwasher. Watering the front yard is a pain because I still don’t have a hose in the front and I have to carry buckets of water. But both yards are tended to and that’s important. Cat care and attention.

I paid the bills. We are decisively in the black. Oh good.

I’m taking a short break. I feel like I’ve earned it. I want my bedroom clean. I need to clean out the play room which has been acting as guest quarters. Construction starts again on Monday and that room is supposed to be empty. Where will it all go for now? Gulp.

I feel like the littlest chicken in Chicken Big (a wonderful children’s story) saying “But we’ll make room!”

I need to hire my quasi-step-sister (Dad’s bio-daughter) to help me with my trees. Apparently she is a professional landscaper and my trees need mad pruning.

Tomorrow is my birthday. I know that Noah arranged for a present because it has been sitting in the fridge since before we left. I’m not supposed to look. He accurately points out that I care about things arriving on the day-of and I tend to be kind of a twat about things that appear in advance. It is good to be understood.

The internet says my squash plants probably need more iron. I feel so grateful to live in a time of information. (Yellowing leaves, but not in a way that indicates infection…)

I’m encouraging my kids to do a purge. We are overflowing our ability to clean up again.

Here are some phrases we say a lot in my house that will go in my “Krissy’s rules for staying sane as a parent” book that my friends keep asking me to write:

• If you can’t clean up your stuff you have too much and you need to get rid of some of it. Do you want to own your stuff or have your stuff own you?
• A place for everything and everything in it’s place. If you can’t find a place… maybe you don’t need it.
• We are workers, not shirkers.
• If you ask for something more than three times in one day you are pestering and the answer is no for the rest of the day.
• You are one of the luckiest people ever born. You have food, clean water, safety from diseases, and free time. What do you want to do with it? (I think heavily of JFK when I say this one: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”)
• If you spend that money today what will you spend when _______ comes around?

That’s just off the top of my head.

On the trip a father was talking about why he bans inappropriate content for his kids. Eldest Child says, “Mom doesn’t ban things she just spends a lot of time talking shit about things she doesn’t like”. He looked like he wanted to do a spit take.

Yup, that’s my approach alright. Glad we understand each other. I read a terrible parenting book about raising perfect children through guilt and shame (that’s almost but not exactly the title and I’m too lazy to google it) and I don’t… exactly do as she preaches… but she had some good pointers. Her mom didn’t ban things. She just made sure you knew why she thought things weren’t good.

My mom went between banning things and going limp because her bans were completely ineffective.

I don’t bother to ban much. Oh. That’s another thing I say:

• I’m saving my no’s for boyfriends.

Frequently my kids do shit I don’t like and I don’t approve of. I tell them exactly how I feel and leave it up to them to do it or not. My theory is that interpersonal violence between teenagers is a serious problem and I want to have a whole lifetime of credibility that I’ll let you do any stupid thing you want but I’m going to be serious about safety concerns. I’m hoping that my kids will believe me when it comes to my evaluations of people to date. I have a spidey sense about predators. I’m hoping to goodness that my children will be willing to listen to my advice when push comes to shove. I tell them over and over that once they are ready I will be supportive of them dating. But try to seriously listen when I give you feedback. I’m not saying do as I say. I’m saying I won’t say “Get the fuck away from that person” unless I have a good reason and please believe me.

Some day I hope to be able to write down a whole set of formalized advice for keeping yourself safe. It will be created if and only if I can talk some of my sex worker friends into being interviewed. I don’t have the right to tell this story. I can just help pass along what has kept other people safe.

I think I can now. But how do I know how to protect young girls? I know how to go sit on the lap of every rapist.

Hopefully that has changed.

But that’s so far in the future. Time to go back to working.

I am home from Florida. I am flooded with feelings about parenting and motherhood in particular. I read two books on the trip that really blew my mind combined with watching all the families on the boat.

But: A) I can’t type with these fucking fingernails and B) I need to go to sleep and C) I have a mountain of work to do. The remodel gets started again on Monday. I need to take care of my plants, unpack, finish painting the kitchen, and many dozens of other tasks.

My hands will be busy. I’m so glad to be home. We talk periodically about maybe moving someday. As time goes by I wonder if I could. Coming home to Wonderland is such a euphoric experience. I’m surrounded by my art (I’m completely inspired by stuff I saw on the trip both for painting and the mosaics) and I’m such a fantastic home schooling environment.

I feel refreshed and ready to rededicate myself to my real job.

I am home schooling my children. Yes, that means I wear the bossy control freak pants. If you don’t like it, don’t come over.

I’m reminded that my life is as full as I need it to be and perhaps even over stuffed. I desperately want to see a whole list of people but I really want to get work done. I’m going to frantically work for the next several weeks straight. My house is turning into the picture I see in my head and it is glorious.

I don’t want a big house. I don’t want to live in a big city. I like my quiet suburb. I love my garden. I love my neighbors. I love how many hours a week I need to clean in order to have a company-ready-house all the time. (Specifically: not many.)

I love my children. I love that my eldest child got in trouble on the plane ride home and will spend tomorrow grounded and after a very long talk about consequences, other options next time, and why I have to follow through on what I threatened… and she said she understands that I’m in the right.

Behavior modification for the mother fucking win.

I don’t follow through on my threats to be an asshole. I follow through because then you believe me and trust me and know that I will always be consistent with you.

I’ve been thinking constantly about consistency. It was a theme in the books. Consistency from mothers. How much matters?

It’s complicated. I desperately want to write about what I’m thinking about the books (Her Mother’s Daughter, and The Diamond Age) Ok you nerds won’t think that The Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer is really a mother/daughter book… but I can pull that theme right out. Hopefully soon I’ll even have time to write about it.

Nell and Fiona both interacted with parents through the primers. That’s fucking huge.

This book has more influence on my parenting than I want to admit. This is my second read through.

By the way, I’m over Florida. Yeah, Vero Beach is great and I’m super sad I didn’t take Noah to the Keys…. but I’m so fucking over Florida.

I can’t god damn breathe. I can breathe just fine in Hawaii even though it is also humid as fuck. I can’t breathe in LA and I can’t breathe in Florida. Ugh.

Also: I hated Legoland in Florida. I find the California park to be wonderful. This is similar to my opinion of Disney World vs Disneyland. I hate the World and I’ll never go back. Universal, at least Diagon Alley, was awesome. But so horrifyingly expensive I wanted to cry. That was disgusting. And we were rained out of the biggest coasters. Woo.

I do love the Potter section. That was gorgeous. Also: gave me ideas for house stuff.

God I love that Noah doesn’t care how weird I make the house.

I will paint until I run out of paint this time. I can just tell. It’s going to be so fun.

To go back to that thing I do where every time someone asks me for money I hand them $5. We were passing a woman with a sign as we came out of getting groceries before going to the Disney Vacation Club property where we were going to go have a posh good time. “Noah! Noah! Get out money.”

She thanked me and asked God to bless me, that’s pretty normal in such situations. But then she said, “I’m trying.” Her voice broke. She sounded so sad and desolate. I said that I believe her and a tiny little spark appeared.

We all need to be seen. We all need to be believed. We all need to be helped.

Sometimes people ask me why I’m not afraid the person might buy drugs. I always laugh. I don’t have a high horse to sit on.

If I can afford to go on this trip I can afford to help people in front of me who need help. I have been that person. I was helped. All I can do is pass it forward. Yes, there might be consequences from getting the money I don’t like. I accept that possibility. But I’m also going to tip like a mother fucker on a cruise ship. Those people are working fourteen hours a day mostly for tips. They get very very little money. Yes I’m going to tip well. To the point where they gasp.

Isn’t this how trickle down economics is supposed to work? I have god damn arrived. I may be shivering (literally) as I cringe and think about my end of the year financial review. It ain’t gonna be pretty. I’m going to… have some feelings about myself and my spending habits. Ugh. But! We have no traveling at all scheduled now that we have given up on the idea of an around the world year because… we want a baby more than we want that.

I can go back to saving.

And I did get my mortgage down below $70. I’m not being too shamefully wasteful. And I am living within my means. I pay off my credit cards every month. I try to not feel like shit when we go on a trip. I save and save and save and build up the buffer and then go travel. And completely go over budget like holy fuck.

It’s bad. I mean, it’s not what I want it to be. I have less self discipline or maybe I just underestimate like fuck? Also, I tip a shit-ton of money. I brought $1,000 in cash. At least $400 went to tips/giving.

So yeah. I know why I spend so damn much money. I give it away. I think it is just.

But…ouch.

And… I haven’t done my #GiveYourMoneyToWomen yet this month. *head desk*

I MAY HAVE ANXIETY…… like whoa….

But I’m a privileged motherfucker. I’m so god damn privileged I blow my own god damn mind. I have incredible luck in this life. I have friends who love and support me very very much even if they kinda don’t want to sometimes.

I have a husband who makes me really want to stay alive just to see what he’s going to do over the next few decades. I think this will be neat. I’m going to have to do some ass kicking, but hey… only in ways we both like. Things like: go to conferences and speak about this research you are doing. Yes it is important. Yes I support it.

Even as I cringe about money. It will be comped later. I can take the hit.

I’m really excited to have another baby with this man. The circumstances really couldn’t be better.

Even as I’m still not sure what I’m going to do about nonmonogamy. This will be interesting. Really… a lot of things will be interesting. Probably all of it. We always are.

A train wreck in motion.

Once I read someone say something like “People always ask me how my relationship never has problems and I say ‘We just don’t air our dirty laundry‘.

Me, I hang all the laundry right on the line. The sun is a disinfectant.

We really don’t know what we are going to do. Christfuck.

Sorry Christians. I grew up going to church. I have to deal with my issues how I have to deal with them. Oh man.

I just know that I’m looking forward to every journey I will have with the people in this house. We are figuring it out together as a team because I’m teaching my children how to be able to do that. I like them and I admire them. Are they shitheads? Oh yes. They are my children and I have a different agenda than most people. I can live with that.

I don’t really have a choice because which other agenda could I even convert to? Oh craptastic. Can’t compute. Brain exploding.

Naw. I have to just keep doing what I’m doing.

Sometimes I blow the boat up. Yup. I do that. I’m a fucking asshole.

Life is really complicated.

I sorta live for complication.

This is the gap that pot fills. I wish I were a more patient person. I put myself into positions constantly where I need buckets of patience and…. I’m not the most patient person.

I love the Bonus Kids with all my heart. It is challenging that every parent socializes their kid differently. The Bonus Mama and I have different things that bug us. Neither of us are right nor wrong, we just are. We train our kids differently. This visit… the four kids are all in fucking bad moods and I’m having to stop, think, process, Ok…. why do the Bonus Kids have different expectations in this moment and what do I need to do to fairly express my expectations… which are not what they are used to.

There is no right or wrong in this equation. Everyone is completely fine. But these are young kids and if I want them to adapt to me I have to god damn explain what that means. I have to do it with a smile and gentle hands.

One family that I’m friends with believe it is never ok to touch their child when giving directions. They have worked out methods that manage their expectations with their kids. I’m a toucher. I’m big on a gentle guiding hand to push a child into the direction/expectation I have. Watching my friends has caused me to seriously question whether I’m appropriate or not. I don’t think my preferences are right. They are what work for me.

I touch for a lot of reasons. (I’m talking head/shoulder/arms/back. It is touching without consent but it isn’t nasty or mean or touching sensitive areas.) My experience of working with children is you have to get their attention before giving a correction. The fastest/easiest/most connecting way to do that effectively that I know… is touch. I don’t touch all day long and I work really hard to make sure these are gentle touches. I’m just redirecting attention. “Hey, listen to me for a minute.”

I will walk up to a kid and put my hand on their shoulder when they are screaming and flipping out and say, “Hey… do we scream in this house?”

If I want to get their attention without touching…. (I feel like I should put a bag over my head)… I usually end up screaming when they are really self focused.

I’m not proud. I think I’m a loser.

But I have found a system that works well for me. I don’t touch kids I don’t know. That’s over the line. This is in my house with kids I work with a lot.

My little niece in Scotland? I want to see her again. I won’t touch her. Not unless she initiates. Children of strangers…. I don’t touch them at all. That’s a troublesome line.

But kids I’m attached to who are in my house who spend a lot of time pawing at me? Yeah. I touch them without consent to get their attention sometimes.

I know that two wrongs don’t make a right, but somehow I’m learning something new about consent in this space too.

I can get the attention of lots of children, no matter how dysregulated they are, without touching. But I get fucking loud. I can project amazingly, fantastically well. I can quiet down thousands of screaming children because….I’m louder. This was a job skill in years past. At the beginning of rallies the bullhorn wasn’t loud enough to get any attention. But I can.

I’m strangely proud and ashamed of this. Fucking a I’m loud.

I try to not bring out the bellow unless there is a good reason. (Thousands of screaming children in an enclosed space….) But when I’m dysregulated the first thing to go is… voice volume control. I’m much better than I used to be but I still seriously struggle.

I think this is why I do so well with children who have emotional problems. Dear God I understand. Let’s sit around and commiserate on how hard it is to control ourselves. If you need to have a good cry because you are frustrated go right ahead. I do it all the time. It’s ok.

But pot gives me this extra lake of patience. I don’t have to consciously freeze my body before I do something inappropriate. Instead I have a blinking few seconds where I don’t know what to do but I’m not poised to SCREAM AS IF MY LIFE IS THREATENED. Ok, I’ll tell you the truth. Post-journey I’ve had a tiny amount of pot every day. I’m… inspired by what I am reading of microdosing. Ok, so normally when folks talk about microdosing they are referring to lsd or mushrooms and I am not using either of those. So I’m stealing a term that isn’t really mine. Gosh I’m an asshole.

Anyway. I’ve been consciously using very tiny amounts. I’ve been spreading it out. I’m using the vaporizer pen because it is a lot easier to give small doses. And I don’t have any smokable product in the house. This is the last of what was supposed to last me a month. This product comes in .5g quantities and I worked on it for weeks before I ran out of bud and I’ve used it for a week now. That’s a huge reduction in usage this week. If I were to use this pen as my primary method two months ago a cartridge lasts about a day and a half. This week it has been my only method and I didn’t use half a cartridge.

I’m looking forward to seeing where my tolerance is after two weeks of not having a choice because I don’t have any and I’m traveling. (How’s that for a convoluted sentence?)

I’m looking forward to having a frank discussion with my med-doctor about pot and pregnancy. All the other meds she wants me on are known to be bad for pregnancy. At this rate… I probably feel comfortable. Especially if I can force myself to make .5g last a month because I’m just using barely enough to impact my behavior and not enough to make me high…

Oxytocin is going to be a big deal. But that’s complicated right now.

Everything is always complicated.

Folks decided to change some of their travel plans during the upcoming trip. So I get to cancel a reservation and get some time share points back. They have to be used within 60 days. I’m thinking maybe Noah and I will sneak in a trip to Las Vegas. Use the points or lose them.

If you want to keep friends, flexibility is key. I understand why they want to come back. They are the only ones not home schooling.

Thank you for coming at all.

I’m packed. I’m excited. In 49 hours we are boarding the plane. Squeeeeeeeee.

This is going to be a ridiculously fun trip. We will rest. I know that many of my friends don’t like restful vacations. I need one. I’ll be a better, nicer person after serious rest. It’s been a lot of years of not resting. As all three of my therapists have said to me recently, “Rest is mandatory. You don’t rest. You need to find a way to rest.” (With minor wording variations and different accents and inflections. But whatever. Same message.)

I’m taking doctors orders. This is my happy face. I’m going to go play on a boat for a week. A ship. A floating hotel. I’m going to be pampered. My kids will be entertained. We won’t be bringing screens. Interact with your environment. Learn how to find things to look at.

Only boring people get bored. Entertain yourself.

We can do it with sticks and rocks. We can do it in a hotel room. Now we’ll go do it on a boat with theaters and pools and a frickin water slide that goes over the edge of the boat so you can see all the way to the ocean.

Ridiculous. We are spending what used to be 6 months of my income on this trip. I saved up for years. And then the damn clothes ended up being way the fuck more expensive than expected. Shit. So I’ll be paying the trip back for a while too. Sigh. But I’m going to wear this fucking outfit forever. (The dress will cheerfully accommodate an 80+ weight gain! This sucker is roomy because that was the cut of the era. Ahhhh, room for pregnancy. Ok, not the corset dress. That I’ll have to stay about the same size for. Whatever. I really wanted it.)

I’ve returned to this size and shape over and over again since I was 15. I’m comfortable calling it my approximate size even if I do fluctuate in actual weight.

Ok. Time to focus again.