The best part about getting older is I have more patience for my patterns and seasons and shit. I’ve had a rough couple of days emotionally. The people in my house tell me I’m not freaking out at them so that’s good. Internally I am completely fucking freaking out.

I’ve been wanting to mutilate myself a lot. I want to remind myself that I don’t deserve anything and I am not important and I need to just shut up because no one fucking cares what I think.

It’s kind of hard to maintain those thought patterns in this house though. My family thinks I deserve everything. My family thinks I am super ridiculously important. My family wants me to talk and they like hearing what I think.

Sometimes they inadvertently do something that doesn’t land how they mean it and I get upset and I feel like maybe they don’t feel about me the way they do.

But they really do and it’s not ok to force them to jump through hoops to prove it. I have to just believe it.

That’s hard.

I have to grow up to be a nice white lady and except for glowing in the dark I’m not a great candidate. I’m an asshole and a monster and I’m not interested in being nice for you. Only due to racism and structural problems and the fact that I’m a rich motherfucker…

I have to be aware of power differentials and *I* have to be nice. Or I’m the problem.

It’s funny how that’s always been true but now I care more. I don’t want to be this problem. I want to not be this problem. I don’t want to hurt people and that means I have to soften my affect and I have to learn how to communicate without scaring people and I have to compromise.

Fuck all this.

Art. Video games. Respect. Worthiness. Time. Appreciation.

It’s complicated that I have several jobs that take up an enormous amount of my time and brain but folks think of me as just sitting around not doing much.

What does it mean to value someone?

I want to be able to set these boundaries without kicking and screaming and being nasty. I did a fairly good job of backing out of the house deal. I expressed that it wasn’t going to work for me and I needed to back out and I stopped responding.

I don’t need to tell them that I feel like I was punched in the gut and spit on so I want to get nasty. They didn’t punch me in the gut nor spit on me and I don’t need to get nasty. They want what they want and that’s ok. It’s not what I want to offer. That’s ok too.

No one needs to be nasty. It just didn’t work out.

But my insides want to be nasty. I don’t even have anything good to be nasty about. It was a possible deal that didn’t work out. We started out as friends but distant ones and I suspect we will be as close as we would have stayed anyway when I move. Which is to say… we won’t be close and that’s ok.

I am allowed to need color. You are allowed to need cream walls. Totes legit. All cool. Paint any other house, k?

My family wants to be respectful of me with video games. They’ve been doing great at meals on their own. I noped out of a conversation with Eldest Child where she wanted to extensively detail what she wants to do on a video game. I patted myself on the back. I was civil and calm and shit.

And the baby is starting to fuss again.

• had protein heavy breakfast
• dropped kid off at camp
• 1/2 hour meeting with staff folks
• took books to Half Price Books
• acquired Mighty Suitcase for cheap as per Sarah’s instructions
• ate salad lunch
• Dr appt to consolidate blood test info with GP & request titer checks
• scheduled blood draw appt
• scheduled DMV appt for Real ID
• followed up with pediatrician office about billing mix up
• loaded dishwasher
• changed many diapers, pottied the baby
• walked 3.3 miles already
• I even braided my damn hair all fancy
• wore the baby for almost the whole time we weren’t in the car so oof weight

I’m tired.

Yesterday I caught up on Mint.

If Noah didn’t have such a good job we’d be in trouble. My self discipline has been shit. I am not feeling proud of me.

Noah followed up on the evaluation for Middle Child! Oh I’m so happy he did.

Camp this far away sucks. Sometimes the drive takes 30 minutes, sometimes over an hour. Around 3 hours of driving back and forth for 6 hours of camp? My back hurts.

I need to respond to a bunch of emails. My inbox is at 50. Ugh.

I am both happy and frustrated. Life. Just…. ugh.

We are making forward progress in about a dozen areas. School continues at a great clip (Personally I’m loving the botany stuff we are doing for science) and by mid-way through this academic year both of my children will be at grade level or above in all subjects. Given that EC started her academic career three years late and had to make up… I’m glad that she’s fully caught up in the third year she is doing academics. So she did a little over two full years of academics for each of her first three years of “school”.

I’m not worried about her abilities in the future.

MC (because of the charter school) didn’t get as behind to start with. We decided to let him start in second instead of third grade because of my pregnancy. He’s probably still a month, maybe two months behind in reading but he is almost caught up and he’s doing great in every other area.

If they continue this rate of progress they will finish elementary school work early. That’d be convenient for me.

We have made a few steps towards the legal stuff we need to take care of. I should call our lawyer tomorrow to schedule updating the will. Always more to do.

We’ve made significant progress towards all of us being vaccinated for the travel that’s coming up. I feel like a walking plague carrier. Cause I kind of am today. Typhoid, Cholera, Hepatitis A, Rabies…. I’m fully loaded baby. We also got a booster update on MMR.

I said when delaying vaccinations for my first child that if our lives were different I would vaccinate differently. Now my third child is absolutely on schedule or getting shots early. BECAUSE WHEN I SAY I WILL MAKE DIFFERENT DECISIONS UNDER DIFFERENT CIRCUMSTANCES I AIN’T JUST MAKING SHIT UP.

We continue to get rid of stuff at a dramatic rate.

I need to go get packing tape so I can pack more boxes. I ran out. I have the boxes… but not the tape. We should walk to the dollar store in the morning. We like that walk.

I have been stupid lately and I’ve eaten too much wheat. I had diarrhea. After many many months of the most perfect poop that has ever come out of my butt. I stopped with the stupid wheat and my poop went back to being beautiful displays of properly processed food. I don’t have celiac disease… but wheat fucks me up.

I am getting closer to a travel solution I like for electronic devices.

I’m almost completely to where I need to be on packing stuff like medications and random other “just for travel” accessories. Of course our clothes and other shit aren’t packed and won’t be for a while.

I’m in the middle of four books and I’m having trouble putting the internet down to finish them. Come on Krissy.

I haven’t made more progress on country research this week. I’m feeling overwhelmed.

My children continue to be people with imperfect behavior. Trying to figure out how to encourage them towards the people they want to be as grown ups is hard. It would be so much easier to just say, “Hey… you’re an asshole. Fine. I’ll be mean to you until you decide to stop being an asshole.” But that doesn’t work. WHY NOT?! IT WOULD MAKE MY LIFE EASIER, DAMNIT. Parenting is really hard. We continue to try ways of helping each other be more loving. Some work and some fail.

I’ve been having this weird feeling lately. I can complain about pretty much everyone and everything. It’s a talent. But that doesn’t mean I think that people are bad or doing everything wrong or that I’m better than them.

If I can point out a problem I see in your marriage or in your child’s behavior… in no way shape or form does that mean that I think my marriage or child is better. We suck. I see my fuck ups as clearly or more clearly than I see yours. I ain’t better than anybody. I’m not a better parent.

Ok, I do believe…. that I am more willing to get outside support for my family than most people. But that’s not a “better than” thing exactly.

Just because I think your kid needs something they aren’t getting that doesn’t mean you are a bad parent. You are a parent who hasn’t yet handled a particular issue.

Do you know how many fucking issues I haven’t solved yet? It’s not issues it’s subscriptions.

I know you are trying. When I point out something I see it isn’t to bludgeon you with what a failure you are because you haven’t already fixed this thing. If you had already fixed everything you would be perfect and boring and who would want to know you? Damn we’d all feel inferior and resent the fuck out of you.

Instead you are beautifully, wonderfully imperfect. You inspire me to be better because you are better than me and worse than me and you keep going and trying. I love you.

I wouldn’t be who I am without you. I’m so glad you are here.

Even if I do think you really ought to help your kid deal with ________ issue.

Shit dude. We are all works in progress. We are perfect works in progress.

Slack continues to make me feel giddy like a school girl. I feel like I have NRE with my friends. Also a stranger on the forums invited me to her private group (where she could discuss the sensitive nature of the scary stuff happening in her life) and I swear to god I almost cried getting that stupid invitation. A stranger saying, “Girl! Of course you need to get in here! I need to hear your point of view!” makes me feel like my crazy codependent fucked up need to talk to strangers isn’t all bad.

Sometimes, I even help. I’m not a superhero or a rescuer or anything stupid like that. I am not saving anyone. I’m just some girl who is telling you that you are important and loved.

Sometimes… that’s enough.

Sometimes it takes me a few minutes of feeling around to get my fingers properly on the home row. Those little nubs are my friends. They gently caress my fingertips and say, “Here I am! Your journey to feeling ok is this way!” From those little nubs I can find anything and I don’t have to look.

Her sweetness doesn’t love me typing around her as she sleeps on my chest. But I’m exploding with feelings.

I want to move around, but I’ve already walked over five miles today and I’m tired.

I want to have sex but I don’t feel even a little bit comfortable leaving her sweetness alone in a room with her shiny new rolling ability.

I want parties and people.

I want to go far, far away.

I want to invite Y to be my date to my 20th high school reunion. She didn’t go to that high school but she went to middle school with us and there is this one dude who has been unable to leave her alone all these years. It would be interesting to see if he has grown up enough to be nice to her finally. Though I have my doubts.

I don’t think I’ll be in town next summer. I will have other things to do.

I want to crave sugar less and I want to have control over my temper.

I want to understand what my children want for their futures so I can help the prepare. Middle Child has some conflicted feelings about home schooling. This is funny to me because he seems to believe that his life would be easier if people made him learn things earlier.

So at this point he’s about 2 months behind “grade level” on English according to the final test done by the charter school and he’s bang on schedule for everything else. It’s not even like the child who is behind feels like they would benefit from school. But the kid who is caught up… he kinda wishes I made him go to school. Every year when it’s time to sign up for school he says no. Then at the end of the year he yells at me that he should have gone to school.

I need to not take on feeling bad because I cannot please my child. Some people don’t want to be pleased. That needs to be ok. Sometimes, he’s truly not in the damn mood to be pleased and that’s ok. It’s not about me. I don’t need to let it wreck my day. He can have his own feelings and I can have my own feelings and we can sit back to back and sigh loudly about how annoying feelings are.

I tell my children that they are perfect *and* they are works in progress because that is how being human works. You are always perfectly yourself and there are always aspects of you that could use some improvement. There is no such thing as a finished person. Keep growing.

I want to go far far away and meet people who have never lived how people live here. I want to ask questions and listen to answers. I don’t want to change people; I want to learn. Yo quiero aprender. I need to not be embarrassed about all the mistakes I’m going to make. It’s ok to sound stupid. It’s kind of unavoidable.

I want to learn how my assumptions are wrong. I want to learn why what I want is and is not possible.

I want to watch my children lean on each other and laugh. The way they enjoy one another overflows my heart with joy.

My life is not fair. It is so ridiculously good that I cannot wrap my head around it. There’s a lot to schedule… but I like a challenge.

My kids ate my ice cream–but they left the kind they bought for themselves.

They think they like variety. Then they come home and eat all of my vanilla.

Because fuck everything, vanilla is the best.

But we have to buy the other flavors! So that they can eat the vanilla.

Whiiiiiiiiiiiiine.

KIDS ARE NOT ALWAYS POLITE. GOSH DARN IT TO HECK AND BACK.

*cat butt face*

AND THE GOD DAMN FANCY DONUT STORE IS CLOSED TOMORROW.

This is how I know I don’t have real problems and I laugh at myself. This is my irritation for the day. This is the problem.

I mean, my entire body hurts like fire and standing up is sometimes really really hard…

But I’m safe. I’m loved. My family is mostly really considerate and wonderful and loving.

I think I’m going to stop letting them buy other fucking flavors of ice cream. All vanilla. Because then I have no reason to be angry when you finish up a container of ice cream. There will be another vanilla sitting there instead of lime sherbet.

It’s not that lime sherbet is bad. It’s not. There are times when it is perfectly acceptable. But I have to be in the mood. 99% of the time ice cream should be vanilla or get the fuck out. Maybe little pieces of chocolate are allowed to decorate the vanilla goodness.

Maybe.

Ok, so vanilla and vanilla with chocolate chunks.

Acceptable choices to always always always have. WHY DID YOU BRING HOME PISTACHIO AND LIME SHERBET?!?! WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?????

If I actually yelled any of this I would be an abusive nasty bully. Instead I’m silently typing it and giggling at myself.

I did talk to Noah first, earlier in the kitchen. He’s very patient with me. He’s good at saying that it’s ok for me to feel irritation even if the kids are behaving fine and I’m fine and…. life is irritating. That’s ok.

I wouldn’t trade them for all the vanilla ice cream that ever was. And even though they are my entire forking world…

THOSE LITTLE TURKEYS STOLE MY ICE CREAM. And left me lime sherbet.

Damnit. That sucks.

This is like that damn Rocky Road that sat in the freezer for months until Noah finally ate it for the kids. Sheesh.

Stooooooop buying other ice creams. You don’t actually like them very much… I don’t like them very much…

It’s not like I was deprived. I could have had a candy bar. I could have had brioche. My life is not hard when it comes to food. Fuck, if I wanted to go to the damn ice cream store this minute I could.

If I wanted to send Noah to the store for ice cream I could. I’d rather be pissy; I guess. And now the baby is trying to suck on my thigh. Guess I’m done being able to type. Fuss.

7.5 months till night weening. I can’t wait.

Ok. If I want to be loving and respectful towards the people who have already given me commitments around helping me I need to get my head around what that timeline means. And soon.

Do I have ten years to get everything in place and build the network? What does that mean? My baby girl isn’t going to be safe/ok if I start field research in the next ten years. But that means in the next ten years I need to get to the point where I can cite chapter and verse on all the current incest research. I am going to travel and meet people and make friends in distant and diverse lands.

Because that *is* part of my skill set.

So I think I’m shooting for 2030. That’s probably when I want to have a big group organizational meeting and actually get IDB going as a “Everyone is assigned tasks and we build the network and figure out who is doing what and…”

I have just over ten years to go meet the people who will be on a team with me.

I had to stop and rewrite that sentence. It won’t be *my* team. Perspective matters. I will go meet folks who want to form a team. But I will not be looking to be their boss.

What is it that I am still referring to?

I need to get hygiene, physical maintenance (exercise and eating), and my god damn temper under control.

I can’t keep yelling under stress or I am going to be the abusive bully who wrecks the whole project. That’s sure as the sun coming up tomorrow.

It isn’t that I have to stop having or expressing emotions. It is that I have to figure out constructive ways of dealing with my emotions. *That* is a lot of what I mean when I say I will grow up. I have continuously made progress over the past 18 years of legal adulthood. But I am not where I want to be.

And that’s… yeah. I’m running out of time on this stage. This work is complicated.

I need to get my personal schedule figured out so I can write the books I need to write. I need to re-edit Outrunning and start selling it. The folks who have read it have given me mostly positive reviews… beyond saying it is really hard to read because it is so intense. I think I have figured out that there need to be more than book about the 18-25 period of my life. One part is going to be Part 2 and it will be written with my children as the Ideal Readers and it will not be juicy and sexy and tawdry. But it will be honest about my behavior and it will talk about what I learned and why.

And more than anything I hope I get my ass in gear to write about the education I received at the hands of the Middle Aged Guard. Gosh. I want to write about the Wednesday munch and the Saturday parties and what function they had in my life. Because you were all so important and I love you so much and I don’t know how to honor the gift I was given better than to show its beauty.

I *was* taught a lot of lessons very directly. I’m lucky.

So I want to edit Outrunning but keep it as a book for adults. I need to write the 12 year old version of the same book…. but I think I need both editions. I want to write Part 2. I want to write about the Middle Aged Guard. Then I can write about Wonderland.

I feel both like I am disgustingly self obsessed and like I am trying to get a handle on my own complexity so that I can give more and that’s really not about self obsession.

So that’s what I want to get done in the next ten years, I suppose. Write those books. Figure out how to sell them. Meet The People. My Youngest Child is not going to get 18 years of Mom-Companion in the same way the big kids have. I need to go do this work.

No one gets everything.

I need to get busy.

I’ve read the books (on incest). I’ve read the studies. But I didn’t practice with the titles and details until I can recite them chapter and verse. I have to. Even though that’s going to be depressing as shit.

The work I pick is depressing. It’s a good thing I have so much sunshine in my personal life.

I’m ridiculous. My computer will stay open. Because that happens.

I can’t check Twitter again today. I have to stay off the forum.

Not forever. I know I need them as resources sometimes. Not today. I need a break.

I can do Duolingo. I can have Slack open (I am entirely failing to add people. I keep trying and no one is getting emails. I hate the internet.) mostly because no one has talked to me there yet. Ha. I can read up on stupid hair care shit so I can stop whining in front of my friends so they think they are supposed to offer solutions. (Everyone’s hair is different. This process is individual and that sucks.)

I think that during Noah’s self-date the kids and I will walk to the park for a picnic.

Self dates are important. We all take them. You have to get to know yourself. You have to like yourself. You need time with just you.

I am deeply embarrassed by how much of my self date time lately is getting a fucking donut. I’m totally obsessed with this place near my house. They are so pretty and delicious and the perfect kind of fluff to solid ratio and…. an arm and a leg. They are ridiculously expensive.

I can’t drink. I can’t smoke. I can’t take as much pain medication as I frankly need. Sleep is hard.

You will pry my over priced donuts from my cold dead hands, motherfucker.

I feel petty and stupid and ridiculous.

I *am* petty and stupid and ridiculous on this topic. But oh well. That’s something that folks do sometimes. I’m not special.

What do I want to grow up and be? I’m almost 37 years old. It’s kinda time. Why am I looking at “growing up” as if that means the same thing as empty-nesting? That’s the equivalent timeline I’ve given myself.

I want to be able to work with people who do not look like me so that we can all grow to understand incest as a phenomena and experience more fully. So we can figure out what kinds of actions are more helpful for us.

Because we are a fucking subgroup of the population. Incest alters how you experience life in dramatic ways that can be clearly mapped.

We are marked by our experiences.

There are some of us in the immigrant detention camps. Will I do them more good in the long run if I finish the process I am putting before myself to learn the kind of mental and physical control that will allow me to effectively do the research I want to do?

Somebody has to go to law school so they can be the lawyer representing the people in the camps.

The person sitting on the front line is someone who either did their prep work long ago or someone who is on a different path to being supportive.

Is the work you are doing today in the service of dismantling the system of oppression or upholding it? There are a million different tasks that are all part of that.

Fucking hair care so that I look like a respectable, respect-worthy bitch is part if this motherfucking process for me.

Do I love it? No. Do I want to do it? No. Is it actually in service of my ability to reach my long-term goals?

Yes.

So far I’ve had at least three solid commitments from other women who want to help on this research when it seriously gets going. Those women understand the security and privacy concerns in putting this kind of information on the internet in a way I will never understand. They are on the front lines of ensuring security for the entire fucking internet because I am lucky in my friends. I have lived in the right place to meet some extraordinary people.

They are waiting for me to finish growing up.

I need to put some serious specific dates around this and get my ass in gear. I can’t fully wait until YC is 18. I can’t do that to this project. I can’t do that to these women. I can’t do that to my whole damn cohort.

I won’t live forever.

We need to find a way to find each other and learn how to communicate. This is going to have to be intersectional as fuck.

And my face can never be in the forefront or it’ll be one more white bitch homogeneous project.

That’s complicated. And important. If I want the project to succeed… it can’t ever in any way be about my ego. Because this is the most vulnerable part of *all* of us. I can’t take that identity from people and make it mine.

I nuzzle this sweet infant on my lap and have mixed feelings. She won’t get the carefully curated Montessori early childhood my big kids had. I put an overwhelming amount of work into creating that. And…. yeah. Now we are leaving. Sorry, kid.

No one gets everything.

I can’t be at every protest. I can’t get every kind of college education or do every job.

Am I working to dismantle the system?

Yes.

Ok. That has to be enough for today.

My pain doctor spent my pregnancy telling me that as soon as I was done being pregnant there are lots of options. So I went in to see him. Now he says that I have literally one option until I am done nursing (which is years away). The one option is something called a “dry shot” where he sticks a needle into me with no medication (I said, “So basically acupuncture”) and moves it around a little then I get to drive to my chiropractors and have my chiro adjust me.

He will charge me over $500 for this shot. He said that my pain levels might go from a 6 to a 5. It would be over an hour of driving roundtrip for the shot (and it’s only effective for a short time so I have to hurry to the chiro) which hurts. It just makes it a little easier/more effective for the chiro to adjust me.

He wouldn’t recommend physical therapy for strength gaining to help. He wouldn’t discuss any medication options at all. I asked for a Lorazepam script. Because when I travel I have been able to go up to eight days without sleeping and that’s kind of a problem. He said I can get my pediatrician to write him a note and then he will prescribe 1/4 of what I’m asking for.

Oh. I should come right in when I’m done being pregnant…. why?

But when I’m done nursing he’s happy to hand me heavy opiates and keep me drugged out of my mind for the rest of my life.

He’s not recommending PT. He’s not recommending anything else. I just have to wait for the heavy hitting opiates. That’s his plan.

Did I mention that he was over an hour late for the appointment? He spent 10 minutes telling me that I have no options other than bullshit till I’m done nursing then he walked out. I’m paying around $500 for this office visit.

I’m having feelings!

I won’t see him again. He’s expensive as fuck and he’s doing a lot of jerking me around. HE WOULDN’T EVEN TALK ABOUT THE PREVIOUS BLOOD TEST WORK NOR ORDER OTHER BLOOD TEST RESULTS. I fucking hate him. I think I am going to write an email talking about how upset I am that I was not handed the results of my previous blood work. Fucker should have had a god damn print out for me. I paid thousands of dollars for it.

Sigh. Ok.

I went in because my back is on the verge of spasm all the time right now. I’m asking Noah and the big kids to pick the baby up off the floor because bending over and standing up again with 15 pounds is too much. I’m afraid I will fall and hurt her.

No PT though!

I really wanted PT. I wanted help getting stronger in targeted areas so that I can bear more. But that’s too hard. He just wants to drug me.

I’m going to stop seeing him and I am going to send the office visit fees to organizations helping families separated at the border. That will do more for my mental and physical health than visiting this motherfucker who won’t help me does.

I’m not asking you for god damn Oxycontin. I want physical therapy. I want to be told that acupuncture is my best option instead of him offering me one dry shot at $500 a pop instead of my lovely acupuncture folks who charge me $25 a visit and they treat a whole bunch of areas of pain at once instead of the one jab.

I want people to be honest about their limits and not tell me things like, “Come right in when you stop being pregnant because there’s a lot we can do.”

Liar. There isn’t a lot you will do. There is one path you want to follow: you want to drug me into oblivion.

That’s not really what I want anyway. I may be a short tempered asshole because I’m in pain but I’d rather be that than a space cadet.

I don’t want to try and home school my kids on Oxy. Not really. That sounds…. problematic to me.

In other news, all three of my children take my breath away. I love them more with every day. My body sucks. But my life is wonderful.

My husband is so great. Noah has been so kind and helpful and generous in spirit. There is nothing I could have done to deserve him. He thinks about us all day long. He thinks about how to be kind to us. He thinks about how to make us smile. He wants all of us to be happy and he works towards that every day.

It’s really beautiful.

I contrast his thoughtfulness with a friend who reached out. We SMSed like twice about something and I mentioned moving. She said, “This will take a real conversation not texting. When can we talk?” So we scheduled a video chat. Then she moved it to the next day. Then on the day of the chat she asked to change the time. Then she stood me up. Then she asked to go at a slightly later time. (I was in a medical appointment.) I said no. She said, “Ok how about our original time tonight then?”

I told her that my window of child care had expired and I no longer have the freedom to have a peaceful conversation.

Her response was most unsatisfying.

I understand that staying home with my kids means I “don’t have a real job” so I should be just as available as non-breeders who are unemployed and just chasing Pokemon all day…. BUT ARE YOU FUCKING DELUSIONAL? NO I AM NOT AVAILABLE ALL FUCKING DAY TO JUST HAVE FUCKING QUIET TO TALK. THAT SHIT TAKES PLANNING AND WHEN YOU FLAKE I AM NOT GOING TO ACCOMMODATE YOUR BULLSHIT.

Of course I am not going to yell at her. And she is definitely waaaaaaay too good to lower herself to reading my blog while wanting me to read allllllllllll of her shit.

I have more than one “relationship” where pretty much I am expected to be an admiring audience member as they tell me about their fabulous lives and when it is my turn to say something with my real honest to god outside voice…

Oh hey. Let’s schedule. And reschedule. And reschedule. And stand you up. And why can’t you accommodate me and reschedule again, I thought you were my friend.

This is like when I came across the country for you and you wouldn’t put your pants on and leave your apartment to see me because you were a little tired.

I see you. I see your behavior towards me.

Because of Noah… I see exactly how well you don’t treat me. It’s not that I think everyone in the whole world should treat me like Noah does. I really don’t. But having someone in the whole world think I am worth treating with respect… it casts a harsh shadow on everyone else.

Why in the fuck would I reschedule with someone who will treat me like that when I can blow that person off and talk to Noah instead? Why in the world would I waste my precious, rare, alone time on waiting around for someone who has no respect for me or my time?

We aren’t actually friends. Friends don’t treat me like that.

I deserve better. I don’t do that bullshit to people.

And on a silly note… I’ve been working on hygiene. (In our house we hisssssss the word hygiene like it is an insult or a poison.)  I used to hang out with a lady who spent a lot of time telling me that if I don’t want people to treat me badly because I look like shit I should work harder on my appearance. In general I stopped hanging out with her because fuck the idea that I deserve being treated badly if I am not performatively pretty enough.

But when we travel it’s going to be all about first impressions. She’s not wrong. I hate it when people have such opinions and they are right.

Quite frankly I think folks should have been suspecting something other than PTSD/Depression on my mental health diagnosis list just because of what a struggle hygiene has been my whole life. It’s taken me over 20 years of serious effort to get to the point where I brush my teeth twice a day and I floss every day. That was fucking hard for me to build habits around. Dealing with my hair is sooooooooooo much worse. And when it’s super fucking long (it’s almost to my waist at this point) I can either do an ugly as shit messy non-bun… or it’s work.

If I want people in other countries to treat me like a person I have to look like I have put effort into my appearance every single day and that thought makes me want to climb into my closet and never come out again. That’s such an overwhelming, horrifying thought.

People are going to fucking judge the shit out of me because I don’t shave my armpits and legs. I don’t tweeze my eyebrows.

I had no idea just how disgusting these choices are in other peoples opinions until Twitter.

I was talking to Jenny about being an expat because she’s been across the pond for about 8 years yet. She says she can be fat, hairy, or an American… pick two. She can’t have all three as a weirdo ex-pat.

My ribcage is smaller than Jenny’s, but I am still going to probably qualify as a fat American. I don’t want to give up on being hairy. Oh god.

Also! Jenny! When you asked me why the baby is growing out of her clothes so fast if she isn’t in a high percentile…. uhhhh… I had this sinking feeling in my belly. I uhhhh I think we move our babies out of clothes before they fully outgrow them. I think we like our babies in very baggy clothes because we are afraid we will injure a baby in tight/hard to put on and off clothes. And having this flash of insight into our choices made me feel ashamed and like I am a liar who is claiming my baby is growing faster than she is.

My babies are never in skin tight clothing. So uhm, my guesstimates of “Wow this kid is so big” are probably dramatically overstated.

I had this entire thought process combined with a mental picture of a friend’s kids. Her kids were a handful of years older than my kids with a similar spread. Her children were wearing the same size clothing as my kids. Only my kids were swimming inside big loose sacks and her kids were in clothing so tight they were almost tourniquets. In my head I had this lightning strike followed by the thunder clap of, “YOU ONLY MOVE YOUR KIDS THROUGH CLOTHING SIZES SO FAST BECAUSE YOU ARE NEUROTIC AS FUCK.”

Oh shit. That’s true.

So Jenny… my expression of how fast my babies are growing is not exactly a lie, but it highly influenced by my weird as fuck perception of how clothing should fit.

It’s ridiculous how ashamed I feel of myself for this.

So this kid is in to 50% for height and weight so she isn’t growing that fast. My previous kids are 90%+ for height so they are genuinely in taller than expected clothing.

The current kid is fighting very well in 6-9 month clothing at 4 months in my baggy desiring opinion. So she’s not really that big. The 6-12 month stuff is still a little baggy but not much.

I’ve been thinking a lot about when to put the house on the market. If we shot for October 1st… the house would have a stack of offers by the time we got back from Disneyland and Malaysia. I suspect it will be easier for our lives if we put the house on the market on October 31st so that we can be here for the sale offers. If we decide we want to do stuff to fix up the house… it wouldn’t get started till November so I feel like pushing the mark with putting the house on the market is… not in my physical not mental best interests.

Everything in my neighborhood is being sold for well over a million in less than two weeks right now. I really doubt we will need to remodel to get buckets of cash. Even with all the defects all over the house.

I don’t need to be treated badly anymore. I have way too much going for me.

My hands and arms hurt and I rarely have the time to seriously pick apart my thoughts for writing. That’s having an infant.

I’ve scheduled a lot of medical appointments and I need to book more. We grown ups need a typhoid vaccination.

I have the basics of travel and lodging arranged for Mexico and Malaysia. I suspect that in Mexico we will do very little exploring. Everyone is looking forward to utter rest. Malaysia will be a major exploration experience. We are staying near the main city center park in Kuala Lumpur. I’ve looked up museums and stuff to do. The kids and I are going to wander a lot.

Hopefully I’ll add stuff to instagram.

I’m happy that EC is losing her braces soon. I now feel a bit more cheerful about the fact that I want to get rid of the vast majority of what we own in the next two months. Eeep. That’s work.

I feel like I want to try and schedule a couple of group things before we go. But there won’t be that much and I’m not going for a big party.

I don’t know… I feel like a candle lit dinner party would be fun. But I can’t imagine that working out with children.

I miss alone time in my house. I miss burning candles late into the night and just letting the world float past me. I miss being naked and feeling luscious.  I want to feel luxurious. Not utilitarian. But I’m a mama. Mamas are functional.

I want to be naked and alone in my clean house in the dark only illuminated by soft glow. Ah well.

I want sex. I had sex recently and it was lovely and all, but I want more.

I want to feel like I have time.

I want. It’s a nice feeling.

And here I sit. Under her sweetness. It’s not exactly what I want, but it’s not so bad.

I spend hours composing blog posts in my head. Then when I have time at a computer all that comes back to me is, “Tired. Hurt. Busy. Oh g-d.”

Some things I want to notate for my own memory: EC called me out. It was beautiful. There was an incident with screaming right in someone’s face. I said that doing that is almost as bad as hitting someone because it hurts people. My daughter looked at me most pointedly and said, “Does that apply when you do it? Hmmmmm?” I told her that it does. That is part of why I say that they can never deserve being yelled at; it is a failure of control on my part.

It was a pretty lovely exchange. I’m so glad she can stand up for herself. I wish she didn’t need to against me. But I kind of think that is part of most dynamics?

I got real rigid in my expectations again and the big kids are relaxing. I’m not pregnant. I have an infinite amount of focus to ride your ass again. Pregnancy is so hard. I can’t think or move around or help or pay attention the way I do normally. I think it is funny that my kids are thrilled to have the guidelines in place that chores must be done by 10 and academics done by 12 or don’t ask me for screen. It’s a sheer cliff they can see coming and it isn’t based on my moodiness. They like that a lot.

We are solidifying the school assignments for the year. My daughter agrees that it is better to have stuff just assigned in advance so that school work isn’t a day by day “Do I think you’ve done enough for today” battle. That’s super unpleasant for all concerned.

My Middle Child is struggling but also doing well. I feel so bad that he got my full on emotional dysregulation. He really did. That boy is so much like me. We spent a while talking about how he needs to stop physically menacing people while he is little. At some point he is going to start T and it’s literally unsafe for every person in this house if he does so without having his temper under control. Right now he feels very free to physically lash out at us and that’s not ok. It’s better than it used to be. He is growing up and learning more control. But he’s so much like me and the last huge temper tantrum I threw was when Sarah lived here. So it was what 6 years ago? I don’t have a high horse here. I just have the sheepish awareness that I’m not a large person and part of the reason I have gotten away with my tantrums is because I’m not that big.

Middle Child is showing promise to be as tall as Noah. He is doing everything in his power to ensure that he grows up looking manly. It’s going to be a different thing if he is violent. People will hurt him back in ways they don’t hurt me. I’m scared for him. On top of all the other reasons he could be targeted. He’s gotta get his temper under control.

We are probably going to need to put the focus on that for a few months. That’ll need to be a structured elimination plan where I don’t pay that much attention to other things for a bit and that’s hard on the other kids. Balancing the attention between the three of them is going to be a challenge.

I live for challenges.

He’s motivated. He wants to have more control over his temper so he doesn’t lash out and hurt people when he’s angry. But he’s a little kid and that control is hard. That’s ok. I have stacks of books with recommendations. He and I will come up with a plan together and then we’ll act on it.

Religious study is going well. The kids are making interesting connections that I wouldn’t make. There is still too much of me that is influenced by Christianity being taught to me as “The Truth” as a child. My children think Christianity is as accurate as Hinduism. They see no difference. Talking to them is so beautiful. They treat all the stories like they are valid and interesting and have something to teach you about people. It’s cool.

YC had her 4 month check up with the doctor. She’s a textbook baby. 50% for height, weight, and head circumference. (15lbs, 25″ tall) She’s got extremely good head control and back control and she can make more sounds than expected for her age. That part doesn’t shock me at all. Ha. Talk talk talk talk. She’d better be a big talker to keep up in this family.

If I had another girl child I’d want to name Gabrielle so I could call her Gabby and hope she’s talkative. I’m not even kidding. In our clan it would be a prayer on her behalf.

But no more babies. I am absolutely over the moon about the family I have.

I haven’t packed more in a week or so. Partially I only have difficult shaped boxes in the house and partially I realized I’m waiting on the braces and I don’t want to be bitchy/pushy at EC. I’m still slowly clearing stuff out that we aren’t keeping and I’m trying to not feel internal panic. We have many months left. If I keep getting rid of 2-5 bags a week… it’ll all happen. It’s ok.

Thank you so much to R & L for taking the brewing stuff. That was going to be hard to rehouse.

We won’t be going out like I wanted to this summer. Money isn’t endless. Instead, we will stay closer to home and maybe that’s for the best anyway.

Yesterday I walked 5.5 miles. That’s more common lately. I’ve hit 5 miles 4 times in the past two weeks. *pat self on back* My kids are doing similar distances. We are getting ready. We are getting fit. We can do it.

Now, if we could be fully consistent with our other chores and mood management, life would be perfect. If life were perfect… what would we do with our mental energy?

I’m having a hard time getting time to type lately. It’s not that I’ve stopped the roiling feelings… it’s that my arms are full. Even though this baby is my most put-down-able baby I use the times when she isn’t in my arms to sprint through work. I’m always behind.

The big kids and I are in an interesting phase. Kids are pushing back in important ways. They are individualizing and expressing preferences. Things like: I have been told that I am not allowed to discuss details of my kids transition with anyone who is not intimately in his life or an appropriate doctor or trans for the foreseeable future. That makes sense. This is going to be a process. (Middle Child is currently going by the pronoun he. I can say that much to clear up confusion and then I have to stop.)

My daughter keeps pushing back on my nagging and I get it. I’m completely fucking annoying. But she’s 10 and she still forgets to do a lot of stuff and when she forgets to do stuff she gets mad at me for not reminding her. So I kind of had a melt down a few days ago and I started sobbing because if I’m not allowed to tell you to do it without being bad and if I don’t tell you to do it I’m being bad… I am going to explode into the nastiest bitch ever because if all of my low key options make me bad I’m going to say fuck it all then I will be horrible and all of your fun goes away and I will nitpick every fucking thing in the universe.

I had a good half an hour of crying and talking about how YOU HAVE LEFT ME WITH NO WAY TO BEHAVE AND I CANNOT COPE WITH THIS.

Then we went to the dentist and found out we get to pay $750 to fix four cavities. There goes our summer fun!

So I’m having some big feelings. I’m not supposed to nag but I am to blame when things don’t happen. I am supposed to make entertaining magic appear even as money is sucked away into medical care. (I’m a petty fucker but a piece of me is just overjoyed that a medical expense isn’t all my fault.) I’m supposed to suggest the right classes at the right time or my kids feel free to complain bitterly about how I failed to meet their needs.

I’m looking at my spoiled brats and thinking a lot of harsh thoughts about my parenting, let me tell you.

At the end of my meltdown I told my daughter that until she can get more than half of her assigned stuff without reminders STOP TELLING ME THAT I SHOULDN’T NAG YOU. THIS IS LITERALLY MY JOB AND I HAVE TO DO IT AND I AM GOING TO GET FUCKING AWFUL IF YOU KEEP TELLING ME TO STOP REMINDING YOU. YOU DON’T REMEMBER WITHOUT REMINDERS SO STOP BEING NASTY TO ME ABOUT THIS.

Like… the baby was born and EC just stopped wearing her headgear for her braces. I wasn’t sitting on her to force her to put it on every night… so we all kind of realized she went months without wearing it. Whoops. So… we want to put our house on the market when her braces come off. But she can’t be bothered to do the basic care necessary to get the braces to fucking come off.

This kind of thing.

There’s more. But I don’t need a long rant about my daughter’s forgetfulness today. Shit happens.

I wonder more about her being on the autism spectrum even though it wasn’t identified at the first screening. I wasn’t diagnosed until 35 and I could talk about the lifelong trajectory of my development. I sorta fear it’ll be like that for her too. Her development is just… cock eyed.

I hear a baby.

It was kind of exciting to read that it’s a standard ADHD problem to struggle with plans changing.

The more I read about my struggles being “normal” the more I feel like I can figure out how to manage them.

Can’t type more with sleeping baby. She’s perfect.

Well… I’m not pregnant any more. I am perking up. We went to Lupin Lodge today. The kids couldn’t stop saying, “Oh my god we get to be NAKED.” It was funny. The random adults there were shockingly cool. There was a long game of volleyball in the pool with all the kids and adults playing. It was really lovely. We had a fantastic time. I talked to a lady who is pretty sure she remembers J from way back when.

I am going to miss all the connections I have in this valley.

We spent the time with a friend and her daughter. It was great to see them. My friend enjoyed snuggling the baby and the kids all had a great time together.

Last weekend we went to the waterpark. Today one of my kids is going back to the water park with a friend. A different friend is coming over to see the rest of us. Tomorrow I get to go see Sarah.

Life is picking back up. I have more energy than I have had in years. I am not sure (I might be misremembering… my memory is a funny place) but I suspect this is the most energy I’ve had since marathon training. I haven’t had this since before the road trip. I’ve been dead with exhaustion for years. I had a brief stint of almost manic energy when I was cheating and working on the bathroom remodel, but it wasn’t like this.

This is being sustainable and feeling good.

One of my former students (definitely one of my favorites, she was one of the ones who came over to paint my house and she visited post-graduation) contacted me after a long break. It’s so nice to hear from her again. She was one of the queer/poly kids I carefully kept my mouth shut around while broadcasting Complete Non-Judgement. She moved out of state and is doing really well. I’m so happy for her.

She tells me that I should get on finishing the second book and publishing it. She said, “I don’t think I’ve ever been able to relate to a narrative voice the way I do to yours. I hope you never stop writing, you are so good at it.” I’m going to cry now. That’s so gosh darned nice. Wonderful people like you being out there are a lot of why I write so much. I love you. I share what I have with you… mostly that’s my brain. It’s a bit weird… but it’s fun sometimes.

I am trying to figure out how to chill on my crankiness. It has improved in the past almost four months from the pregnancy extreme but I’m not 100% back to where I was pre-pregnancy. For some reason having an infant who wakes me up all night long to insist on nursing even though it fucking hurts my shoulder to nurse in bed is harder than just having big kids. Who knew.

(ME! I FUCKING KNEW THAT.)

I asked the kiddos to schedule their next week. Look at what we have planned and *you* make the decision for how you are going to get all your stuff done in that time. I will refer you back to *your* schedule over and over but I’m not going to discuss what you should do next. I need to bounce that responsibility back onto the kids. I’m going bananas trying to make the schedule then enforce it. Something has to give somewhere. If you want me to make the schedule, fine–but you have to bloody follow it. If you want to make the schedule and I just remind you to check it over and over again, fine.

But I cannot and will not do both. I get so god damn mean and it sucks for everyone involved. That isn’t working. Something has to give somewhere. This week… the give is the children doing the planning.

Let’s see how this goes. hahahahahahahahaha ahem.

Planning to try things and fail and see how it goes is how I got my first teaching job. Those kids are still contacting me so not every part of it failed. Hopefully it will go ok with these children too.

All I can do is pray.

I’m reading more about parenting a kid with ADHD. Mostly what I’m getting from these books is that I need to keep doing what I’m doing but add more patience. That’s been my entire experience of being an adult. “This task is too hard.” “Well. Then try harder.” Find more buckets of patience to dip into. Find more wisdom. Find more kindness. Just fucking do it.

I’m not doing things wrong. I’m just underestimating how much diligence is necessary to see a task through. This is hard for me. I’m not a finisher. I’m not the one who sits still and keeps a routine going for years just for the sake of completion. I have ideas! New beginnings! Finishing is for boring people. *cough* Or something.

It’s amusing figuring out more about my own brain in this process.

I feel like I’ve gained new depths of understanding around why my existence is traumatizing. It’s not really about me, Krissy. It’s about my membership in a group that is… the problem. When I recognize how much support and medical care I’ve gotten over the last few years, when I think about how luck I am to have a partner like Noah who provides direct support plus access to buckets of cash…

If I were still struggling I would hate someone in my position with the fire of a thousand suns. Sometimes it is hard not to hate myself for existing with all this fucking safety.

Oh. Yeah. That’s what they meant. I have all this fucking safety and it being available to me and my spoiled as fuck children… that feels unfair. It feels horrible and awful. My children are not better or more valuable or more worthy. Why in the fuck do they get to be safe?

Because life is fucking traumatic and unfair.

How do I inhabit this space with humility? How do I hurt the fewest number of people possible? Even sharing the good things isn’t neutral. It rubs in folks’ noses that I have something they want.

It’s all complicated and painful.

Today we get to have a meeting with an insurance sales person about long term care insurance. I’m already borderline disabled (I’ve been having some good days lately so I ADMIT NOTHING) and things will get worse as I age.

I’m having a hard time just standing up right now because of how badly my back hurts. I love the baby. I’m really grateful she’s willing to sit in things like strollers because I’m not coping that well with her weight.

I love having a fat baby and all, but could you slow down the weight gain JUST A TAD?! No? Ok. Fair enough. I get it. Fat is beautiful. Keep it up, darling. My back will… figure something out. My back will figure out how to send burning lightning bolts of pain up and down my spine is what my back will figure out. It’ll be rad.

My daughter thanked me for trying to not be a burden on her later in life. That was a trifle awkward. But hey… I’m trying.

I feel absolutely exhausted. We’ve been keeping busy. Exercise and packing and learning stuff… my body and my brain feel depleted. And my massage therapist is out of commission because she was hit by a car. (She was in her car; her car is totaled but she is ok.) She offered to try to do 30-60 minute sessions while she is healing because she feels bad for letting me down! I said OH MY GOD NO. You are going to heal and rest and take care of yourself and if there is anything you need, call me. NO YOU ARE NOT GOING TO GOD DAMN HOBBLE YOUR WAY THROUGH TAKING CARE OF ME IMMEDIATELY AFTER YET ANOTHER TRAUMA TO YOUR BODY.

Oh my goodness woman.

I know some codependent as fuck people.

Noah is home and it is glorious. I missed him so much. I don’t feel like it is as ok to talk without him.

kids. gotta go

We went to SFMOMA today. On the train. With the stroller.

My elbows are in much better shape than they were after the grocery store run. I think I figured out a better angle. We walked 4.5 miles. Not as much as the last trip to SF but… plenty I think. That was all we needed today.

It was fun.

The baby did great in the stroller. She complained when she had a poopy diaper or she needed to eat. Seems legit. I carried her sometimes because she was politely asking for a snuggle. But the stroller definitely made the day better.

Why do I want to keep trying with this stroller? My back doesn’t ache like fire and I don’t want to hit someone because I’m angry about being in pain. That’s a big deal. This stroller in particular has some up sides to go with the many many down sides.

The biggest upside that means absolutely the world to me is that if I have to I can put my baby in the carrier on the front and my backpack-diaper bag on and this stroller folds into a compact little thing I can carry on my stroller. Everything can be carried on my body up multiple flights of stairs. Would it be fun? Nope. But it wouldn’t be that hard.

I couldn’t do that with a bigger/sturdier stroller. I’m not strong enough at this point. So even though something like a jogging stroller would be way more sturdy and hurt my arms less…

I don’t know why being able to carry 100% of my shit is the final decision line. But it is for me. I have always hated strollers because I get panicked at the idea of getting stuck with them. I can’t really get stuck with this one. It is psychologically comforting.

It’s working because the baby is happy in there and it’s not overall more damaging than carrying everything on my body at all times. It’s all a balancing act.

I don’t always wake up feeling this way, it’s lovely. We are almost halfway through Noah’s time in Japan and it has gone well. We have a nice early bedtime together and things aren’t so bad. I didn’t sleep well the first night but since I’ve been tired enough to pass out immediately.

Today we are going to SFMOMA. I feel kind of bad. In my head… I asked my kids to research the museums in the bay area. Looking back through the emails I’ve sent them… nope. I only asked them to look at LA museums. Well. Ok then I’ve been an asshole asking them to hurry up and pick a local one. Shit. I apologize for the holes in my memory. I think I wrote a list of them here instead of an email to the kids. Fuck and fuck and fuck.

Ok well… they didn’t get to pick this week. But I’ll send the kids the list and they can help pick for next week. *cough*

The reason they got the email about the LA museums is because there are a ton of them and we won’t be able to see very many. Noah has a work trip to LA in December I think and we are going to be in LA for a week in October. In October we will only spend one day in a museum because the rest of the trip is Disneyland with Sarah. But I think we are coming along in December and we’ll be able to hit two or three other museums. But if there are over a dozen museums in the LA area… we need to narrow down our interest. Thus emailing the kids.

But I thought I sent a separate email about the bay area and nope. Damnit.

I will fix that today. Easy-peasy.

But seeing as EC is seriously motivated by the Museum of Contemporary Art in LA…. SFMOMA seems like another good choice. I am very interested in the art my kids are interested in. I like seeing what they are drawn to and what repels them. I learn so much from them.

Last night EC stayed up reading when the other three of us went to sleep. She used her hiking headlamp so she could stay in the room with us. Everything about this girl is wonderful. I like the way she has this low key preference for being vaguely near us but it isn’t cloying or controlling or demanding. She just enjoys us being together. She doesn’t freak out at separation. She doesn’t resist obvious reasons to be apart. But she likes us so much.

I grew up in a family of people who hated each other. When they sit in a room together they do little other than insult and degrade one another.

My babies would be shocked if they witnessed the behavior that was standard in my family of origin. They would argue back and kindly rebuke the insults.”Don’t say that to someone! You will make them sad!” They care about their impact on people and they really want to be positive. I like my children.

I like the family Noah and I have made.

My larva woke up for a teeny snack and is now sleeping on my arm. That slows down typing.

Rotated diaper laundry cause I fell asleep last night. Whoops. We need them today.

Ok, I did try the massively discounted travel stroller from Babies R Us since the window of being able to buy it for cheap is small. I have gone out on one long outing and one short outing so far with it.

Well… it’s not as hard on my wrists. I’m not sure how or why but it’s fucking brutal on my elbows. I am going to try some tricks today to see if I can change that. It is both more and less stable feeling if that makes sense. The wheels turn very smoothly but having so many joints to be very foldable means you have to exert pressure in exactly the proper places. I don’t love it immensely but it is incredibly handy. It can be helpful on a reasonable sized grocery trip.

And it seriously folds up small enough to be carried like a messenger bag. It’s lighter than my damn diaper bag and can hold 50 lbs. So… is it amazing and wonderful? No. Is it useful? Grudgingly… yes. Maybe. We’ll see. I hope so.

My life is unreal it is so good. I feel like I’m waking up in a fairy story about someone else. *My* life couldn’t be this awesome…

Only it really is.

Have to get ready to talk to my Jenny. Because life is awesome.

I am so grateful Noah didn’t travel for work when the big kids were small. They were much harder babies. This baby can fall asleep while nursing and then be transferred to the swing and sleep for another hour.

This is a miracle previously unseen in this house.

I am ecstatic.

I can make food. I can run around and do chores. I can feel productive. It’s glorious.

EC and I are continuing to have a hard time with reminders and nagging and such. We both have executive functioning issues. (Reading books about this is hilarious because we are overlapping but not identical in where we fall down.) Trying to figure out how to manage hers and manage mine and not parentify her for my issues as I’m trying to manage them both while teaching her to manage herself…

gah.

It’s a good thing we like each other so much or this would just be unbearable.

We both struggle with focus and sticking with a task but I’m an old person who has more practice bringing my attention back around. That’s the only reason I do slightly better. I suspect I was worse than she is when I was 9/10.

…. maybe. As I think about it… no. I was already making checklists of how to do shit for my mom before then. Ok I wasn’t worse than EC. But I had a non-functioning parent and that’s different.

Sometimes I stop and feel kind of choked up when I think about the fact that part of my children’s problems is that I help too much. When I’m being an asshole and telling a friend that they should stop helping their child so much because it is infantilizing… I SEE THE BIG HOLE I MADE IN MY OWN GLASS HOUSE AS I THREW THAT ROCK, OK?

I think I am intensely an asshole when I give advice I shouldn’t give partially because I know I’m fucking up exactly like that and I’m yelling at other people hoping the advice will sink into my own thick skull.

I do that way more often than might be apparent. Boss other people as a means of trying to give myself good advice.

Side note: Noah had a minor emergency as he traveled. He communicated with me via IM and when I woke up in the middle of the night to use the toilet I found his messages and fixed his problem. I am awesome. Now my honey can eat.

Back to executive functioning stuff. (Listing out so I can organize my own brain.)

Focus really is a rough one for EC. MC doesn’t have quite the same difficulty with this one. MC can tune out distractions. EC sees a shiny and can’t keep her mind on her task. I mostly manage focus because I scare myself with the consequences of distraction. I also periodically get loud and mean and scary telling everyone to leave me the fuck alone or I can’t focus. There were days of tile lay out where I could not have anyone in the room or I wouldn’t make progress. So yeah. Focus is tough. I suspect but don’t know for sure that this is harder for Noah than it is for me but it’s hecka hard to evaluate. I can focus through distractions more easily than he can. But I think of that partially as being temperament: I’m a teacher; he’s an engineer. I like a loud busy room and he wants silence and being alone.

Deciding what is important. This is… not easy but I wouldn’t put it in the top three problems for any of us. None of us tend to get sidetracked into truly stupid projects. *pat all of us on the back*

Set goals. I think if there is a bright shining executive function skill that we all knock out of the park… this is it. This is the cherry on top of our hill to slide down. Can I bring in a few more unrelated silly metaphors? We like setting goals. I WANT TO SAY I AM THE BEST AT THIS BECAUSE I AM A VAIN MOTHERFUCKER. But that may or may not be true. MC isn’t being tested on this one very much yet. EC had some serious push for this over the last school year and she did really well. Noah’s goal setting makes me dreamy and shmoopy. He’s good at goal setting. *deep sigh of joy*

(For the record I am going through the book The Impulsive, Disorganized Child by James Forgan and Mary Anne Richey.)

Use prior knowledge. You know… this one is hard for me to evaluate. I think that the degree to which I look for repeats of old patterns is maybe too rigid and a problem. I am nothing near under functioning in this department but I seem to be over functioning in a way that might be bad. It’s hard for me to evaluate my family members on this. With Noah…if I have ever had a bad day and exploded at him for something minor he will be ginger around that topic forever. Which is… also kind of over performing on this one. It’s so complicated. He’s trying so hard. He wants to never trigger me. The horrible thing is that in order to make that happen you need to just kill me. He doesn’t want that. So we muddle through and I get set off and he feels bad and to blame even though it truly isn’t his fault. Sigh. I feel like I’m fucking this up for the kids too. I’m trying to change. They are trying to learn from experience and benefit from making a mistake and not make it again. But next time… I might need something different from them. I don’t know how to evaluate this metric at all.

Initiate action. Once again I’m a fucking rock star. *cough* (A humble one.) I can’t say I’m better than Noah though. He’s really really good at this too. It’s one of the things that caught my eye about him. Other folks will be hanging back not sure what to do and he’s already moving to get something going. He always has possible plans on offer. God I love that about him. It is so hawt. Our kids have less experience than us but I wouldn’t say they are slouches. Ok, not an area to work on. I’ve been starting to talk to my newly minted 10 year old about waiting to act so you can read the room. So I’m kind of actively working to slow this one down because we are so effective. More over functioning.

Manage time. This one is a mixed bag. I am fanatical about managing time. (Years of therapy followed by being a teacher means I’m sensitive to stuff going 3 minutes too long.) No one else in my house is good at it. Noah has worked really hard to improve and he has learned how to use technology to fill in the gaps in his natural ability. We are trying to get the kids to start learning his hacks but it is hard. Neither of them have my internal clock. My internal clock is so strong that it is commented on by other people constantly. This is a huge thing for me. If I have 55 minutes for my appointment I will be wrapping up starting at 52 minutes because I will not go over. This made me a terrible stage manager because I cannot wait five minutes until the audience finishes arriving. Motherfucker the curtain is supposed to go up at 8? We will be in place and rising that motherfucker at 7:59:45. I have issues. And I absolutely can bully a whole crowd through arriving on time. I’ve done it.

Self monitor performance. Ok I suck at this. I think almost everything I do is shit. I’m not more attached to the bathroom because I could tell you how much I fucked up and I should have done a-x differently and better and… Perfectionism sucks. My kids constantly ask me to evaluate them and I try not to. I ask them to evaluate themselves. So this is one where I suspect I am teaching it better than I am capable of doing it. I think the kids do pretty well. Noah seems from this angle to be excellent at this skill.

Use self restraint. Sigh. Depends on what it is. I am all over the map on this skill. Sometimes I am good to an unholy level because I’m very good at denying myself things as punishment. That’s not actually positive. But it is a skill. If I do not perceive myself as needing punishment… whoa this is hard. Hard. Hard, Hard, Hard, Hard, Hard, Hard. I fail a lot. Don’t ask me how many fucking donuts I’ve eaten this week. (I’m 2 lbs under my pre-pregnancy weight. Don’t judge me.) I would say my kids are not so great at this. Noah appears to be pretty damn good at this most of the time with occasional lapses.

Remain flexible. Meh. Mixed bag. My kids are good at this. I can be if I am sleeping/eating/exercising enough. If those metrics are out of whack I will absolutely flip out at the most minor change. It’s absurd and childish. I’ve improved over the years… but I still struggle. Noah needs a few seconds/minutes to process but he’s cheerful about this in general. Good thing because I’m an asshole who completely reorganizes his stuff in the house all the time.

After writing this out…. focus stands out as the area with a problem. I mean, other than my overweening vanity we are ok in most areas. Not perfect but ok. But focus is where we all drift with the currents.

I’m glad I sat down to write this out. Knowing that even if it is hard we do ok with most executive functioning. We just really fall down on focus. That makes it seem like a much more solvable problem. Everyone has stuff they suck at. If there’s one big area… we can work on that. We can do research and see what the experts say about focus. I’ll finish reading this book. Next is a book for kids with ADHD and strategies they can employ. I will focus (haha) on the focus sections.

It makes it a lot easier to frame the problem with laughter in my head. “Despite all of this being harder than it might otherwise be… we do pretty well in most ways. But we are a pack of squirrels when it comes to attention.”

heh. This kind of thing is why I ask places like Stanford to evaluate us. This is where I’m failing.

IT WOULD MAKE MY LIFE EASIER IF SOMEONE WANTED TO WATCH ME AND FIGURE OUT WHEN AND HOW I’M FUCKING UP AND TELL ME HOW TO CORRECT IT SO I DON’T HAVE TO DO SO MUCH DAMN WORK.

But that has never happened. *le sigh*

Why in the fuck am I sighing so much today? That’s weird.

I just told our gardener that September is his last month. He’s been working for us for over ten years.

This is really happening. Within five months our house will be on the market. We will be ready to start the next leg of our journey.

I’m telling everyone I know that if they have a friend who would appreciate an art house… come to me! Houses in my neighborhood are going for $1.2 or $1.3 million. I don’t need all that. This is the absolute once in a lifetime chance to get a bay area house at a discount.

Coooooooome to me art lovers….

Once upon a time when I fizzled like this I would go look for trouble. Not now. Now I have babies. Now I sit at my kitchen table and this song is in my head. For most of the day I’ve had this one going. These songs make me think that being a parent and wife is complicated for her too.

I tried to express something to a friend this week and I feel weirdly jittery about it.

I’m really sad that my attempts to build community here have not been successful enough that I want to stay no matter the frustrations. I have put a lot of time and energy into people and communities. I didn’t ever manage to feel like that connection was “important enough” whatever that means. I am not important enough.

I’m sad that people who gosh darned know I’m in their community don’t poke me and say, “Hey I’m having a problem.” Cause the thing if… if folks militantly won’t ask for help… I don’t exactly feel like I should ask for help either. Which makes the bonds of community hard.

Do I reach out? Sometimes. In a blind, flailing way most of the time. “Will someone help?” It is so much scarier to ask a specific person. But lemme tell you… if someone offers help I say yes.

But my life has been my life. We all have different experiences.

My way is not The Way. sigh.

It is funny that I have moved my intense feelings towards “community” because the chosen family thing didn’t work for me in a large scale way. I take my community seriously and I show up any time someone pokes me and requests my presence. I’m that weird bastard cousin who shows up at family reunions to piss everyone off. Ha.

I am going to get through this week and today had better be my lowest day. I was a butt. My kids deserve so much better. And in the end EC still wanted to stay up late to chat alone. Even though I am a butt.

Sometimes the intimacy of our relationship astounds me. This is the most intimate non-sexual relationship I’ve ever had. With all of my children… but it’s seriously more intense with EC. (I’m not playing favorites! It’s just… those two years of being alone together made a difference. There’s a level of knowing that is harder to get to with distractions around.)

I know I know I know that no one can “make” me feel anything…. but EC makes me feel more loved than any other person on this planet and I need to not fuck her up because that’s true. I have to guard my black hole of need.

Sometimes I fear that I send signals that make her think I don’t like her in my urgent desire to not overly pressure her.

We are going through a thing and nagging (in both directions) is at a fevered pitch. I’m reading books on ADHD and impulsivity and executive function issues…

My dearest daughter. When I talk about how deeply frustrated I am that I have to tell you literally six times to set the table because you keep walking away mid-task to go read a book… that doesn’t mean I dislike you.

Oh my baby. I like you so much.

MC heard me ranting to Noah. I said, “This is when I hate my kids.” This is going to take weeks, maybe months or years of processing. Sigh.

You know how you sometimes tell your sister that you hate her but you don’t really you are just really frustrated in a moment and you used a hurtful word? Yeah. Like that. Only you weren’t supposed to hear me. I was supposed to be venting behind your back. Is that polite? It’s human. I don’t hate you. I phrased it so poorly.

There are times when I hate how hard parenting is. Usually those times overlap with one or both of you running headlong into an issue I struggle with myself. Yeah. I seriously hate some of these moments. But I take them on all day every day because I like you so much.

Beloved baby… if I really hated you do you think I would treat you like I do? Do you think I would dedicate most of my fucking waking hours to being a performing monkey for you? You might have a weird ass opinion about how I treat people I hate…

But that was an awful thing to hear and you feel sad. That’s so valid.

You need to have something to tell your shrink.

I’m kidding. Kind of. Actually… their shrink said something to me in a hand wavey way on the way out the door. I’m not sure what that was about.

On the way home MC said that they want to head back up to UCSF to talk to the gender folks about puberty again. They are starting to feel like they don’t want to go through puberty as a girl and that means we should figure out hormones, like, soon.

It will also make moving more complicated.

But if that is what my baby needs that is what we will do. One way or another. Amusingly I know at least two trans-folk who have been semi-nomadic during transition. I might ask them how that went. Maybe. I’ll see how the chat with UCSF goes.

When Noah is here to hear all of my bubbling thoughts I feel a lot less crazy. He acts like my thoughts make sense, even if they are discordant.

Talking to my massage therapist is interesting. She’s really struggling with the loss of her mother. In the past 30 years she hasn’t gone longer than 3 days without seeing her mother. It’s been that long since she went on a vacation. Other than going on a handful of vacations… she’s seen her mother a minimum of three times a week all her life.

But she doesn’t have a partner to share her life or her burden with.

Life is hard for everyone.

baby!