+ My wonderful family helped me with half an hour of yard work yesterday and that made visible progress towards my goals.

+ Even though the baby is tiny and larval and so needy it is hurting me I love her so much that I am mostly maintaining good cheer through her demands.

+ I am better at asking for help with the baby than I have ever been. When I am feeling frazzled I ask Noah or one of the big kids to help me and everyone jumps at the chance. I am feeling productive and like my body gets to rest from the physical strain of carrying a bowling ball around 24/7.

+ Noah’s cooking lately has been awesome.

+ The Educational Specialist told us she has been lying to us and telling us we need to turn in more than we need to because most clients don’t turn in how much she asks for. We are basically done with the school year in terms of quantity of produced materials and we have five weeks to go. This feels weird. I will keep having the kids move forward, we will just be moving into 3rd/5th grade a few weeks early. We finished all of the current stuff already except for two more science experiments. And we have five weeks.

+ Noah and I discussed a timeline yesterday for making the website/clearing out the house enough to have staged pictures taken for the website. We are shooting for October. I will schedule a fancy-ass photographer to come in and do the family portraits/fun house pictures and it’ll be worth the money.

+ We got the dirt moved that I needed moved and now I can get plants for the beds this week. I am doing starts this year because holy toast I don’t have the time/energy for seeds. But I want the yard to look spectacular for staged photos trying to get someone to buy it. Those beds need lush growth in them.

+ The van is full for a trip to Goodwill and Half Price Books today. I’m aiming for a trip a week for a while.

+ I can already get rid of two book cases with what I have packed/gotten rid of. I haven’t yet. But I will soon.

+ Ze bebé is getting huge. Her 3-6 month sleepers are getting tight and I’m about to start putting her in 9 month sleepers just so that diaper changes are easier. She hasn’t moved out of the 6 month onesies or dresses yet. Just in sleepers because she’s so dang tall. She will be 9 weeks tomorrow.

+ Our sweetness is smiling more and more. I think it is funny that a lot of her smiles happen on the changing table after she has a clean butt. I think she likes the wall in spring because she spends a lot of time smiling at the butterflies.

+ On the parenting forum I’m participating in a “stop yelling at your kids” challenge and whereas I’m not perfect or on a long streak or anything I’m doing pretty well. When I take into consideration that I am: a)barely sleeping b)in contact with a needy baby for 20+ hours of the day c) in a really lot of pain d)limiting pain meds like whoa e)limiting sugar f)and trying to go through allll the shit in our house…. I’m doing pretty well! Go me.

+ We are having a fucking fabulous time researching where we are going to move. We are looking at countries all over the world. This is going to be the adventure of a lifetime. My life is so fucking insanely good I can barely wrap my head around how fucking cool this is. I get to be an international nomad. That’s going to happen. In the next year.

+ I feel intense gratitude that I am still in the bay and still receiving wonderful body work from my excellent providers. That’s serious luck. I will miss them.

+ This is a little weird, but I’m grateful that since I appear to be allergic to alcohol… Noah is having some stuff go on that means he shouldn’t drink either. It means I get to look forward to a time of solidarity in enjoying silly juices together because we can’t have grown up drinks. We have to enjoy one another without inebriation. I like that.

-I dislike how much I am nagging everyone in my house. I feel like a mega bitch all the time. But gosh my kids would like to still have their entire “job” be playing and that’s not an option any more. It was appropriate when you were 5. Neither of you are 5 now.

-I am super bummed that I threw up so I needed to cancel a social visit with a friend I haven’t seen in months. That sucks. I was looking forward to talking to her.

-I would like to sleep through a night without waking up to side lie nurse. My shoulders hurt so bad. 10 months till I can night ween. *sob*

-I’m a little mad at the Educational Specialist because she has been pushing my kids for most of the year and in the last two visits she admitted that we are the only family in compliance and she feels a little bad that she shoved *us* as hard as she did because we were fully in lock-step-demand compliance. We only needed one item per subject per grading period and my kids have turned in two or three samples per subject every meeting all year. Oh. I’m not mad because we did the work, I’m mad because we had to fight over formatting so much work for turning in. We could have fought over 1/3 of the fucking formatting and that would have made my life better.

-I hurt. I’m minimally typing so most of the pain is coming from being a baby toting device. She’s heavy. And side lying nursing is the god damn pits.

People from the High Desert get it when I talk about running from heat and poverty in a way other people don’t. It’s a kind of being seen.

I need to only listen to country music I carefully curate. The radio isn’t ok for me anymore because the constant drumbeat of “alcohol, alcohol, alcohol” is bothering me.

I don’t actually think I need to run from all heat. But I can’t do dry heat. It makes me want to die.

The trip to SF with the baby and MC was really fun. I had a moment of being a butthead on the train because MC told me they lost their bag of toys and I was a little snippy. Then we figured out it was in the backpack and I apologized profusely. The visit with Sarah was one of the better ones I’ve had in a while. I had less anxiety and I think it was partially that I didn’t ask her to come to Fremont.

I’ve been seriously flipping out internally over how terrible I am for wanting people to come so far to see me.

Today we did a ritual with the family therapist about trying to move on from difficult feelings. I think that was a good thing.

I’m bouncing between feeling really happy and positive and certain that things are so good and are going to keep being good…. and then I’m like ONLY I’M PART OF THIS FAMILY SO OF COURSE I WILL WRECK IT ALL.

I cleaned the refrigerator finally. It’s been on my to do list since before I got pregnant. Whoops.

I have reduced my sugar but I’m not finding it possible to eliminate it. When the baby screams I go for sugar because it keeps me from crying or flipping out. I’m using sugar like an anti-anxiety drug. Basically I am eating my feelings. But I’m still having less than the previous month. Not as much less as I wish I was having.

It’s fucking hard being nice when my nerves feel like a cheese grater is going over them. Just the screaming is that hard and she really doesn’t scream much. But the sugar helps.

I am making small but noticeable progress towards culling the house. Hey! If you get a lot of mail shipments of small boxes (maybe from Amazon…) I would be SO GRATEFUL if you would collect them and give them to me. I am deliberately putting the books in small meticulously labeled boxes so that when they are in storage someone else can go through them.

It occurred to me that before we go through and do stuff to remodel the house… we should go ahead and put it up on a website. So that someone could potentially say, “Wait! I want to buy it and do that part of the remodeling!” To make that possible earlier (and to make every part of remodeling easier) I’m in hard-core cull mode and that’s working for me. If you have seen stuff in my house and coveted it in the past… now is the time to come shopping.

I’m not kidding. If you saw something you like ask fast. I’ve already taken like 10 bags and 5 boxes to get rid of and I’m moving along quickly. But at the rate I’m culling it will take six months. Who knows how quickly the thing you like will go….

Oh!!! I’m so thrilled! I asked the school across the street if they want me to donate stuff I’ve gotten for home schooling and they were thrilled. I’m excited about it being useful and easy to donate.

Ok, enough typing

Sarah started a new job so I’m babbling at her a lot but I’m trying to not go too overboard. Pam has fallen into an activism hole and isn’t available to chat much because she’s off having a life or some shit. Jenny’s mom is visiting her so she hasn’t been free to Skype in a few weeks.

The words are bubbling up inside me. God I want to talk.

I finally made all the phone calls I needed to make to deal with medical shit for the kids. (Insurance verification stuff. Not a big deal. Just a thing to do.) I paid all the bills that have stacked up. I checked on car insurance stuff. I did useful things.

Noah’s mom wrote me a nice letter and didn’t address it to Noah. I will deign to respond. I now have a policy: when his family addresses a letter to him… I don’t answer. I’m not an invisible secretary. If they write to me I’ll write back an epic chatty letter with all the details they would like to get from him but he will never tell them. Like data about our children’s personalities. He doesn’t care enough about them to tell them.

I want my kids to show up and be accepted during the rare visits they have. That means the family in Texas needs to be aware and braced for the weirdness. I give that introduction. But only when they acknowledge me as a person.

So I got another box of adorable little dresses. I’m amazed she had any left after how many she sent when the older kids were small. But here is a whole stack of 18 month clothes. Sure. I have basically nothing in that size so far.

I will have to tell her we are moving and culling so that she doesn’t send a dozen massive boxes this Christmas. hahaha. It won’t help. She will do whatever the fuck she wants.

I’m struggling with how guilty I feel for advocating for myself. Noah is officially working part time for a couple more weeks (the fourth trimester is coming to an end… yay!) but I’m struggling with how ashamed I feel of asking him for help. I do stuff for myself when I shouldn’t and don’t have to and then I feel awful and angry. It’s not wise or useful or helpful or anything good.

I am using a lower dosage of medication than I would prefer for pain and sleep reasons. I’m not sleeping well because of nursing (although this kid is so easy I’m not really bitching… just noticing that it’s true). I’m in a lot of pain from holding the baby (as expected). I’m really struggling with trying to cut sugar.

I want to cry because I just want more fucking sugar. There’s so much I can’t have. Privacy going pee. A walk without my back hurting from holding a baby. Less pain in my body. Sleep. Not having sugar at the same time is feeling like horrible torture. I’m such a god damn baby.

There is no fair. I’m allowing myself tea with sugar. I have already had other sugar this month. The amount I’m cutting back to isn’t zero. I need to shut the fuck up.

But it hurts.

I god damn hate being an adult. Fuck this shit.

There is a piece of me that is afraid that if I cut the sugar more I’ll drop weight like whoa and I don’t want to.

Body mass and weight are fascinating. I’m in the mid 160’s right now (which is at the low end of the middle of my weight fluctuations… I go from 145-205 with most of my time being spent in the 160’s-180’s) but my belly is still distended and I’m wearing pants I usually wear in the 190’s. My shirts are fitting weird because I have no extra fat in my back/shoulders. I look very much like I have the kind of body where I could lose 20 lbs and all of a sudden look skinny and fit. It’s weird. Usually I feel like I look more like a chunky person but smaller? This isn’t that.

Bodies. Weird.

Ok. Time to go pick up MC from camp. Don’t wanna move from the couch but life doesn’t really give a shit what I want. Move it, wench.

Do you know what would make being patient easier? A whole lot of drugs. Do you know what I am going to have? A very small amount of drugs.

That’s not exactly, fully what I want here. Life doesn’t give a shit. I’m nursing a dang baby. Minimal drugs, bitch. Just enough to keep me shitting and eating and not cracking all my teeth. Not enough to feel cheerful.

Frankly there aren’t enough studies about the impact. I do minimize what I put in my baby as much as possible.

I just can’t use zero or I will melt down.

This phase is challenging but so important. I love so many parts of having a nursing infant. I will never again be this wonderful, this able to solve needs just with my body, this needed.

I didn’t think I would get this third chance and I appreciate it so much because I didn’t truly have hope I would meet this child. I’ve been through the baby gauntlet and come out the far side with big kids. I know how short and magical this time is.

But nursing fucking sucks. It’s also wonderful. More than one thing can be true.

I love this stage and it is hard. Ambiguity. Strong opposing feelings. That’s life.

I rewatched Orange is the New Black with an eye towards watching Susan more carefully. (Crazy Eyes) Watching the way she freaks out… that feels so true. I am not quite at the level of that character (I have a high IQ and she is developmentally six years old) but as I was flipping out at my friend on Sunday I kept getting flashes of Susan. My friend wanted me to calm down because I was reacting really big to an interaction that felt small to her. In my head I was seeing Susan screaming “I did a bad thing” and hitting herself in the head.

Shit. I totally do that.

I mean, my tantrums are slightly more nuanced and I’m better at hiding them… but that’s a huge chunk of what is different. I’m better at hiding my crazy and that’s a lot of what makes me be perceived better. If I was put in a setting like prison I don’t think I would do well. I would be seen as being as crazy as she is.

That scares me.

I am not better. As I watch all the stories of why these women are in prison… my fuck ups mostly haven’t been smaller (except the folks who committed murder or major fraud…) and I just didn’t get caught. I have muled drugs. If I had been caught on one of the times I was bringing all the drugs to a party? Phew.

I’ve done other shit I’m not going to list now.

For the record… I haven’t done much in the last few years that I could get in trouble for. I won’t model it in front of my kids and I don’t get a lot of space from them.

I understand why my sister did drugs in front of me. There was no one to watch me while she was supposed to be “responsible” and that was as responsible as she was capable of being.

I grit my teeth more and swallow pills or eat bits of medicated candy at meal times but I don’t spend my time hot boxing the house with my kids around. Learn better, do better. My kids are exposed to a medical explanation of drugs and they are not around smoking. They don’t need the medication and that would expose them.

I keep reading people describe other women as “good mothers” and I want to know what they are being judged on?

I’m not sure I’m a good mother. I’m doing my best and somedays that’s pretty good and other days it isn’t. I don’t know about anyone else. What is a good mother? I don’t understand. I don’t know what all these darned kids need.

My back hurts.

I would dearly love to up my medication dosage right now because this lower dose shit is eating me alive.

Things I am freaking out about: stuff. How to store it, how to dispose of it, how to get people to do the parts that I think they want to do but I’m communicating poorly so it is a mixed bag.

I’m not freaking out because of you. I’m freaking out because I need to start getting rid of stuff and if I wait 6 months to start I am going to be very sorry because then I will need to move quickly and that will be so much harder. We are going to end up with a small storage unit worth of stuff (mostly books) and suitcases. Everything else will have to go and if I try to do it quickly it will hurt my body.

So I’m starting now. I’m giving things back to people who loaned me stuff (which I’m communicating poorly about and then I feel like I’m about to flip out because I’m doing such a bad job of advocating for myself) and I’m trying to get rid of stuff. One of my buddies would like to sell stuff for me because it represents possibly many hundreds of dollars but she wants to do so on her schedule with me storing stuff until she feels like picking it up.

That is not a bad thing for her to want but if my goal is getting it out of my house and her goal is to make as much money off of selling things slowly while storing things at my house…

I’m not doing well at advocating for myself and I feel like a horrible bitch.

And then when I do get to Goodwill the employee yelled at me that I have to sort all of the stuff I donate.

Fuck. Everything.

Getting rid of stuff is so stressful.

And my kids are kids. I’m tired of fighting over food. Like, seriously fucking tired of arguing and fighting over every god damn meal. Lately things are awful. This comes in waves. The kids want to be micromanaging control freaks about every bite and none of them should be healthy. I’m done. I’m at the point where I am going to start flipping out so I need to set the boundaries early and hard. It’s not ok for me to scream at them. So I am going to start sending them in the back yard every single time they argue about food. We have regular negotiations where everyone gets an equal vote. Everyone gets to ask for meals at meal planning time. Everyone gets to say that X or Y vegetable is a hard limit and they will not eat it ever and have that respected. No one is forced to eat fucking eggplant or onions or mushrooms or… the list is god damn long. Our “acceptable” list of vegetables is fairly tightly proscribed. We only make foods that are on the tolerable list. So having to get into a fight about every god damn meal is feeling just unfair to the extreme. I’m sick of it. It is so god damn rude.

It’s like how my kids are feeling the need to interrupt their classes and argue with the teachers to the point where they are disrupting anyone getting to learn. Everything has to be about them every second of every day.

Dude. I am totally a more respectful student than this so it’s not just that they are acting like me. This is bullshit. They are hella rude. I need to get this shit in line. This is not ok.

I need more medication. And my children need more friends and time away from each other but we are struggling to make that work. I could put them in school but it wouldn’t give them friends or emotional benefits beyond time away from each other. I think it would create a lot of problems.

It’s 8:10 and the kids will be in camp all day and I am just about to explode with impatience. I want them away from me. And right this minute I’m feeling hella sad that the entire day will be spent under the baby. I love the baby. I’m feeling touched out and overwhelmed and I want a little space to be in my body and in my brain without someone complaining at me or hurting me.

I hate breastfeeding.

Just another day in paradise.

There are parts of caring for a baby that are hard, even when the baby is easy for a baby. There are nights of disrupted sleep even if the baby sleeps pretty well. There is fussing and discontent because sometimes it takes mama a few minutes to figure out that the current problem is what position I’m holding her in. Baby screams are designed to climb inside your ear drums like shards of glass. Do not ignore me say the frantic screams that can erupt in a minute when the baby realizes OH MY GOD MY DIAPER IS WET. THIS IS NOT OK. FIX IT.

But I’ve been through this rodeo. I remember crying because I needed time off from EC. Now I’m still thrilled to get time off from EC but don’t you touch my baby. She will only need me for a little while.

The load on my brain and body feel different. I have been all the way through this and come out the far side with functional, interesting big kids. I don’t feel impatient with my baby this time because in my body I know that this dependency period is so short. Then they pull away and want to do it alone.

She will only think I am everything for a few months. I can be patient for that long. It means I get to snuggle her sweetness. I’ve been calling all of my kids my/your/her/their sweetness as in almost a stand in for “highness”. It keeps me from calling them “your heiny” which sometimes I am inclined to do because I am a turkey butt.

She’s not the most robust nurser ever. She doesn’t suck very hard and then my nipple falls out of her mouth and a pool of milk spills. It’s not spit up, she just didn’t swallow fast enough/hard enough. But the double chin tells me that she’s getting enough in her. She just prefers to stimulate my let down and then just let it spray. This is wise; my older children would suck hard after my let down and then get mad because they choked with the intensity. My boobs are energetic about how they deliver milk. HI. YOU WANT MILK. HERE HAVE ALLLLLLLLL THE MILK WITH GREAT FORCE.

It’s funny to me. But I spend a lot of time staring at walls so I need whatever levity I can get.

Height wise, baby is about out of 3 month clothes. She has plenty of chub space left, but the toes are getting tight and that makes it hard to dress a baby. Luckily some kind friends are going to come get my we-are-done-with-it pile this weekend. R will pick up the stuff she lent me that I don’t need to keep and Y is picking up stuff we are culling so she can sell it on the internet. She has time, energy, and the extreme need for money so she’s happy to do it. I’m happy I don’t have to get all this stuff to a donation center this month. Yay. It also means she can pick through my stuff to see if anything is useful in her new apartment. Shopping in your friend’s house for free is the best shopping.

I am not hosting an Easter party this year. I just can’t. I’m tired and not up for the amount of stress I put on myself for it. I spend 30-50 hours getting ready for the Easter party every year. I do a lot of yard work over months prepping for it. I do a massive deep clean of the house so I can have other people’s children come over and dig through the nooks and crannies of my house. I don’t want all the germs around my newborn.

I am going to hide eggs, of course, but my kids are going to spend a freakin week finding eggs.

The kids asked if we could put the house on the market next year after Easter so we can have one last big party because wouldn’t it be sweet for YC to get a real Easter egg hunt in this house…

We’ll see but it’s not a bad time line.

And I’m totally out of time.

Today was long. I have absolutely no memory of when I woke up, which is weird. Usually I notice that time and it imprints on my memory. Time is a big deal to me.

I’ve always been obsessed with time and clocks. I play a variety of little games with myself about manipulating the numbers and the lines in analog clocks. I play the adding/subtracting/multiplying/dividing games with face clocks too. I’m really into thinking about how to get everything to 10.

Anyway.

Today we woke up and went out to breakfast. It was a weird ass day. We ate out twice. After breakfast we came home to grab a few odds and ends and nurse the baby then we drove to San Jose. We went to the consignment event I said we weren’t going to visit this spring. Oh well. I found the stuff I wanted and the big kids filled in their summer wardrobes. We were down to 1-3 tank tops or shorts for each kid. Even though we do laundry a lot the summer is a little annoying with one tank top and three shorts.

I also found a swing for $35 to replace the one my friend gave me… which was broken. To be fair the one from my friend is like ten years old. These things are not manufactured that well to start with.

Then we went out to lunch. Lots of veggies were had.

We came home for a brief respite. The kids and I weren’t home for two hours. Then we got to go to chess class. Then the kids had belt testing in martial arts. We got home almost 12 hours after we initially left this morning.

The baby was great.

I would say that if you added up every minute of her screaming/crying there were about 10 more minutes of upset than we would get in the same time period at home. It just… went fine. She’s a trouper. (And now I’m second guessing that spelling of that word, Noah… even though I’m not wrong.)

This is a baby to inspire frequent breeding.

“Have a baby…. ” she says, “then you can experience the bliss of soothing a tiny helpless human with baths and car rides and being put down while you do things….”

IT’S A FUCKING LIE. NOT EVERY KID IS LIKE THIS. DON’T DO IT. KIDS ARE USUALLY HARD AS FUCK. THIS KID IS A GOD DAMN MIRACLE.

I mean, she’s still a lot of work. But she’s so sweet about it…

There are moments when I seriously think that karma is a real thing and I paid so hard when I was young that I earned having my life get better and better starting at 25. The last 11 years of my life have been surreal.

Thank you, Noah.

I am grateful that you have been willing to essentially train a feral animal. I am not who I was when we got married. There are parts that are better and parts that are harder but absolutely none of who I am today would be possible without the safety, support, and love you have given to me.

And the kids. You gave me three specific reasons I never get to quit on you. You made it so you have a permanent manipulation button on me. “It would be better for the kids if you…”

You are a genius.

I’m getting over my internal whine about oh my god I signed on for 30 god damn years of active parenting and moving into a feeling of gratitude. This spacing is really wonderful so far for a variety of reasons. I’m really glad we didn’t get pregnant right away. Our big kids are at the perfect developmental stage for accepting a sibling and six months ago I think it would have been shitty. They were both in hard disequilibrium periods and right now they are both riding high on equilibrium, self assurance, and mastery. They are both feeling good in their bodies and lives.

I mean, there is still that deep pocket of shame. There is still that base line of emotional volatility… but it’s doing so much better. There will always be seasons that are easier or harder and we lucked into having the baby be born during an easy season. This timing is wonderful.

I think MC in particular would not have coped with a sibling before this. Being a middle child isn’t easy. There is all the fuss and complication of always striving to feel “as good as” the older sibling and all the pressure of being an older sibling and not being permitted to “be the baby” forever. I think MC would have done poorly at pretty much any point in the past. They needed seven years of being the baby before they were ready to move on and let someone else be the baby.

MC is really latching on to “Sibby”. In my family of origin Sissy is the name for the oldest sister in the family. So we have Sissy and Sibby and both of them really wish I was more supportive of them being little mommies. I believe with all my heart that while it is good for older siblings to be capable of helping and for them to do some of it… they aren’t parents. They are not going to be given power or authority over their younger sibling(s). Just no. There are lots of life circumstances where I might have no choice and I am not judging folks who have to.

It is important to understand how and where your personal choices and preferences are about the intersection of needs, abilities, resources, and desires of the people involved.

I understand why people have to leave an oldest in charge. I just want to do everything I can to avoid doing that. If I have to then… everyone’s principles can change in case of need. That’s life.

In four more years when YC is around four and MC is around twelve and YC is around fourteen…. I can imagine paying the older children to babysit so I can drag Noah to a munch with me so we can make friends in a new place.

But it won’t be frequent and when my kids babysit… I will need to pay them. Given all the schtuff in my life… that’s just part of the deal.

I don’t know why I kept the Sissy thing when I hate my Sissy so much.

Because I love her and I want to look up to her and Auntie was such a good Sissy to my mom. Auntie is always there for my mom. Sure she’s codependent as shit. I’m pushing EC to not put up with being disrespected and working on teaching her patterns of abuse and what to put your foot down about.

Can you be a good Sissy and not be an enabler?

I tell my children, “You only stay in a relationship with someone if they treat you decently and that includes your family members. If you don’t like how I, or your dad, or your (whoever) treat you then you don’t have to continue knowing us as an adult. It will be up to you. Hopefully we will act right and you will want to have relationships with us… but you never owe us. Only share what you freely want to share.”

I owe them because I selfishly chose to bring them into the world. I made them just because I wanted to know them. Because the other seven billion fucking people didn’t love me enough and that was never going to change.

It’s interesting perceiving how much I have changed because of the simple reality of having relationships that are intensely physical and completely non sexual. I am pretty sure that the longest I ever lived with my mother was a six year span from when I was 12-18. My mother and I did not have an intensely physical relationship. She would hug me at times but mostly she didn’t like to be touched; I get it.

I have wonderful friends. We don’t see each other much. Mostly we don’t touch that much when we do see each other unless we are having some kind of sex. Because…

Yeah. Because.

Because that’s what I do. Only I can’t anymore. I have to be something different.

I feel sometimes like I was born when EC was. Sometimes I wonder if part of the reason I went through a really horrible long period when sex was pretty traumatic most of the time was because I did a lot of abreacting and trying to identify with EC’s life to learn how to feel safety in my body and it kept being interrupted by physically painful and damaging sex.

I started really coming out of it eight years later.

I started coming out of it on my own at a time when women in my family have often gone into puberty in generations past.

True and not true. Just looking at patterns. They don’t mean anything.

Abort. Abort. Delete Paragraph.

Anyway. I should go to bed. I’m starting to hit the wall. I was overstimulated like I had been sucking down… I don’t know what. Caffeine doesn’t keep me awake very well. Nothing keeps me awake when I’m tired except intense emotion. I can stay awake. But it takes something ridiculous like a new baby or a term paper I didn’t write until 24 hours before it was due.

Not that I was ever such a slacker. All the way through grad school.

But I don’t stay up well for parties or social events.

Why did I used to go to so damn many parties?

Ahhhh…. so I could meet my wonderful friends. But once I find them I can go home and contact them in my preferred mediums.

It works. Mostly. I do have some neat friends. I find them all over.

I am struggling with talking myself into holding the baby while I brush my teeth. Whine. It’s wonderful. It’s a great job. Holding the baby (or being on my side while I face the baby and nurse in bed) for approximately 22 hours a day gets… ouchie. And I’m not seeing my normal body workers because no I don’t leave my baby for an hour or two because this is my thing. I spend the fourth trimester with my babies.

Sure I dragged this one out of the house all day. But she was in the car for about two and a half hours in chunks spread over twelve hours. The. Entire. Rest. Of. The. Day. Is. On. Me. 

Noah hasn’t had her for an hour out of the last 24.

And I give him dates by himself. Two of us on a self abnegation spree goes poorly. Someone has to be getting some damn needs met.

Ok, I’m getting most of my needs met. Just not alone time or body care. There is more of that in my future. I can be patient.

In the past I made poor decisions because I pursued self-care stuff at the expense of my children. I won’t do that again. If it hurts sometimes… well… I didn’t have kids because I wanted a convenient life. I wanted purpose and connection. I wanted to have someone whose opinion I care about.

I am selfish and small and not everyone else in the world was enough without them.

I needed to have there be more people who think of the holidays and me and “home”. Noah feels like that and it’s great.

When I was born I was told I would get three older siblings. Instead I was raised mostly as an only child and I had occasional visiting abusers.

Now I get to have one kid on one side of me and another kid on the other side of me and another kid on top of me. Noah leans on some part of me or another.

They want me here so much.

This is what safe feels like.

Sometimes I feel pretty squeamish about the fact that I am not sure how much I want to “be” a good person and how much I want to pretend I am a good person so I can model it for my children. I want them to have the option of being good people or effective monsters if they choose.

That’s an interesting thought process. I don’t want to decide for them how they end up. I want to give them the opportunity.

I honestly feel like “being good” was not an option for me when I was young if I wanted to survive. If I had striven harder for being good I would have cooperated more. I would have fought less. And I’d be dead.

So I don’t want to force my children into the model of always doing as they are told. I want them to know how to choose. I want them to have a strong sense of their own internal compass for right and wrong and I want them to do their best to do right according to their own metrics.

Shit like giving money to homeless people. That isn’t something that I feel “Everyone Must Do To Be Good.” That’s not how it occurs in my brain at all. *I* was homeless for years and people helped me. People helped *me* not die. *I* owe paying that help forward. I have extra. My life is freakishly blessed. If *I* don’t hand $5 to anyone who asks me then I am betraying the child I once was.

That’s not about a universal sense of right or wrong or being good or being bad. It is about me playing the other part of the role I used to play. Because I can. Because in this life if you receive it is also good to give.

But different people receive different things. Not everyone is morally or spiritually obligated to have the same role as me.

How does goodness fit into that?

I do actually perceive myself as a generous person. I do perceive myself as a kind person.

But goodness is just a bridge too far.

I ain’t nice, but I strive for kindness all the time. Kindness is not always nice. Kindness is sometimes brutal. Kindness is telling my best friend she needs to change because this outfit sucks on her instead of saying something nice about it being an interesting pattern.

On a completely different note… my body has gone through some kind of intense reset lately. I cannot remember when I last had diarrhea. I’ve had solid stool for weeks. Even postpartum it never got liquid again. It was soft and easy to produce… but not diarrhea. I am pretty sure this is the longest period in my life when I have had solid stools. Apparently we are doing a fantastic job of nailing my nutritional needs plus lowering my stress levels. I’m really impressed. I didn’t know my body was capable of doing this well.

It’s exciting to me.

My sleep is all over the place. Meaning I’m not sleeping very well or very deeply. I’m absolutely terrified that I am going to be responsible for killing my baby. I don’t think that is going to happen but the terror is there. So I don’t sleep well because I check her over and over and over all night long. We do follow safe sleep practices. I’m not medicating at night. I’m not doing risky stuff with my baby. But SIDS is an absolutely terrifying boogeyman. Sometimes you do everything right and your baby still dies. So I don’t sleep much in the hopes that if her breathing pauses for some reason of immaturity I will be there to poke her back into action.

I’ll sleep when she’s more sturdy.

I am so so so grateful I don’t have to drive or have a job right now.

My hat is off to the mamas who have to go back to work already. You are strong, powerful, and loving. Your kid is lucky to have your protection in every form you give it. You are teaching your kids stuff I am not teaching mine and your kids are lucky.

I do wish my country viewed the long term mental health of everyone who breeds as important and provided longer maternity/paternity leave. A low stress time period of adapting to being a parent would be better for everyone.

One lady in my online due date club had to go back to work nine days postpartum. She’s the bread winner for her family and her job won’t let her take more time off. She has cried a lot about how sad she is to leave her baby, but it is necessary for the survival of her family. I believe it is wrong that our country does this to people but I don’t have even 1 oz of judgment for her. She’s surviving and coping in an unfair situation.

Mamas usually (not always) do their best. It is really sad when circumstances control the fact that their best is probably not what is truly best for their family. I don’t blame the mothers. I blame our fucked up culture.

When your choice is between feeding and housing your family or bonding with your new infant… that’s not a choice. That’s evil.

*We* choose to allow that to be the way our culture works. We elect politicians who keep it true.

Someone Noah grew up with has a baby just a couple of months older than our new one. Their baby was diagnosed with liver cancer.

There is no fair. There is no amount of paranoia that can actually keep my children safe. It’s luck of the draw and life is so unfair there are no words to adequately express how unfair it all is. I mourn for their family and pray that such a fate does not strike my children. Because nothing I do or don’t do will actually influence that kind of health. It’ll happen or it won’t.

Being a parent is terrifying.

In this exact moment I feel like I have passed some sort of… I don’t know a line in the sand. Some level of development. I’ve reached some sort of change.

I know that I will again feel like I want to die at some point. But in this moment I feel like there is so much need for my presence that I hope I will never again feel like I “should” die because in this moment I am capable of seeing how untrue that will be for the rest of my life. From here on out my death is going to absolutely devastate several people. There is no chance that my death is a positive thing ever again.

When I die it will cause more pain than it will relieve. I don’t believe that has been true for most of my life. It would have been a selfish act, always, but I don’t think it would have hurt people the way it would now. And for most of my life I have been in so much more pain than I am now. My physical pain comes and goes and sometimes spikes much higher than it was when I was a child but the physical pain has never really been the problem. The emotional pain is what I have struggled to bear.

I don’t know why this daughter feels like such a tipping point to me. She is not more important, valued, or loved than her sister or sibling.

But there are four fucking people who would absolutely never be ok again if I killed myself.

I am not really ok after my father and brother killed themselves. It doesn’t hurt like it would hurt my kids… I had different relationships. But if I still feel the amount of pain I feel in relation to their deaths I can barely imagine what it would do to my kids. It would scar their souls until they died.

I can see that so clearly. My oldest daughter has been clingy and loving and so wonderful lately. She’s having big feelings about the transition to having another baby and she is needing a lot of snuggling and chats about life and change. She’s not trying to regress. She is trying to affirm her own importance in my heart.

My children continue to feel glad that when we go out and it’s chilly, I will still give them my warm layers so that I can shiver and they can feel better. Even though I told you to bring something or I’d let you suffer for your own silliness. I never really do though. If I have warmth to share I will give it. Because you are my externalized beating heart and I want you to be ok. I will be ok enough with what I have left. I have survived so much worse. But you feeling uncomfortable is enough for me to try and fix it. Because you are my love. How could I look at you and make a choice to let you feel uncomfortable when it is so easy for me to fix?

You are my everything. My reason for living and striving and trying.

I need you. I love you.

And now my family has brought me back donuts. Time to go!

I’m wandering back and forth between here and fetlife for this chain of thoughts. I’m never sure why I post stuff on fetlife at all, but once in a while I feel moved to. Ok.

I have a hard time with the very concept of goodness. What is goodness?

I keep thinking about this kid from southern Louisiana. I can’t remember his name. He was a kid who got in trouble a lot when he was young. When Hurricane Katrina hit this kid rescued a lot of people. He was black and he lived in a poor neighborhood that was not given a lot of help in evacuating. He saved a lot of lives. The news stories I read about him (quite some time ago) were all shocked that this young black guy would be so heroic… so good.

Fuck all y’all for being surprised.

The funny thing is I would trust juvenile delinquents to help and be resourceful in that kind of situation faster than I would trust most “high achievers” or obedient children. Why? Because in order to really be helpful in a crisis you probably need to be good at thinking outside the box and not following your standard way of behaving. You need something new and challenging.

In modern America that kind of personality gets sent to juvie on the regular.

I believe the only reason I didn’t end up in juvenile hall was because I moved so often I didn’t develop a sufficient pattern of behavior in a given community.

What does it mean to be good?

I’m rereading the Imriel books again. Kushiel series. Jacqueline Carey. The Phédra books are way less interesting to me this time. (I need something I can read 2 pages at a time and pick up and put down and not put real effort into learning a new thing.) I’m interested in the thought process behind being problematic from conception and trying to have your very existence not cause more problems in the world. I’m interested in what it means to try to be good when you have impulses that are not so good.

I’m thinking about monsters and intent.

Beauty and the Beast. The whole town comes out to kill the beast… why? Because they are afraid of him. Has he hurt someone? Enh, not really. He has imprisoned intruders… but that was not particularly a violent reaction at the time.

When I think of what goodness means I think of when I read the statistic (that might not be accurate) that 100% of Alaskan native women are raped. Usually by a family member. Are those rapists driven from families or communities? Of course not. They are members of the community and they are necessary for survival. They do good things.

I can say good things about pretty much everyone who raped me. Paul Nathan does an award winning comedy act. He’s great on stage. But I know I’m not the only woman he raped.

What does goodness mean?

There is a woman in my local community. She’s a god damn leather title holder. When I was a teenager she spent a lot of time actively trying to get me to sleep with a list of her friends because “They like it when I bring them fresh meat.”

What does goodness mean?

Most of the ‘big name’ presenters from coast to coast have mixed reputations. Everyone has fucked up. Most people have crossed some major line at some point. The victims tend to leave. The big names stick around and become fixtures who cannot be assailed because everyone knows them and they do so much good for the community. Communities cannot exist without tolerating abusers. Abusers do a lot of fucking work to carry communities forward and the community would cease to exist without them.

What does goodness mean?

I won’t work Dickens Fair because I can’t go face my rapist. But Dan’s been a dedicated member of Mad Sal’s for way over 10 years and he’s done  so much good for the show and the community.

I fear that over the summer when I discussed restorative justice with some folks… they really didn’t understand what I meant. I didn’t mean that “communities shouldn’t throw people away” I meant “if you don’t specifically center the needs of victims you will drive them out of your community and only keep the abusers”. I meant that it’s not just about getting over transgressions and letting folks who fuck up have a second chance. How do you help heal people from being hurt?

Shouldn’t communities care a lot more about the members who are wounded instead of the ones doing the wounding?

Naw. That shit is about work going out and communities need work going in. Victims are hard. Victims are annoying. Victims make people feel weak and vulnerable and bad.

Abusers are way better to keep around.

What does goodness mean?

“But I’m a good person”. I don’t give a shit about your inherent goodness. I care that your fucking behavior is abusive.

What is abusive?

When you make someone feel small and bad about themself and like they don’t deserve to have the feelings/thoughts/emotions they god damn have about their fucking experiences.

I do not know if I ever want to think of myself as good. I’m not sure I would want to be. I’m not nice either.

But I am kind. I am compassionate. I am thoughtful. I am giving. I am generous. I am helpful. I am a good listener. I am educated about how to help people process their emotions. I am a very good teacher–I don’t have to know something to teach it.

Maybe I don’t have to be good to teach it.

Maybe it doesn’t actually matter if I am good and instead it matters if I am actively engaged in improving myself and doing things that make the world better for others. Other people, other animals, other ways of existing.

What does goodness mean?

A baby is sleeping on my chest, supported by one arm. The time between typing and hitting “post” changes with a newborn.

I was reading something on the parenting board I’ve been codependently hanging out on. (I want to feel like I can “help” someone and I’m physically incapacitated. I know! I’ll go give advice to internet strangers!) One of the ‘known names’ (i.e. people who post so much that everyone knows their story and references them between threads) made a comment about her mother rugsweeping her father’s physical abuse and my response was that I wish I could slap the shit out of her mother.

I didn’t have the reaction that I wanted to hurt her father.

That’s a thing. That’s a whole societal thing.

(Break for poopy diaper and outfit change and now we are nursing.)

Whether the mother is the main instrument of abuse or the enabler… we blame her first, most, and often only her. Mothers are responsible for protecting their children. A child being hurt is the fault of the mother. No matter who does it.

I think about this a lot. Do I blame my mother most? This dynamic is on the gigantic list of reasons I homeschool.

It’s not really about whether I physically, mentally, sexually, emotionally, or spiritually abuse my kids… It’s about whether I can keep it from happening at all.

The funny (to me) part is I have agreements with Noah around him intervening in *my* behavior. I am monitored. He has told me things I needed to change. That’s good. If I go off the rails I have to leave for the good of the kids and we’ve skirted that before. He warned me I was heading that way.

I got the fuck back on the rails.

I’m not sure I’m actually temperamentally suited to the job I chose. But I’m going to force myself into that mode if it kills me. But instead of killing me it is healing me.

I woke up overwhelmingly cranky and with a long list of complaints. Noah suggested a walk. I’m less bitchy now. Over a mile this time! And it didn’t hurt! We’ve been doing just under a mile and it’s been real slow and hard. This felt better.

Noah doesn’t get mad at me for my moodiness. I don’t know what I did right to get him. I know that saying yes was important. (Technically I didn’t say yes I said “Yeah, I could do that.”) But what did I do to make him want me so bad?

This is the hard part of the fourth trimester. I’m already getting bored. But I believe in this. We are only 11 damn days into this mess. Well, once she can handle being in a carrier a little better so we can get off of sitting in a chair it will be a little easier to move around the house and yard. This tiny fragile person needing us to sit still phase is rough. I feel like a whiner for thinking it is rough. But it is.

People are coming to visit us. It’s not like we are just watching the grass grow through the windows…

Still. It was a long pregnancy of feeling awful and I’m super antsy. But I’m also exhausted and physically recovering still. Ugh.

I went for a walk on days three, six, and nine. Today on day eleven I feel like I’d probably enjoy going out again. That’s a good sign in terms of energy and physical recovery.

Noah is currently holding the baby for the longest stretch he has managed in a few days. I’m so grateful. It’s hard that early on the babies only want mama. I get weary. But then later they like him better so it all evens out.

I’m feeling like the most boring awful person lately because I’m trapped in the house with three video game addicts and I’m not being as nice as I ought to be. But the only way to have less of it shoved in my face is for me to go sit in a bedroom with the door closed. It would be like if I lived with someone who was completely obsessed with sports and I had to go hide in a closet to get away from it.

I feel small and petty and bad because I feel bored and so uninterested in trying harder to care about other peoples interests. I’m feeling ungenerous about listening to information about other peoples games and books and movies.

I don’t want to fill my head with your interests. I want to be allowed to have my own.

But then I feel like I am not even sure what my interests are beyond “moving around and people being there to talk to”.

I am glad I got to see two friends over the past two days. That was nice.

I’m scared that I’m doing that thing where I spend so much time being silent that when a grown up comes over and wants to talk to me I am really bad at listening because there are so many words trapped behind my teeth that I’m never allowed to speak. Because my interests aren’t interesting or ok.

I feel boring and bored.

I asked my family about going to see Jenny’s family this year and my whole family kind of deflated. They really really really want to go sit on a beach somewhere warm. They don’t want to go to cold Scotland so that I can see people I care about that they barely know. I get it. And I pick almost all of our travel so it seems sporting for me to not demand that yet another trip be all about me. But I’d like to go see Jenny. I don’t get to have everything I want. So we will go to Mexico. Which seems weirdly awful because we had to be selfish assholes who didn’t go the entire time P was there (was it selfishness or pregnancy…)

Why do I think that travel is mostly about seeing people.

Because people are my entire motivation to live.

That’s complicated because I want people to want things from me in order for me to feel like I get to have them. And that’s fucked up.

Sometimes I wonder if I resent the fact that Noah really doesn’t care about my appearance so I have no reason to ever feel like it is a good idea to try and look pretty. That was a real problem in my relationship with my Owner. He was intensely focused on how I looked and I am not a pretty girl so I constantly felt like I was letting him down. I was a failure as a trophy girlfriend. Too many things are physically uncomfortable so I can’t be bothered to do them. The idea of spending money every week or two on my nails makes me want to have a panic attack. What a fucking waste of money. I’m not actually judging other people doing it… I don’t care.

It’s just… not for me.

I am not the kind of pretty girl who should have a cared for body. It takes effort and money and time and… no. It’s not for me.

That was true before Noah so it isn’t like I think my issues are about Noah. But he doesn’t care about me looking nice so when I have the vague flickering barely there impulse to try I simultaneously want to cry because no one wants that from me. They want it from other people and that is not for me.

It’s hard that what he would prefer to have is me playing video games. So I go from something I barely have an interest in to something I have a complete negative interest in and I feel like I’m failing to be what I should be. I’m not really interested in trying to be a pretty girl but I feel sad that I fail at it. I would love to never hear about video games again in my entire life and I can’t go an hour without them.

So yeah. The words get dammed up behind my lips and they come out in this flood. “Am I ok? Are the things that I want to have define me allowed? Is anyone interested in the person I would like to be but I feel like I need permission?”

It’s weird to me how often people tell me that they admire how myself I am.

You don’t see how much I cry because I feel like everything about me is wrong and not permitted and I am bad. I do not conform how I should. I don’t even know what I should be conforming to.

But I feel wrong and wrong and wrong and wrong.

I am very burnt out on doing almost nothing for the pregnancy. Everything about my self identity cracks when I cannot do much. I feel like my personhood stops existing. Now that most of what I’m doing is being a chair/nursing service for a baby…

There is so little me in this situation.

I’m sure Noah isn’t feeling much “like himself” but at least he is playing video games, which he likes.

I’m looking at online shopping shit I won’t let myself buy because it is all too much money. But it’s something to do while I’m trapped and bored. I’ve read several books. I’m bored. I feel frustrated and trapped and incompetent.

I feel like I want to be mean and mean and mean and mean. So mostly what I am is quiet.

Sarah–North Face looks better than Duluth Trading Company for the heavy long johns. Since we were talking about it. But at $100 a pop… yeah… my mid-weight long johns from REI will have to be enough. They are waaaaaaaaaaay cheaper. Maybe if I move somewhere with weather I will get desperate. But for the frigid California 50 degree winter… It’s ridiculous.

Overall Duluth Trading Company pants look fun though. I am not stylish.

I have found exactly one nursing dress I like. Apparently what I like in a nursing dress is hard to find? All of the previous dresses I had that were nursing compatible have died an ignoble death. I have a maternity dress that is nursing compatible (Thanks R! I am seriously living in your hand me downs.) and a dress that Ma gave me that has a loose neckline and I can just lower it. It wasn’t intended as a nursing dress but I have no modesty.

Otherwise I had retreated firmly into my overly modest what-do-you-mean-do-I-have-boobs sort of clothing. I expected to gain a lot more weight so a bunch of the maternity/nursing stuff I got second hand… doesn’t fit. I am not an XL. Apparently.

I’m so god damn bored. I don’t care about this shit. But it is something to think about when I would otherwise like to do mean things to myself because I am so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so bored.

I have even been productive. It’s disgusting.

I want people. I want socialization. I don’t want to reach out and risk rejection. I want to crawl into a closet and never come out. I feel so wrong today.

Whyyyyyyyyyyyyy is my mood so shitty.

We are experiencing growing pains as a family. We are struggling with how to communicate around our current needs and limitations. It’s not just me who is short tempered and sharp. I am probably the sharpest but I’m not sure my temper is the shortest.

The big kids want to be helpful. They want to be responsible for their sister. They want to feel competent. This is tricky because there are pieces they can help with… but those aren’t the times that feel most satisfying to them and I get it. They want to comfort the baby and it feels really bad to them that the baby screams until she gets mommy. That feels bad and I get it. It is also hard that when the baby is distressed and screaming I am not good at patiently saying, “Please move so that I can do what I am doing to help the baby.” Instead I am irritable and I want to just nudge their head the heck out of my way.

We are trying to talk gently about these things when everything is calm, but this is hard. None of us have experience with this kind of thing. When MC was born EC was only two. She didn’t push hard to be helpful in the same way. She was still nursing and wearing diapers. Now she is on the verge of being ten and she wants to be allowed to sling the baby over her shoulder and carry her off for a diaper change.

Can we have a couple of weeks to let the baby get more sturdy first? Newborns are so terrifying in their fragility. By the time she is three or four months old I will probably be comfortable with that. I’m still not going to direct/demand such behavior. You are not a little mama who has to be responsible for the baby. But since you want to so bad… I will let you… soon…

But right now when her hips could dislocate so easily if you just lift too hard… I’m scared to let you. Newborns are terrifyingly vulnerable to me.

EC is struggling with the mix of responsibility, limitations, and privileges she has. She wants more and less. MC is struggling in different ways. They are feeling overwhelmed by not being older/more competent already. They are really upset about the things they can’t do yet. The stuff might be minor.

We need to find ways for MC to feel competence right now. They have to be allowed to try at things. EC needs to have access to a little more time to feel smug and delighted over her privileges.

They are both running headfirst, as fast as possible, into their limitations and that sucks. I have so much sympathy.

MC read me a book today!!!! They read The Gingerbread Man and they only needed help with half a dozen or so words! That was super exciting!!!! EC has been a little bit of a punk with making fun of MCs reading mistakes. I pointed out that at this exact same age EC couldn’t read a board book let alone a long picture book so just shut all the way up. Don’t you dare mock someone who is younger than you for their growing competence not being exactly the same as yours. This is my grumpiest face of all.

MC has actually made waaaaaaaaaaay more academic progress than I expected this year. They are doing great. EC continues to resist making math progress but has otherwise made fantastic leaps and bounds of progress in writing, storyboarding, research and documentation, science, reading, grammar, spelling, javascript, and general logic. She is working on a whole bunch of stuff and I’m impressed by her dedication to every subject other than math. Math is pissing her off. But math is improving now that we bought a whole bunch of manipulatives and I’m making her sit down to work on making math visual instead of just in her head. I’m also forcing her to work with scratch paper to write down the entire process of doing problems because just doing it in her head is not adequate. She got far that way and now she needs to see how far she can get with the proper support of seeing the steps worked out.

I’m actually kind of weirded out by how well she does with doing math in her head. I struggle to keep some of those concepts in my head the way she does it. I have to write stuff out or I can’t manage some of the problems she can just do. I think that giving her a few more ways to visualize and a little practice writing the steps out will be all she needs to leap frog through the areas she has struggled. We’ll see. I’m really looking forward to quitting the charter school so we can go back to block units. Doing everything all at once is so much harder for us.

MC’s shrink is excited we are getting them screened for ADHD because the shrink has seen definite signs even in one on one non-stressful settings and they are happy that MC will get support/recognition for how hard focus is for them.

We all learn best when we can fully immerse ourselves in a single subject for a few weeks or months at a time. We can cheerfully spend 4+ hours a day on something we are trying to learn but we really struggle with covering four or five subjects in a shorter amount of time spent every day. We struggle with getting our attention to shift. We struggle with feeling like we get tired and we don’t want to think anymore after the second or third subject. When we do one subject in a day we can spend a looooooong time enjoying it and we don’t get tired in the same way. The transitions wear us out. It wears out our patience and focus and attention and we just can’t absorb very much if there are more transitions.

I feel so grateful that my children ended up with brains like mine so that I am not failing to provide the kind of change/stimulation that someone else would need.

The kids did like 80% of the work to make a cake today and I bet they will handle all the decorating. We have mixes that are kind of old so I’m thinking this will be a nice trick to play a few times over the next few weeks. MC got to practice splitting egg yolks from whites, which is tricky and gives a sense of satisfaction of mastery as they learn. EC got to feel hyper-competent as they read all the directions and bossed the shit out of the process. And then we will eat it for dessert over the next few days. The kids feel so happy when they are able to provide for the table. They do a lot of other types of food, but making a dessert feels like a reward to cook and then eat.

I’m trying to think of tasks to set them that will allow them to learn something and feel happy about doing it.

Making another damn savory food… isn’t quite as satisfying in this moment. Because MC isn’t as motivated to cook and EC is already so good at making so many things.

They don’t want more responsibility for cleaning. They are both actively resisting a lot of the out-of-the-house social opportunities… they like hanging out with me and Noah more than other people.

I never anticipated this. My children just flat like me more than they like other people. Being with Noah is awesome. Why would they want to go hang out with children who will inevitably get on their nerves?

It’s fascinating. I really didn’t think it would work like this. I thought they would be irritated with me. I thought they would be demanding more social opportunities and classes and maybe school by now just to have more freedom. They feel like they have as much freedom as possible being with me rather than risking being under the auspice of any other adult.

I didn’t think I would be so cool to anyone ever in my life.

It’s interesting how EC is talking about moving. She has pretty much decided that she’s not going to hunt hard for new friends in our area. The people she likes the most are GU (Geographically Undesirable) and she doesn’t get to see them much. The neighborhood friends she has made have all moved away and we’ve lost contact because their parents are not interested in maintaining contact. All the other moms work and don’t have time to facilitate a relationship and that’s totally fair.

EC is looking forward to independent teenage/tween friendships and she has flat stated that it isn’t that good of an idea to hunt hard for people like that when we are getting ready to move because then moving will hurt too much.

She is so wise I can barely stand it.

MC is still holding on to a few local friends who have mothers who will still do play dates. That’s continuing to be good for them.

I’m thinking almost constantly about why I want to move. I’ve written up a few long posts and shoved them in my draft folder and they will never see the light of the internet proper. Pieces of this thought process are disgustingly petty and about running away from problems. I think way the fuck too much about people who probably don’t think about me at all.

Other pieces… I feel like there are layers of petty on top of real stuff and I’m trying to figure out how to handle the real stuff moving forward.

How do I move into having real friendships that are less codependent? How do I teach myself to pick friendships based on factors other than people needing me to do a kind of work for them? How do I learn how to feel like I can be part of a community?

It’s really bullshit that I don’t feel like I belong in any communities here. There are a bunch of communities where 90% of the people involved either enthusiastically welcome me or are 100% neutral because I’m a stranger. There are only a few people in any community that don’t like me much. It’s not really about those people.

Those people might be lenses through which some of my issues are magnified, but those people have no power over me.

How do I teach my brain that before I go meet new communities?

How do I teach myself to not be such an asshole? People don’t need me to fix their problems. They need me to accept and love them. I don’t need to clean someone’s house for them to be worthy of a friend. I don’t need to teach someone how to do something in order to be worthy of friendship.

I don’t have to buy friends, not with money and not with time spent working.

Hanging out with my family so much really does make it easier to understand that people don’t just value me for how much work I can do. There are long stretches where I’m a useless motherfucker and my kids and Noah still want me around even if I’m just sitting in a chair and being kind of a butthead.

It’s really weird.

This is such a healing experience.

I’m trying to figure out how to have this experience be healing for all the deep inherited wounds my kids have. Sometimes when they get upset about something, I feel like I can see the edges of ancestral guilt coming out. Sometimes when I explain why something works the way it does and I see the kids visibly relax I feel like I am doing the only work that can be done to heal my family line.

Even though I feel very guilty about not “having a job” and “doing something useful for society” this feels useful too. Learning what being ok feels like and learning how to talk about it… that feels useful and like I will never be able to help anyone else until I learn this in my bones.

I have never been able to learn this at the speed of life while doing other things. I’ve tried. This family is the most healing experience of my life. In ways big and small I struggle with fully articulating. These people make all the suffering worth while. I am glad I am here so I can feel this good.

Even as my back hurts like a motherfucker. Let’s not discuss my arms. It’s bad.

There are many kinds of pain. Physical pain is really not the worst thing that has happened to me. I’m conscious that other people have had far more physical pain than me and maybe I shouldn’t have so much hubris about my insignificant bone breaks and maulings. I could experience far more physical pain.

But when I felt the ring of fire my internal response was, “Awesome! Now this is real!”

I was so glad to have that pain. It meant my baby was almost earth side and I wanted to meet her more than anything.

I’m not so good at the emotional pain. I have been in a loving family for almost 12 years. Almost 1/3 of my life. I feel so lucky that I get to be here with these people.

This is my dream come true.

And I want to move somewhere with my favorite people and build connections to new communities. Communities that I did not join when I was desperately broken and I felt like I had to earn my place with sex and pain and work. I want to know what it would be like to not walk into parties and be able to count off my lovers.

I want to know what it would be like to interact with communities from the point of view of coming from a family unit instead of being perceived as extremely expendable.

It’s going to be a whole new world for me.

This kid is so damn chill. I have never hung out with a baby who was this mellow before. And I can’t attribute it to the pot because I started using that before MC came along. This kid is… just chill.

I would sign up for a study like this in a hot minute.

I hurt. That’s my dominant physical experience right now. All of me. Particularly my neck and left hip. But everything.

She is nursing like a champ and getting chubby already. It is absolutely ridiculous how good I feel about my kids getting double chins. I’m praying we get to a third chin again. (Was easy with EC. Never happened with MC.)

Swaddling is fucking awesome. She got a 6 hour block of sleep and I slept for a little over 5 hours. That’s as much as I’ve gotten in 2-4 broken chunks over the past few nights. That’s so much sleep at one time that I will have trouble going back to bed. Luckily she’s cluster feeding right now so me being awake is good.

She’s nursed for over an hour, almost an hour and a half now. My boobs hurt less. Good.

It’s interesting navigating how the big kids are searching for control right now. They are struggling with not being allowed to do what they want to YC. She isn’t a doll and you can’t casually sling her around. They aren’t trying to be rough. They just aren’t good at careful yet.

And gosh they want to tell me how to take care of her. I confess my tone of voice has been incredibly shitty when they scoff at me and tell me it would be easy to take care of her if I just followed their orders.

Oh helllllll no.

Have you dropped crotch fruit since I wasn’t looking? No? Then hush your mouth.

Do not fucking tell me how to parent my baby.

But.. outside of that the big kids adore her and are happy to hold her as much as they are permitted. Outside of a boundary stomp per morning (gosh my kids are pushing their luck) we are having great days. I’ve been sharp with them every morning (stop yelling/don’t tell me how to parent/if you keep fighting about these toys we will bleeping donate them) but then the day settles down and we don’t keep fighting. But holy crap am I over screaming matches that start at 6am over who owns which stupid little rubber Shopkin piece. I can solve this argument. It involves a garbage can. You both lose. Argument over.

(I totally didn’t throw their stuff away. But they did stop yelling the argument.)

Ok, sore hands.

I’m definitely in early labor. But this is me. What the fuck does that even mean. Does that mean an eon of suffering? Naw. I have an induction scheduled for the 14th. And no interest in laboring long and hard so I’ll be done delivering on the 14th either with a vaginal birth or a c-section so there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

But today has been shit. Twice early today I got this horrible shooting/stabbing pain in my lower right abdomen. It hurt so fucking bad I started screaming and kicking out uncontrollably. That’s not usual for me with contractions. But it hasn’t happened again. I messaged a friend who is a mom of many who worked in an OB office for years and asked her for advice. She said, “Hrm. I wouldn’t necessarily call this second but if it happens a third time you have to call the advice nurse and you should probably go in.” It didn’t happen a third time. So I sit at home.

I have felt like a fucking psycho hose beast all day. I can’t tell if this is just a feeling inside of me or if I have genuinely been nasty to everyone all day. I’m randomly crying. I hurt everywhere.

Ok, I’m seriously fucking pissed about this. I have this major remission of fibromyalgia pain during the pregnancy. That ended yesterday. My entire body is an explosion of pain and I would like to rip someones fucking head off so that I can piss down their throat because that is the only thing that sounds fun when I hurt this badly.

“Is it all happening again” – Godfather 3

love. sex. family. community. health. history. awareness. california woo. having your place. pain. commitment. relaxation. controlled vs uncontrolled bloodlines. queer vs heteronormative dynamics. 36 years old–at the middle of life?

You are not going to die. Neither am I, motherfucker.

But there will have to be a passage. And those sometimes hurt like a mother fucker. Don’t fear. That shit just makes you clench up and everything hurts more

Do you rise through your own merits or through the recommendation of those with merit?

Know your history.

In medias res.

I do not aspire to be that which is looked at.

I shun beauty.

What am I then if I am not a vain motherfucker?

I want to be known and understood. Which is so much more than to be looked at. To be looked at to be is to be projected upon. I want to change you.

That is what art aims to do. It aims to change that which looks upon it.

Like a pond. Like a bodyguard.

Joints. Connection. Pain.

love

1st cousin.

1st

mary

movement

cognitive dissonance. the misspelling reveals the flaw.

thank you autocorrect. even if I fucking hate you.

home. any. minute.

fingers hurt

Today I went to the hospital for an interview. They wanted to know what I wanted from labor. It was an hour long interview so there were more questions. But I was asked what my goal was for labor. I said “No one dying.” The lady conducting the interview almost fell out of her chair. She enjoyed my irreverence over all.

She asked me if I’d ever had thoughts of hurting myself. I said, “Ok let me start my spiel. I have long-term chronic suicidal ideation but I am not in imminent danger and I have no specific plans to hurt myself.”

She commented that I know the right words to say.

This ain’t my first rodeo.

I’ve been rewatching the Jaws series and The Godfather. I guess this is my week for violent grown up movies. Who are you. Where do you belong? What does it mean to be you?

How much does what your parents want for you matter?

Do your children belong to you or your spouse?

What is belonging?

Does it matter what your name is? What art you want to hang on the wall? Who you hang out with?

What defines who you are?

Who. Are. You.?

How much of who you are rests on your ability to control yourself through stimuli or pain or whatever?

If you can stand still as someone hits you, does that make you tough?

If you define yourself…. what does that mean?

Who. Are. You.

Do you rest upon the shattered dreams of everyone who looks like you or shares your religion or who had grandparents born within 100 miles of your grandparents?

What is safety? What is security?