First: I need to stop using the AmEx entirely. They have enormous foreign transaction fees. Second: Mint is not supported for UK usage in pounds. Ok.
Have to adapt. I can do that.
I hear good things about YNAB. And they are supposedly UK available. I’ll look into that. One more thing to do.
Oh hey. I started this more than 14 hours ago and never hit post. I don’t think I will be writing anymore. Toodles.
But sleep deprivation is a bitch to catch up on. I went back through my activity tracker (I know it is not perfectly accurate for stuff like sleep) but between travel and anxiety and overworking I am down about 8 full nights of sleep over the past month. This is why I am currently struggling with paranoia, negative thoughts about myself, irritability, and frustration. I also hurt really badly.
But I am trying to reverse the flow. The past three nights I’ve gotten nine hours of sleep. Yesterday while walking home from the community center I just about fell down from exhaustion and dizziness. Trying to catch up is showing me just how deep the reservoir of sleep deprivation goes. I need to try to spend all of this school holiday sleeping as much as I possibly can; my health requires it.
A full night of sleep for me is ~7.5 hours. I’m down over 64 hours of sleep over the past month. That’s a lot.
This move is the hardest of my life and I have moved waaaaaay more than average. Folks in the military are usually dumbfounded by how much I have moved because they feel a lack of stability in their lives and I’ve moved many multiples of times more than them. Not so much recently, but over the long run. This is my first international move and I can’t understand people who do this repeatedly. This is so hard.
We moved into a house that was more than twice the size of our old house with no furniture coming with us. We have had to acquire everything from scratch and mostly build it because we can’t really afford to buy nice stuff, we are buying flat pack. Which means I have spent multiple full days just on building furniture. Noah has helped with this way more than he usually does with building furniture and for this I am deeply grateful. Noah has spent at least six, maybe up to eight solid days building furniture if you add up all the hours. I’ve done at least as much maybe more. It’s all getting fuzzy.
We finally have consistent, good wifi thanks to Noah’s continual efforts at handling the bureaucratic mess. It is still a mess with regards to electricity. All of the advice “Just do A, B, C” has failed entirely. I think Noah is handling the stress of people lying and being deceitful far better than I could. (The main electricity company keeps saying they have done what they need to do for us to move on with the process. When the other company we want to work with checks… nope hasn’t happened. It takes eight weeks before we are allowed to complain. We seriously suspect the first company is going to drag their feet for seven weeks and five days.) Noah has been on the phone and filling out paperwork just about daily trying to handle the electricity/internet/bank/credit card situation. Now that we have internet and we found out we literally can’t get a credit card until we’ve been here six months and we have a (JOINT) checking account and three savings accounts (grown ups + kids who are redepositing their stuff from the states) we can chill on figuring out financial stuff for a few months.
Oh, also we had an appointment with a couple of truly lovely accountants and that’s going to be a whole messy process that will take many hours of labor over many weeks. The UK tax year doesn’t run their cycle from January-December, they run April-March so we will be trying to sort out tax stuff for like six months straight. Hopefully after the first year it will get a little more clear? At least our California accountant used to work at the IRS handling international taxes?
Trying to acquire stuff for the house has been endless frustration. Between not having a car, not having reliable internet, and our US credit cards getting constantly denied for fraud… everything is taking two, three, four, five times as long to get done and the hand strain is absolutely unbelievable.
And I keep hearing my fucking mother’s voice in my head saying that you don’t go out and socialize until your house is company ready. Thus long working days and not sleeping.
Last night I made a list on the whiteboard of the chores the kids hadn’t gotten to this week. I told them they need to finish by bed time. They got it done. I supervised and didn’t help. I’m trying to reduce my arm strain.
They did a great job and they are currently playing with Her Sweetness so Noah and I can each have some quiet down time in our separate rooms.
We have a house phone number and an actual physical phone will be delivered in a few days. I have a sim card in the house for a UK phone number for my mobile and I will be setting it up once I can put the UK house phone number down on forms. I will be going through and replacing my US phone number on all of my accounts. I will be shutting down my US phone number in December after 19 years of service.
I am having so many feelings about that.
The plan with the accountants is to start moving our money out of the US. I don’t feel super ethical investing in a country that moved its slavery from the cotton fields to the prison industrial complex and is currently running concentration camps. Where freedom means the freedom to get shot at school. Where freedom means that thousands of people can be homeless so the uberwealthy can hoard a little more. Where freedom means ruining your entire future if you get sick. Where freedom means eternal debt if you want an education.
I know getting out isn’t an option for everyone. I know it is cowardly to run instead of fighting to change the system. I know.
My children are already walking to school and home from school alone sometimes. It’s so safe here. I spoke to a mom who is terrified of her kids being alone and that’s why she pays for them to have cell phones from really young so they have to text her all the time to prove where they are and she tracks them on her phone.
We will have a house phone. I’m giving up full service internet on my phone and downgrading to a pay as you go plan that I don’t want to use much. I will be deleting most apps so I’m not tempted to be idle on my phone out in the world.
My kids will be fine here. I am not worried about their safety. We have an agreement: you ask before you take off and you are given a time to be home. You have a watch (without the ability to receive phone calls on) and if you are late, for every minute you are late you owe me a push up.
That’s as much enforcement as I want. That’s as much control as I want. They are big kids. They are responsible. I trust them. The neighbors aren’t going to call the police if they are out walking to the park. I have anxiety about stuff. I am overly controlling in some ways, but I’m trying hard to back off. They will be ok. And frankly the push ups won’t hurt them.
EC forgot her school computer at home one day this week. Noah asked if we should bring it to her at school. Nope. She can accept the consequences for her behavior like a big girl.
It will be good for her.
I went to a couple of activities with Her Sweetness this week aimed at her peer group; these are the kids she will know in school. These are the kids in our neighborhood. It’s good to start getting to know them. She will make friends over time and I will get to know the mothers.
This move is the hardest of my life. Let me write down just how painful this is so that hopefully I remember and never want to do this again. Some day as an empty nester I might want to move to the downstairs apartment with Noah and rent out the big house, but that’s different.
Solstice is going to be interesting. EC has a bunch of needs still. MC has a bunch of wants. YC (I should shift to this at some point soon here because goodness Youngest Child is more fair than just always referring to her as the sweet one–not to mention that she is sassier by the day) has few needs and can’t speak any wants. I am going to start wrapping presents soon just because we don’t have many good stash spots in the house where unwrapped presents won’t be seen.
Oh, and to put the cherry on top of the moving process, we are all learning how to ride bikes as our mode of transportation. This has resulted in at least one, often three or more major crashes per person. We are all sore and wincing and moving slowly. My knee still hasn’t healed from my crash and every time I get up or down to help YC with something I hiss because it forking hurts.
At least MCs lip has healed and they no longer look like an abused child.
It’s a process…
Hardest fucking move of my life. But the house is basically company ready. I want another couch for the down stairs apartment before guests come. I want a real kitchen table for the main dining room with actual chairs we don’t fall off of on a regular basis. EC still needs a bed frame. Then we are done acquiring stuff.
Mostly because I found a tutorial on Pinterest for making bookshelves out of uniform moving boxes and that’s what I’m doing with the books that arrive. I’m not buying bookshelves any time soon. I want artistic fancy-pants book shelves and I don’t want to pay for them now. So I won’t really get all of the boxes out of the house by the end of November, but the stuff in boxes will be out and in use and the boxes will be semi-permanent (until they give out) furniture.
I am struggling with the fact that I need to give myself approval for how hard this move has been because I won’t get it from anyone else. No one but Noah can see what I’m doing and I’m an asshole about not accepting his approval as much as I should. He will give me approval whether it takes me a month or five years. He isn’t judging me based on what I care about. His priorities are different. (He wishes I would slow the fuck down and rest more.)
I have a ridiculous drive to get this done. This is important to me. I need to see this progress so I can sit in the mostly finished house and dream about the art I want to add. I can’t start painting until after my next birthday, but I can make sketches. I can figure out what kind of mosaic backsplash I’d like to make for the kitchen wall where we keep splattering the shit out of it with food. (Did the previous owners cook?! How in the fuck did they keep the wall so white?!) What would I like to do in the upstairs bathtub bathroom?
Art will come, but not until all of the other pieces are in place and I can dream around them.
We still have a few entirely empty cupboards in the laundry room and main kitchen and the downstairs kitchen is basically empty. But we have the stuff we need finally. Those bits will fill in over time as we figure out what other things we want or need.
Realistically it is going to take me many years to finish this house. But I feel moved in now. The art will come. The guest kitchen will come. It’s ok that it isn’t all instant.
I needed to feel settled. Those bits are extra. And I have my name on a bank account so that I can build my own credit. That’s a big deal. Being dependent is hard enough without also being vulnerable.
And proper locks are on the way for every door in the house.
We were just about over jet lag. Then illness strikes. Her Sweetness has a fever and she is super cranky; I assume she is in pain too. Eldest Child is having intestinal problems. I have full body pain (as someone with chronic pain this is enough pain to make me want to sit very still in a chair and cry–I am medicating for pain with tylenol and ibuprofen alternated), a low grade fever, and I am producing a river of snot with the associated coughing, sneezing, and sore throat. If you have followed me for long you know it has to get BAD before I medicate with these drugs because I am so afraid of my tolerance level going up.
I don’t think we will see much of Bangkok and I am very disappointed.
The food has tasted great. The garbage is omnipresent and overwhelming. The traffic patterns are reminding me of Kuala Lumpur only they are very different? It’s closer to KL than Japanese traffic patterns. The gridlock is massive. I can understand why the advice around driving here is don’t.
We are right next to RCA (Royal City Avenue) which is the designated clubbing/entertainment/tourist area. It’s a short walk down a relatively safe stretch of sidewalk. Relatively safe because the motorcycle taxi service has a stand in front of our building so they have to go back and forth on that stretch of sidewalk. If you pay attention and get out of their way it’s ok. And all the motorcycle drivers love Her Sweetness. They want to cuddle and hang out with her.
Her Sweetness is my most reserved child. I used to think Middle Child was incredibly reserved because I compared them to Eldest Child. Holy sauce buckets was I underestimating the amount of reserve a child of my blood can display. When people try to touch HS she cries. She wants her people and that’s it.
I am going to have to stagger downstairs and do laundry today because I am about out of hankies. Dude. I travel with more than a dozen hankies. Hankies are life. (We also have a full laundry basket. But the hankies will be the motivation.)
I was a serious bitch yesterday and I feel kind of embarrassed. I am sick and the kids were pushing me for attention and to do work for them. I blew up about how unfair it is that when they are sick I let them lie still and do nothing until they feel like doing things and I am not allowed any rest. I sort of feel like I “should” have found a nicer way to express this. But I tried a variety of “I’m not feeling well” and “I can’t do that” before I started getting harsh. There is this complicated balancing act where I try to be as nice as I can be to them until they just refuse to recognize that I have boundaries too and then I’m really not so nice. Because fuck that. I get to have rest when I am fucking sick and you can go in your room and play and stop bothering me. No I don’t have to pay attention to you today. You can bloody well cope with me taking care of myself today.
It’s weird. I feel guilty and proud of myself? I need to set these boundaries. I set them as softly as I could. I escalated ,when they completely refused to allow me boundaries, to being more forceful in my language. I did use the word fuck a lot. “I am fucking sick and I need to fucking rest. You don’t fucking need me to play with you. You can fucking play by yourself.” That was after a couple of hours of using soft language and having MC continue to head butt me and be rude and demanding and aggressive about wanting to play.
MC has asked me to use the word fuck less and I’ve been doing pretty well so this flood of fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck was definitely a sign of degrading ability to communicate. But I feel like my head is in a vice and if you don’t leave me alone and stop talking to me I am going to literally melt down and start screaming which would really suck in this tiny apartment. I have limits. I don’t talk to you like this even once a year. But I am sick and I need to be left alone to take care of me.
My kids genuinely think I am a river of love and support and work and they can’t understand when I can’t do that. It’s a weird dynamic. I feel both good and bad about it. I am not sure I am presenting them with a healthy, balanced view of what parents should be like. My mother under-responded and neglected me. So I half kill myself doing the martyr schtick so they never know a minute of boredom or want. I am hurting myself so they never have to be bored. That’s not healthy either.
I really can’t wait to have my own bedroom and for them to go to school. We need to start separating. I feel like a mother bird who is exerting more and more pressure to get the baby birds to get the fork out of the nest. I need some space, kiddos. I love you. I need some space for me too. I matter too. I am not the most important person in our family but I am not the least important person either. We need balance. If we sacrifice my health on the altar of “Happy Family” then this family is going to fall apart soon. I have to be healthy enough to carry my side of things.
I suspect this is related to just how hard I pushed my body over the past few months culminating in the last week. I have done a lot of work. We leave Bangkok on the 9th and we arrive on the 10th because it is another 30 hour travel day with getting to and from airports. Today is the 5th. So close yet so far.
The former owner of the house and Jenny’s Super Spiffy Husband (JSSH) both sent us long explanations of how to set up utilities and services. We are so incredibly lucky that we are following Jenny. She has helped in ways big and small that blow my mind. I feel like we are sliding into Scotland on greased rails. This could have been a nightmare. Instead it is a series of steps. Yes, we feel tension and stress as we go through the steps because lots of things are out of our control… but things are actually going as fast as they possibly could. We made the decision to move to Scotland, got absolutely everything done, and now we are returning in less than three months. That is miraculous in terms of government bureaucracy. Greased. Forkin. Rails.
And once we arrive… we have no deadlines to hurry up and get anything done. There are no foreseeable sprints in my future. We don’t need to hurry up and get anything done. We need to get things done as quickly as we get them done. I mean, utilities getting set up might be the most “Uhhh do that now” step. But furniture and cookware and all that stuff can trickle in. We will probably go shopping on the 11th to get some things, but not a lot. Realistically we will go to the store every day for a while and we will get what we get. Sometime in the first week we will probably hire a van and clean out the charity shop of anything we can use and do a massive grocery shop but it’s not a big rush. If it happens on our second day or our fourth day or the seventh day… whatever. We are right between three stores that are all dandy for supplying us with food we can eat without stress. I’m just not worried. It’s a lovely feeling. I will slowly acquire the things we need to keep house. Drips and drabs. It will be easier to do most of this shopping after the shipment of our belongings arrive so I have the big double stroller.
I got a double bike trailer that can be used as a stroller so that I can pull the baby AND groceries. This is my compromise on not having a car. I am already aware of how awesome Tesco’s delivery service is (THANK YOU JSSH!) but I really like going to the store. And I want to experiment between Tesco and Aldi and Asda. I will get a little notebook for comparing prices. We are going to be trying to be that tight with our budget.
I’m not sure if I told y’all this. Noah’s current obscene California salary is going to last till January. Then he’s going to work on books, teaching, and maybe a wee bit of contracting on the side. We have enough money in petty cash for 2-3 years of run time if we are very conservative and we hope we can figure out him working for himself. This is part of why we decided Taipei is not wise at the moment. If we are trying to live on £40,000/year all of a sudden spending $6000 on a trip to Taipei seems… uhhh not in the budget.
I have lived on much less. While snowballing our debt we lived on a similar amount of money at the beginning of our marriage. We will see!
On the money front: I was watching a session of Scottish Parliament yesterday and there was a lot of hand wringing over how they can’t get enough people to work with mental health care for children. The waiting lists are long and they are incredibly stressed out about it. Do you know what I have a unique background on? Helping kids with mental health problems. Sure, I’ll have to hit up the local university for some specific training and degree hoop jumping but that doesn’t scare me. Maybe when Her Sweetness starts nursery in a year and a half we will have four people in school in the house. That would be kind of cool.
I would like to have a job. I would like to have a job specifically because I dream of a conservatory added to the house and if I don’t figure out how to earn the money for it myself Noah will feel like he needs to get a remote job from California for ridiculous money and then he will work 60 hours a week and I will be very sad.
I don’t need to earn the money in the first couple of years. In my head I wouldn’t be ready to start that kind of project for at least 3-5 years. That gives me time to go to school and get started in the field. I will be 100% hiring out the work and the former owner gave me the name of the person who could probably build it for me because he did all the other remodeling in the house.
This is not abandoning the idea of IDB (Incest Database) but it is helping to keep me busy until then and helps me gain qualifications that will help with the research and it helps pay for retirement stuff so Noah doesn’t have to supply 100% of our retirement safety on his own. I still think I couldn’t really get going on IDB for almost 20 years. Not the way I want to. 20 years is a long time and I could do a lot of valuable work between now and then.
I want to be part of the community. This would be a really great way for me to meet people and find a place for myself.
I don’t have a plan yet. I am not rushing. I am waiting to see how things shake out. I am coming up with ideas, potentials, hopes, and dreams.
And nothing is in a big rush. No sprints. Settle in slowly. Exercise. Establish house. Help the kids adjust to school. Wait for HS to be old enough for nursery. Enjoy the next year and a half of extra alone time with my precious last baby. I feel lucky and blessed.
I won’t be doing much today. Noah has a speakers dinner tonight. We have instant noodles in the apartment that will probably be most of our food while he is doing his conference. I should go down to the 7-11 (holy shit these things are ubiquitous internationally) and get some yogurt and juice and maybe other snacky foods. Maybe I’ll do that run while I’m dealing with laundry.
I feel so bad. I did more yesterday than I probably should have. Today I can’t. As I plan to go to the laundromat and do grocery shopping. I am such a twit.
These things have to get done. It’s not optional. Being the mom is not always fun. But it is always worth it. I did not have children because I wanted convenience. I am so very loved. It’s worth it.
Even if sometimes I have to say fuck fuck fuck fuck to be allowed to rest.
I think it is kind of useful that EC is reading these Warriors books because the mama cats take no shit and that is causing her to change how she views me. It’s hilarious.
I have been dizzy on and off for days. My body is so unhappy. Her Sweetness is waking up every two hours to nurse and I don’t feel like it is fair to complain given how sick she is.
Miss Jenny picked up our keys. The solicitor has been paid off. We have a home to go back to. A home that pretty closely matches drawings I’ve been making about my dream home for years. I am so lucky.
We are going to be highlanders! We start this next phase of our lives on the day I turn 38. Seems like a good time for a rebirth.
First: it was an a small adventure figuring out how to dispose of the expired car seat I was borrowing. Portland does not make it easy. They wanted us to drive over half an hour to a transfer station to pay like $28 to throw it in the garbage because they don’t recycle them. Instead we found a dumpster behind a hotel.
Then when we got to the airport I learned that Her Sweetness and I were not able to have our boarding passes printed for the whole trip. We got boarding passes to Hong Kong and then we got to cross our fingers everything would work out from there. That’s an anxiety producing situation for me. Holy cheese toast. But I tried to stay cool and calm and in the end it just meant an extra 15 minutes of processing in the airport. No big deal. China just has slightly different rules about traveling with a lap infant.
American Airlines website said they would only give us 1 meal on the flight. Instead they served 3 and we got to throw away a lot of food. That could be worse. But the AA flight was… not amazing. It felt budget and unfriendly and not very helpful. I have dreams about the kindness of Philippine Airlines. Such a lovely airline. I mean: AA expects you to go back and self serve on snacks and drinks instead of them coming by and offering them to you. But they also don’t want you out of your seats unless you MUST. So that’s not a fun situation for a 14 hour flight.
No more 14 hour flights in our future!
I liked the Hong Kong airport. The shops were top notch and folks were very patient and low key. That’s a relief after the US. It felt a little bit like the DMV only nicer? Like, people were just doing the thing and it’ll get done and you can wait… it’ll be fine…
The Bangkok airport was fine. Getting the taxi was fine. Then we got to our apartment. I looked 9,837 at the confirmation information I had and… no information about how I was to get into the apartment. So I started calling the host and sending her messages. This continued for an hour in the blistering heat. I had been awake for most of the previous 48 hours (If I got 6 hours of sleep added up in cat naps I’d be surprised) and I was not really feeling patient.
Eventually she woke up and asked why we didn’t call the guy who was waiting in the apartment. THE GUY YOU NEVER TOLD ME ABOUT AND YOU NEVER GAVE ME HIS NUMBER? THAT GUY?!?!?!
Then it turns out that the guy DIDN’T GIVE US A FUCKING FRONT DOOR KEY, JUST THE ELEVATOR PASS.
So that sucked. Noah was dispatched a few times to acquire food since we couldn’t all go. We ate. We rested. We bitched.
Eventually the lady had someone bring us a key and she gave me phone numbers for local people who can help with problems. I told her, “May I suggest that in the future you send an email 24 hours before check in with the name and phone number of the person a guest is supposed to meet?” She thought that was a good idea. Oy.
The apartment came stocked with 1/4 of a roll of toilet paper. Good thing there is a convenience store down stairs. But we are back in the land of bidets so my hemorrhoids are feeling better than they have in months.
Apparently my time in Kuala Lumpur was not real indicative of Malaysia in general because I didn’t see almost any garbage. Here in Bangkok I feel like garbage is raining down on us and flooding the pathways. So. Much. Trash.
Folks in Fukuoka would have a heart attack. Then get up from their hospital bed to start cleaning.
God damn different Asian countries are different. I am such an ignorant fucker. I didn’t realize it would be quite this dramatic.
When you drive into the city from the airport there are large signs telling you that speaking ill of the king will result in jail time. Also: being disrespectful of the Buddha or getting a tattoo of his image will result in jail time. They don’t fuck around.
Fair enough.
I come from a crazy ass country where every man, woman, and child in Texas owns 6+ guns and that’s not including the rest of the fucked up states. We never get to judge another country negatively for having…. views.
The food. *Fall over drooling* the fooooooooooooooooooooooooood. We are a 5 minute walk from a night market that serves absolutely amazing food. I could live happily forever on the variety of offerings they have. Middle Child and I had different types of tasty noodles in soup. Noah and Eldest Child had rice dishes from a different stall. Her Sweetness ate off of everyone’s plate until she realized how spicy Noah’s food was. Ha. We had fun drinks. They weren’t as sugary as we are used to from home but they were intensely fatty in a way the US doesn’t favor and frankly it tasted way better. MC had a “unicorn” which was sugar, condensed milk, two kinds of coloring, and flavors of I don’t know exactly what sort. Then there were a bunch of candies shoved into the top with sprinkles. I had a more plain caramel drink. It wasn’t a lot of caramel. But it was super good? Noah and EC had Thai iced teas with boba. Mmmmm.
Our lunch at a perfectly decent restaurant was around 900 baht. Our fabulous, wonderful, over the top good dinner at the night market was about 350 baht. Then this morning our breakfast at the grocery store cost around 600 baht just for the food (we got other staples and paid more like 1400 baht overall). 1 baht = .033 US So the lunch was around $30, the dinner was around $11 and breakfast + staples was around $45.
The night market is just so gosh darn cheap.
The traffic pattern is a bit intimidating to us: it is reminiscent of Kuala Lumpur but slightly less terrifying? Fewer motorcycles running up on sidewalks to go around cars. Here the motorcycles mostly only go up on the sidewalk if they are parking or dropping off passengers?
I am finding it fascinating that Her Sweetness is Not. Fucking. Interested. in being popular with all the local folks who would love to pick her up and chatter at her about how cute she is. She is getting a very effective “Fuck off” face. Good for her.
Sleep. Oy sleep. It’s all over the place. None of us are sleeping well. The AC helps, but it is still uncomfortable and jet lag is a bitch. Resetting a babies sleep pattern is not the same as an adult just “toughing it out”. You can’t do that to her. She melts down. She starts wandering back and forth screaming about all the things she wants but she doesn’t really want because the second she has it she is screaming about something else she wants. Sleep is the only remedy. She was super upset when Noah decided to stay downstairs and work in the common area so we don’t all have to be quiet. She wants her Bigs with her all. the. time.
Once we got through the fuss, I quite like this apartment. It is small but well laid out. The couch is awesome (it is pretty rad that I wanted to buy this couch from Ikea for our new house, I made everyone go on a pilgrimage to Ikea to sit on it in Portland. Now that we have used it for a few days everyone is fully on board with this being an awesome couch for us. This one.) and we are glad to have it here. The bed is pretty comfy. I am not sure when I became such an intense devotee of firm mattresses, but I am. Firm is great.
I am tapping my fingers waiting until Noah is done with work for the day. There are 5 or 6 Thai massage places within a 10 minute walk. Hell yeah. They all cost 300 baht or less. So… less than $10/hour. Can I have like 11 hours straight?
I had my last dose of pot on the plane. My intention (If I put this in writing, maybe I will stick with it) is to not buy alcohol at all until I genuinely feel like I have a small surplus of money in the food budget and that could not happen until October or November. I’m almost out of Ativan and I don’t intend to get more.
I’m about to be cold turkey on all of my drug dependencies.
Did I mention I plan to run a lot in Scotland? Like, when I am having feelings and I want to reach for a chemical crutch… go run instead.
I am going to learn how to be a healthy role model if it fucking kills me. I have made a tremendous amount of progress but I am not where I am going to get. Tea is going to be my big vice and I need to reduce how much sugar I put in it. (Jenny’s eyes got So Big when she watched me sugar my tea… yeah… I use a lot.) I should probably buy cubes and I get one per cup.
I am not going to buy soda again to have in the house until I also buy whiskey because I like drinking them together. Or maybe I will learn to drink my whiskey neat. We’ll see. One way or another I don’t plan to have the money to buy whiskey often enough to be a big influence on my life. Luckily I live with someone who thinks that alcohol should be served in roughly 1/2 a shot glass portions.
Yesterday was our anniversary. 13 years of marriage. I am glad we have had these adventures together. I am even more glad we are about to settle down for the foreseeable future. I want to be chilly. I want to exercise. I want to stop fucking packing.
Had a chat with EC about how much it costs to maintain cats. She wants to have two. She started panicking when she heard how much Puff used to cost me. And she wants two. We negotiated that she can do 5 hours a week of babysitting to pay for her cats. Seems like a good trade to me. We are starting with mothers helper work (she is NOT responsible for MC) and we will go from there.
It is neat hearing her strategize how she wants to do her room. She is highly cognizant of how expensive her plans are (she wants a custom built loft bed that looks like a treehouse) and she is trying to figure out which parts she can do, which parts she wants to ask me to help with, and which parts she will need to have the £ to pay someone else to help her. I feel so proud of her. Her planning skills are still nascent but she’s going to be fucking bad ass as an adult. She thinks things through. I mean, she’s still impulsive as fuck because she has ADHD like whoa but she can also plan. It’s amazing.
MC is more focused on the school part of moving. Setting up a room is not really on the radar yet. School supplies, uniforms, how to make friends, how to write in cursive… kiddo really can’t move past those details and that’s totally ok.
Her Sweetness is learning words at a blistering rate. She is going to be closer th ECs curve with talking than MCs. Doesn’t matter, they are all fine and normal and doing what they ought to be doing. But holy cheese she says a lot. People keep asking me if she is 3 or 4 based on her size and talking. Nope. 18 months. And she’s my smallest baby. Cue the bug eyes.
Folks have asked me if I am pregnant more than once. I laugh it off and tell them I am just fat. If I got upset I think the interaction would be tense but instead we all have a good laugh and move on about our day without strife. I am trying so hard not to let other peoples judgments of me impact how I view myself.
I am pretty fat at this point. I’m riding the 200 lb line and on my frame… that’s not small. The lightweight pants I have that zip off into shorts are so tight they are really uncomfortable. No bueno. My dresses barely fit. I am not going to fit into my flannel lined jeans unless I lose some weight.
It’ll be ok. My body does this. I bounce between the 150’s and the low 200’s. I have done this over and over and over since I was 16. This is my range. It is all normal for me.
I hope I can go to bed early tonight and I hope I actually sleep through. I sure could use it.
We go home in six days.
Our house is paid for and legally ours. Miss Jenny will be picking the keys up this week for us. I am elated. I feel really glad that she gets to be the first one to take possession of our house for us. I feel so welcomed. I feel so wanted. She is being super awesome about telling us to go ahead and start ordering things to her house and we will get it over to my place lickity split once we are there. She wants us to feel comfortable and happy.
I know there will be days we struggle and feel home sick because that is part of the journey of change. But I want this change with my whole being. My entire family wants to be there for a wide variety of reasons. I have great faith we will figure this out.
We figure a lot of things out. We are pretty cool like that.
142 days until we will come back and do the beginnings of setting up house and paperwork and all that fuss.
The road trip was 167 days and we were so done with that. To the best of my knowledge we will only be separated from Noah for a 3 week stretch and a 4 day stretch. So 25 days alone with the kids in that 142 days. That’s not so bad.
Looks like the former owners are not up for the fuss of renting temporarily from us. They have a lot going on and that makes a lot of sense. They want 8-10 months in one rental without more issues. I totally understand.
That means that we will try to have our stuff shipped directly to the UK from California because we will take possession of the keys (our solicitor will at least) and when we have to come to the UK to handle paperwork in October we will spend a month starting to set up house. I won’t cry about this. (Really 3.5 weeks.)
207 days until we get to move into our house permanently and we won’t be traveling for quite some time.
We will get to go see Pam and her family in Taiwan for a month at the end of traveling there.
So many things keep changing. I feel like keeping track of the plan is hard. That’s because the plan keeps changing.
Luckily, when we go to Taiwan we will only need to bring the bare minimum of stuff we need for a month in warm weather. Golly that sounds so restful and light.
The plan has changed a lot as we have had to look at the realities of dealing with laws and visas and processes we don’t control. I’m a bit sad that we aren’t going to be traveling for the 18-24ish months I had hoped for.
I AM NOT THE TINIEST BIT SAD MY CHILDREN WILL BE ENTERING SCHOOL A LITTLE EARLIER THAN PLANNED.
I mean, things have gone ok for the past couple of weeks. And we have set up a summer full of Outschool classes that will mean I don’t feel like I need to do almost anything for their academics for a solid two months. I won’t be on vacation but I will have a reduced load. Ahhhhhh.
They have a bunch of classes set up in Minecraft where they will be doing a variety of learning activities through the game (it’s actually incredibly well done, we have tried such classes before and they learn a lot) as well as classes on healthy boundaries in relationships, being savvy consumers and ad aware, how to socialize with new people (kiddo said he really wanted this class–ok), and cyber safety. The kids will keep up with their Duolingo too because they like it and that’s on the list of chores they earn money for and they really like that part.
Middle Child never has more than one class scheduled in a day and Eldest Child only has two classes scheduled on a day for a couple of the weeks. I told them that I want them writing notes for the classes as their academic writing for the summer. What do you plan to do, then after the class write up how it went, what you changed, and what you think you might like to change in the future. Then get up and try again with the next day.
Plan, do, reflect.
And they have unlimited time on their kindles so they will hopefully go through a lot of books. I bet I could do some sort of reading challenge to encourage them to each be reading more. (EC doesn’t really need the push, but MC might benefit. He’s a fairly standard little boy–he’d much rather be doing than reading.)
MC will be receiving a pedometer watch when we get to Portland. It’s already arrived.
I think our summer challenges will be: whoever has the highest step count for the week gets to pick a family movie over the weekend. And for reading…. maybe for every 10 books you read I will add… £20 to your start of room budget? (I was going to give each kid £500 to start with for furnishing their rooms.)
We’ll talk about it at lunch.
Noah and I sat down and transferred a bunch of money from the house sale. We now have a whole bunch more money in investments and a lot less in checking accounts.
Holy. Fucking. Shit.
I know I have never gone back and done the end of year report for 2018. I have the screen shots, I just didn’t write anything up. Whine.
I am feeling intense mental block around doing this. Even though our total wealth is going up like almost no one else for my generation I *still* feel intense overwhelming shame about how much money we spend. I feel fucking awful. I feel like what I am doing is grotesque.
I am not really missing my budget targets by that much? I am. Let’s be honest, here. But… I miss my budget targets in large part because I under budget on purpose and know we will make more money. Then when I go over… I’m still under what we make and we have invested really fucking well. Our net worth is a hair under $1.5 million.
That makes me want to choke.
When we buy a house in Scotland I may not pay it all in cash. I may get a mortgage because having a mortgage will cause me to hurry the fuck up and pay double and triple payments because I want to get rid of it in a way that I won’t save. Like, I will economize to get rid of the debt in a way I won’t if I just grab it out of investments.
I know the stupid games I play with myself.
Because I don’t want a mortgage. But I also want to leave those investments the fuck alone because those are for the future.
I don’t know how I will handle it for sure. Not yet.
But Noah would really like to hit $3 million so he can just stop working forever.
Will we make that target? Right now I feel like it is hubris to be too sure. But we went from ~$350,000 in investments and ~$350,000 in debt when we got married 13 years ago to almost $1.5 million and no debt.
Noah is 42. I’d really like him to be able to retire by 50. Because I am selfish in the extreme and I want his company. Because if he weren’t working for money he would teach people shit for free because people can’t really afford his time and he loves to teach. I would love to be able to give him that.
Why do I feel so god damn embarrassed about being a little bit over budget when we are having these kinds of results?
Ok. The minute I get to Scotland where I will no longer feel as bad about baby girl screaming I am night weaning. I. Cannot. Do. This. 10, 11, 12, 1, 3:30, 4:30 and 5:30 wake ups to nurse are not. fucking. ok. Hell, I turned her down the last two times. If my down stairs neighbor objects I don’t fucking care. I barely get back to sleep and she is waking me up screaming in my face or kicking me in my face.
I am so fucking enraged.
Why don’t you act niiiiiiiiiicer to everyone. BECAUSE FUCK YOU. THAT’S FUCKING WHY.
I am up to over 3 years of my life lost to this bullshit. My pain levels are back up to a 6/7. I hurt. I am exhausted.
But be more giving!
Be kinder!
Be more gentle!
No. I have nothing to give. Today I am going to sit still until I go do everyone’s fucking laundry then I will sit still again; I ain’t taking care of any other shit. The big kids can get away from me.
I can’t deal. I can’t be patient. I feel like dog shit.
And I think I am getting sick based on the volume of crap coming out of my nose.
I have already started working on packing. The airline we are flying to leave here has much tighter restrictions than the one we used coming here. We can’t check as many bags. We can’t have as many carry ons. So I am already working hard to pack and figure out what to get rid of. Luckily all three of my children have grown so maybe their bags will get lighter and I can shove a bunch of stuff into their bags. It just occurred to me that the pants that EC has outgrown might fit MC and I should have him try after I do the laundry. That would be hecka smart. He’s outgrown so much in the past few months. He looks much thinner than he did when we arrived in Japan. He was deliciously pudgy in Hawaii and now he’s stretched again.
Growing like consciously planted invasives.
We each get one checked bag and one carry on. The “personal item” can’t be bigger than a purse. Fuck. We arrived here with 6 checked bags and 8 carry ons. I will probably pay to check one extra bag. I don’t want to but I might need to. Noah will be carrying more crap to Minneapolis and then Scotland than is strictly necessary for him to have and I don’t care. He is carrying the maximum weight limit for his bags, not what he needs. I get to carry the absolute maximum when I travel by myself with three kids. Nothing is fair. Nothing is easy. He will cope just bloody fine.
I will be moving very very slowly and using a lot of trollies.
I get to have three 50.5 lb bags that we check, four 22 lb bags that I *think* all need to be carried on, and the stroller. I suspect we will all be wearing extra layers of clothing that we don’t really need to wear and we will take them off and put them in a grocery bag on the damn plane. Ha. Tell me I can’t have an extra carry on, will you? I’ll get around that nonsense.
I am already packing all the grown up clothes we won’t wear in the next week. I will just do laundry slightly more often, that’s not a problem. I just about flipped out in Hawaii trying to pack because getting it all done in the last few days when we wanted to be “having fun” sucked. I can’t do that again.
I’m hoping ECs knee heals fully so we can explore in the last few days we are here. That means everything else needs to be ready to go.
The biggest suitcase currently weighs 36 lbs with the high chair inside it and most of the big stuff I would want to get packed in there. That’s promising. I will find more clothes to shove in the nooks and crannies. The kids are getting rid of clothes/books that already total like 8 lbs so far; more will have to be culled. Several of the baby toys are ready to go but they need to be washed first. I have used up many bottles of bathroom stuff so the volume is greatly reduced. I am ditching all of the medications that will expire in the next three months because I will need to replace it soon anyway. I am considering combining the very different looking kinds of vitamins into one bottle so I have less to carry.
I will get us there.
Frankly, this will be easier anyway. I have been trying to reduce weight and volume. This is an excellent spur to truly get that shit done.
I may decide that it is better to ship gifts to the US from Japan instead of sending them in Noah’s bag for him to ship from Minneapolis. That may be important. This is why I am starting to pack nine days in advance this time.
Now it is eight days in advance. I am going to do laundry today and I am going to put all of our extra cooking stuff in bags. We aren’t using all of it here. We will be more likely to use it in Scotland. I think the kitchen alone in Inverness is bigger than our entire apartment here. Then there is a living room bigger than the second apartment here. Then there are multiple bedrooms.
Space sounds so nice right now.
And the house in Portland! It will feel FUCKING PALATIAL! (It’s a fairly small house. It’s about comparison.) The first thing I will need to buy there is a baby gate so that baby girl does not fall down the stairs into the basement. According to truly the house is 892 sq ft. So it is almost as big as the house in Fremont minus the third bedroom and expanded bathroom. Awesome. It’s really funny that we started this journey partially because the house wasn’t going to be big enough for the long run. (None of these temporary lodgings are for the long run. But my kids all want to have their own bedrooms by the time they hit high school. Ok.)
The refrigerator in Bangkok will be three times the size of this one. There are many more kitchen cabinets. The counter space still isn’t extravagant, but at least they have a rice cooker (up on a shelf so it doesn’t dominate the counter), a convection oven, and at least twice the prep space as we have here. I will make it work. We have a separate living room there. The kid room is much smaller and they will just have to deal. We will be in Bangkok for three months. The entire booking will only cost $3,138.
Portland for 2.5 months is $6,731. Inverness for two months is $5,850. Fukuoka for three weeks: $2,820. Thank goodness for Bangkok bringing the average down. And Japan is by far the smallest, most difficult to live in space. I suspect folks will be more friendly to us every where else too.
Not that everyone in Japan has been unfriendly–that’s not true at all. But this is not a multiple cultures promoting place. I miss seeing a sea of different kinds of faces. Kuala Lumpur was incredible for that. But their government is persecuting LGBTQ+ folk. Can’t go back.
I want to go to South or Central America. Asia has turned out to be way better than I imagined; pero yo quiero hablar español.
Pienso en español. No todo, claro, pero mucho.
Noah really is heading towards New Zealand in his heart. Turns out he has cousins there (through the queer/trans branch!!) and getting work visas would be a cinch. He has already been approached by a tech company that would be happy to sponsor him while he keeps his current job for US dollars so he can start the immigration process. Their goal would be for him to ultimately found some sort of company there.
He’s thinking a code school. I can’t think of a better thing for him to do with his personal goal of helping to “build the railroad”. He wants to help people learn. He wants to help people get into the ability to work with computers. Opening a code school in semi-rural New Zealand sounds pretty fucking rad towards that goal.
But maybe it would work in South America too? Let’s go find out.
If we move to New Zealand I want to learn Maori. There is an interesting cross cultural psychology program at one of the universities that requires knowing Maori. Hmmmm.
But first… I need to fucking sleep. *glare at baby who is once again nursing*
fuck my life.
Everyone is expressing worry about the future. Each member of my family is expressing different kinds of fear and and anxiety. Where will we end up? What kind of job will Noah get? How will our lives be different?
I think this is why my anxiety is going down. Do you know what I have complete and utter faith in? My ability to adapt to a new environment. I’m good at that. I can do that. No problem.
Will we live on less money? Almost certainly. Will that be a problem? Well we will have moments of feeling irritated, but mostly it will be fine.
Noah is really worried. I’m just not in a way that might be stupidity but I don’t think so. I will be with the people who make me the happiest in the whole world. We will figure it out.
I won’t be able to be profligate with money anymore. That will be ok. This is a new set of habits in my life. I have done it because I can and it really doesn’t matter. When it mattered I didn’t run up debt.
We are halfway to Noah’s cushy retirement goal. The US does look like it’s about to melt down, but if it doesn’t that means we are probably 10 years away from where we want to be financially if we don’t add any more money. We are capitalist pigs. Our money will grow. And if we only have as much money as the top 60% of people in the world…. uhhh we will cope. Maybe I’ll have to get a job to fill in the gaps. *faint* Oh no…. qué horror!
Maybe the big kids will have to babysit to earn money for their extras. We won’t die.
Apparently the way my brain decided to handle “I am sick of fucking nightmares” is “I am not going to let you get into REM sleep because I am going to wake up every half hour.” It was a rough night for me.
Yesterday was mixed. It was mostly good with some frustration in the middle around fucking screen time. I hate computers. (Yes, I recognize the irony that I am typing on one and typing is basically my inside voice.) Yesterday Middle Child and I got up early and got on a bus to go downtown to rent a car. On the bus we worked on homework and snuggled and it was fun. It was frustrating on the way back because Google Fi has decided that I get phone service everywhere…. and data when I am on a wifi network and that’s it. Noah’s phone has data all over the island. Urgh. So I had to call Noah and have him talk me through getting on the freeway. Luckily he is a patient man.
Middle Child and I stopped on the way home and had a snack. Eating together on dates is like a thing.
I dropped him off, picked up the baby and the laundry and headed to the laundromat for two hours. Woo. It took so long because only one washer was available while I was there. That’s ok.
When I got back… it got frustrating. With the recent introduction of Parental Controls… a lot of websites aren’t working anymore. Netflix isn’t working because it is tracked in so many ways that Parental Controls blocks it. (I am sorta unhappy about Google and Facebook tracking my Netflix usage anyway now that I know it is happening. Fuck Google. Fuck Facebook. Evil motherfuckers.) I started getting loud and Noah told me this wasn’t worth yelling about. He was right.
I decided it was better to make the kids go outside for a while. Noah and I looked at the controls again, decided that because the kids get 4 hours and that’s long enough to whine about not getting everything I will let them have 1 hour a day on weekdays (it will mostly be used for school time) and 2 hours on weekends, which will let them play a game or two but not long enough they will demand movies.
Because I am god damn sick of fighting over their computers.
I waited until I chilled out. Then I went outside and talked to each kid separately about why they lost unfettered access. At the end of these conversations they both hung their heads and said they agreed with the restriction because they have not been polite at all about their computers. (They were supposed to set their own timers and limit their screen time. Never happened. They were supposed to do school stuff…. that was mixed.) They both agree that they have not been responsible and I need to take that responsibility away from them. They also understand that me standing over them to monitor them while they are on adult accounts isn’t fair either. So here we are.
I mixed in talking about things I was frustrated about in other areas (each kid got very different feedback because they are frustrating in such different ways) and how I am off my medication and I will be for the foreseeable future and let’s talk about how that is going to impact my body and my mood. Phrased that way they both said, “I’d rather be limited and deal with that frustration myself than keep making you track my screen time. That will go poorly.” Yup. It will.
After that Noah was done with work for the day and we drove up to explore the western edge of the end of the highway on Oahu. We played there for about an hour then drove down to Pokai Bay so Noah and the three kids could play in the water while I talked on the phone to one of my friends. (No data= no video chat. Dangit.)
I don’t have consent to talk about her in detail so I won’t. I will say that we have been friends since the 7th grade. When I talk about how Noah’s friends are rich and mine are poor…. she’s on my mind. She is someone who I think about a lot. I don’t write about her for lots of reasons around her privacy and people being judgmental pieces of shit. But it’s really nice talking to her. She asked why I don’t call more often. I said, “well… I do this thing where I find people who are really crazy like me and I try to enmesh with them and then I get really anxious about bothering my less crazy friends and I withdraw.” She said, “Well I’m a little bit crazy so you should call a little bit more often.” Then she laughed. It was nice. She has a tremendous amount of experience with kids and I learn a lot from her. She’s one of the most giving people I’ve ever known. Her kid has had some interesting life experiences and she has told me she was really glad she’s always known me because she learned about a lot of things from me and when it came up with her kid she felt calm and collected about going with the flow.
I am grateful for her perspective and time. I will try to call more often.
I need to schedule a call with my other buddy in Salt Lake. He completes the trio of my middle school friends I’m still in touch with. His mother in law hates me and he finds that delightful. Ha.
And I get to see Jenny soon. I am trying as hard as I can to put my intensity in a box because I can’t explode all over Jenny and her family. They are all very reserved people. It is overwhelmingly important to me that I create a healthy connection with her kids and they are sensitive souls. I have to meet them where they are. I am the adult. That feels like a lot of pressure. It’s self imposed! Mostly? I want this meeting with my namesake to go better than the first one. I feel pathetic about it, but I want her to like me. I was too assertive the first time and she was like “Fuck you stranger lady” and that was fair… (She was under 2. The fuck you was entirely body language.)
I earn people pushing me away when I am too intense. But I am really fucking intense. That’s just a fact. How much can I put that intensity in a box and still be an authentic piece of me? I struggle with that balance.
You know, like how can I diplomatically talk about my feelings so I order my brain versus how much do I get to the point of screaming “Fuck you, fuck you, and fuck you. Who’s next?”
Sigh. Balance. I continue to lurch towards it.
Last night I had a chat with Middle Child about his allowance savings. He said he feels like he doesn’t deserve to have it because we are walking past so many people who have nothing. I talked about how sometimes he uses his allowance to pay for things he breaks, sometimes for things he wants and I will not buy, sometimes just for splurges and if he gives all the money away he won’t be able to meet any of those needs he has for autonomy.
I talked about trying to find the middle way. (Thank you Buddhism. I am not a true follower, but every faith/religion/cultural path has some value for me to learn from. That’s what California Woo means to me.) I talked to him about trying to find the balance between saving up for yourself so you can meet your needs versus sharing what you have extra. I asked him what would happen to our family if I gave away 80% of his father’s income every month because I don’t feel like I deserve it. His eyes got big as he processed what that would mean in terms of housing, food, medical care, everything changes. So instead I share 10%.
We can meet our needs with 90% and we don’t have to stockpile the last 10%. We can share it and help other people have lighter loads. I can’t really give away more because I have a lot of medical expenses that are going to go up as I age. I have to prepare for that or I am deciding that I need to die early.
But it’s not about giving it away because you don’t deserve it. It’s about recognizing that our life is really good and we have the ability to share…. so we should.
He’s working on writing up his feelings about the values in a book called Islamic Values for Children. (DUDE! It’s online! Oh that’s awesome!) It’s neat helping him process what he agrees with and disagrees with in this book. Like, he said that we need to pursue (I’m paraphrasing slightly) understanding creation because if we don’t we make bad decisions and we hurt ourselves and the people around us: like killing off 80% of bugs in the world. Humans have used pesticides for a long time and now we face the possible extinction of our species because food is going to have a hard time growing.
I love hearing where his values differ from mine. But he has been raised hardcore in an environment where “Enlightened Self Interest” is a big deal. Being selfish isn’t wrong, but you need to be selfish in the concept of helping yourself be ok loooooooooong in the future.
It’s neat seeing how that plays out for him.
One of the hard things about Noah’s job is that he always feels like he isn’t quite doing enough to earn all those buckets of cash and all the conference invites so he works… constantly. Today and tomorrow he is taking off work! We get to go play on the island. I’m happy about that. I don’t have a plan for what we will do. I want to take the kids all the way around the island because then the kids get into these intense chats about how the plant life and rocks change. They are observant in ways I never was as a kid. Yesterday Eldest Child was talking about what the rock formations mean in terms of lava because she learned about it in one of her books. That’s so awesome.
“Hey, the plants aren’t so brown. That means this side gets more rain. Hm, I wonder why this is the line where that changes?”
This kind of thing didn’t occur to me as a kid and I love standing near this. I like them so much.
But first… we should pack 90% of our stuff this morning. In 48 hours we go to the airport.
I need to spend most of my time focusing on my family because I need to feel what that means. But I won’t forget my friends.
Oh, by the way: the place in Longview fell through. The AirBnB host said that we couldn’t have the independent apartment that long but we could rent two bedrooms in her house and share her kitchen and living room for the same price! Uhhh… no. That’s not a good deal for us. My kids are essentially nudists. They need to be able to have their own space where they can unwind without having to perform certain behaviors for a host. So I found a place closer to downtown Portland that is actually about $600 cheaper for the whole stay. It is in a much more crowded neighborhood, which will be mixed. Less ability to just “GO OUTSIDE” and more ability to walk to grocery stores. That’s a balance I will cope with. The house is sparsely decorated and one floor. That was shockingly hard to find in the region. The houses on AirBnB available for a long stay are mostly multi-story or decorated to within an inch of their lives. Yeah, I’m not dealing with that shit with a nearly-walking-baby.
Last night we had pho for the third time since reaching the island. We are really on a kick. I ordered the spiciest one on the menu then added three heaping spoonfuls of chili because it just wasn’t spicy enough. I wanted my lips and tongue to burn. It was awesome. Afterwards we had our first dessert since reaching the island: shaved ice with ice cream on the bottom. I added mochi balls to mine. We all had very different flavor profiles and it was funny how much the differences really are indicative of our personalities. EC had caramel ice cream with mango shaved ice, MC had coffee ice cream with cherry shaved ice, Noah had gosh I can’t remember his ice cream but he had guava and passion fruit shaved ice (with coconut sauce). I had cookies and cream ice cream with vanilla/pineapple/pina colada. The other three of us had mochi balls instead of sauce.
The baby went nuts trying everyone’s. She thought it was the best thing that’s happened to her in a long time. She is starting to understand “We look at a menu, then people go away and bring us good things to eat.” It’s fun to watch. She does a lot of intently looking at the menu then pointing at pictures. We often order what she points at. She is certain that the world is working as it should. Ha.
D–you didn’t do something terrible when you left that comment. The timing and the phrasing were not my ideal. But that happens in relationships. I am almost done being an exploding asshole. I am so sorry you got swept into all the upset about other things and other people.
Some of my grief is legitimate and real and totally deserved. That doesn’t mean I should lash out at everyone. Sometimes I do though and that is really fucking shitty. I try as hard as I can to limit my explosions to being here. I love you and I appreciate that you have tried to share what you have spare over the years. That wasn’t a lot and that’s ok. I don’t get to demand more from anyone who doesn’t have it going spare. Really I don’t get to demand more from anyone.
My black hole is not your job to fill. It really isn’t. I know that. It’s why I try to retreat when I am being inappropriate. Sometimes that retreat involves inappropriate yelling in my space. I imagine that is not easy. You don’t want to feel like you are hurting me. You don’t want to feel like you did something wrong.
I try to withdraw when all you have to do to be wrong is be near enough to hear me as I am screaming about being in pain.
Why am I so depressed? Well. I built a lot of my sense of self worth around my value to people. Quite some time ago Sarah said that she was tired of having me publicly humiliate her when she made mistakes so I didn’t write as much about how she was treating me. I gave too much. I hate feeling like I am one of those assholes who justifies treating people badly or stalking by saying “I just love too much”.
But I went and did physical labor for her when it was literally causing me physical damage. I spent thousands of dollars helping her. Because I was trying to give her the kind of support I wish someone wanted to give me. She had me block out lots of time for her on my calendar and she showed up when she had nothing better to do.
Dad only offers help (that I have to pay hundreds of dollars for because I have to buy the plane tickets and send food money for my kid and send money for activities…. why aren’t I just sending her to sleep away camp–that costs less money?) when he also wants to ask me if he can borrow $25,000. But he doesn’t invite me to Thanksgiving or Christmas unless it is an Orphan/Leather Friends event. When he has holidays with his family I am not invited. I might be able to crash it… but he doesn’t invite me. Years ago when I asked him if he was willing to have a relationship with my kids he told me that I needed to know that all of his investment properties, all of his ability to help in this life is going to his kids. But I should loan him $25,000? Uhm. No. That kind of loan is for family. And you are letting me know that I am a Leather Family member… not a family member.
The folks we came to Hawaii to see talked about how much they missed us and how much they wanted to spend time with us. They have been begging us to visit for two years. And the daughter has totally flaked (she’s 20 and going through some shit… I get it) while the mother is manipulative, whiny, and cruel to my children all while asking me to fund her lifestyle. “I want to throw you a vegan feast to show you how much I care about you… but you have to pay for it.” Well a vegan feast is only welcome if it comes from t&T because their household is the only vegan household I fucking trust to make me food that will taste good. Your offering sounds like I am going to leave hangry and mean. And I get to pay for it. You will hang out with my kids and tell them that if they are not demonstrating enough gratitude that they don’t deserve to have as much food or money from their mother for play. WHAT THE FUCK? She mocked the size of my daughter’s ass because it didn’t fit in a climbing unit designed for fucking 5 year olds.
But I feel this terrible, overwhelming shame about cutting off people who treat me this way? They are willing to be my friends so how dare I judge what they have on offer?
Being really upset about these bigger boundary violations mean that smaller things feel more threatening. I *know* the CPS comment wasn’t intended as a threat. I *know* she didn’t mean to hurt me. But CPS is a deeply triggering topic and I am already wild with upset and I don’t have the ability to process that kind of thing without flipping out on top of everything else.
I don’t feel entitled to demand better treatment. I feel like these “friends” are treating me this way because this is what I deserve. Because I deserve to be treated like an ATM. If I don’t buy love I don’t deserve to receive any.
I deeply believe that my children don’t owe me anything. It is supposed to be a one way trip of support but that means I feel used all of the time by a lot of people and that’s hard.
I am still grieving Marcie. Her wife would not allow me to visit when Marcie was injured. Marcie felt abandoned. Marcie broke up with me because she couldn’t cope with feeling abandoned. I get that. I hope her wife is treating her better now. I will never know.
I am not blameless in any of this. I wanted too much from Sarah. I could watch her patterns and guess that she wouldn’t keep her promises and she would continue to want/take money and never think about how she was impacting other people. She is consistent with lots of people. I kept making stupid choices.
But I hurt. I feel like my hurt is stupid and I should just get over it and how dare I act like I have problems when I am not poor any more.
How dare I act like I ever deserve any support at all now that I have so much fucking money. I *should* have to pay for all help I get. And if people treat me badly as they take my money… isn’t that what I have always believed rich people deserve? Isn’t that justice?
I never meant to get this rich. I really didn’t. And now I don’t know how to view myself.
I don’t feel bad about the financial help I give to a lot of people. I bought Y a car and I don’t feel bad. I gave M a car and I don’t feel used. I have paid for people’s schooling. I have helped people start businesses. I loaned a friend money so she could get an apartment when she got her first corporate job and she couldn’t afford a place in the city she got the job in.
I don’t feel used by any of those situations at all.
I feel used by Sarah. I feel used by Dad. I feel used by the lady here in Hawaii.
Feeling bad about these people does not entitle me to treat other people badly. But I’m not coping well. I feel like I have to pretend I am not hurting and I am not capable right now. I don’t feel entitled to be sad about how these people treat me.
I abandoned my mother and my aunt when they needed help. I left them with a bunch of users, abusers, and takers. I feel like that means I deserve all the bad in the whole world. That means that Sarah treating me like shit feels like justice. And I hate myself for being someone who deserves this.
When I got my accident settlement when I turned 18, my sister told me that I had to use it to buy her a house and she would let me live with her.
How can I teach my children how to be in relationships without being users if that is all I understand?
It isn’t that all of my friends are users. Not even close. And it isn’t that I think I deserve endless support or financial help or…
I babysat for a lot of people hoping for trades. I was told that it was “easier” for me. They couldn’t handle having more than their own children in the house. But me providing free child care was so nice. It worked with the Bonus Family until it didn’t. Then my kids told me that a lot of her discipline was threatening to hit them and putting them in time outs for hours. I already knew that she expected my kids to come clean up after her kids because my kids are “more mature”.
I feel like almost every child care situation I have found has turned out to be shitty and abusive. I fear that it is happening because only shitty and abusive people want to be around me.
Only that isn’t true. I have friends who aren’t shitty and abusive. Well. I have people who want to talk to me for a few minutes or hours a year who aren’t shitty and abusive.
I feel like I should have known that my children would be treated badly by caregivers, as if it is a generational curse.
I don’t want to be bitter or angry or pissy with new people because I hate how this has all gone down.
But that means I have to lie about how I feel all the god damn time because I don’t trust people and I assume people are going to use me or treat me or my kids like crap.
M came through for my last birth. I need to never ever do anything again that puts me in such a vulnerable position. Because I can’t ever again need that much help. I can’t guarantee it. I am sure that people will help me in the future but they will help me randomly and when and how they feel like it and it won’t be based on my needs or issues. It will be about what makes them feel good that day.
That has to be ok. That has to be enough.
Which means I need to not try to be bigger. I need to not try to accomplish things. I need to just sit around and do nothing and wait for my kids to have needs because they will have needs and I am the only one who will be available to help them. I can’t ever believe anyone who tells me they will help again. If someone offers to be a penpal I need to to not believe them. If someone tells me they want us to come visit because they want to spend time with us I need to assume they are a liar.
I am so fucking grateful that Jenny said she has maybe a spare hour one day a week. Maybe. That is not consistent and I cannot count on it.
Thank you.
I hate that I need to assume that people are lying to me all the time. I need to assume that people are telling me what they wish was true, not what is true.
And I wonder why I feel depressed?
I really don’t want to live near the ocean. I don’t like it at all. I learned that, at least.
As of today all of our bank accounts are linked for transfers. This means that in 3 days I can verify that they are all linked for transfers and start playing financial games. This is terrifying.
We have three checking accounts. Why? Because one is best for international usage (it will flat *work* in more countries… which seems wise…), one is so we can have a safe deposit box (must have an active checking account or no box!), and the other one is so that the kids can continue to have their savings accounts at the bank we have been using for years.
Trying to decide how to shuffle the money around is both daunting and exciting. I feel kind of sick about how much money I am passing around.
I need Noah to help me with Mint for a few minutes and that’s sounding awful. Ugh.
I should go back through and do the “end of year” review for 2018 money. Ha. I have? Had? the screen shots.
This makes my stomach hurt. Handling money for 30 minutes feels like running for 3 hours. I am so tired and stressed.
And I have a bunch of account information to fix with Mint and *panic*. Calm down, Krissy. If this has to be broken up over a week… it’ll be fine. You’ll get it done. With a baby whining on your back. Because that’s the deal.
SO MANY MULTIFACTOR VERIFICATIONS.
And I’m looking into medication stuff for Japan. That’s a bit tricky! I have… slightly more Lorazepam than they would prefer I bring, because I need it for Scotland afterwards. I have to pray I don’t get in trouble or get it confiscated. That’s sad. It’s not on their “Fuck you don’t bring it” list… but…
I’m ditching the DayQuil.
Ok, the 529s for the older two kids are now funded. I have not yet opened one for Youngest Child. And… I think I left her SS card in storage so I don’t know if I *can* open one right now. Ok.
I need to quit for today. Our Mint budget is not acceptable. But I can’t do more right now without getting mean.
Good golly I feel overwhelmed. Today Noah set up his direct deposit to stop going to the credit union and it will be split between two new banks. One international checking account and one US bank that has a safe deposit box attached to it.
The US bank will be where I funnel the donation stuff because the account has to be active enough or we can’t have the safe deposit box. I will probably also have a handful of direct deposit stuff come out of there but I will need to transfer money periodically to cover that. Ack. I just need to have enough transactions a month and I’m not sure what that will even mean.
The US bank doesn’t have a lot of money in it yet and the international account is still completely empty because deposits haven’t hit yet. We have 31 more days at this address.
We may want to save closing the credit union account until we come back after the cruise. We’ll see. We just can’t access this very well as we travel. The kid bank accounts are staying there. We will access them when we come through town. Savings account?
I need to run my credit and probably freeze it. Not today. For some reason that’s freaking me out.
Do you know how many things we can stop paying for soon?
That’s a lot.
Now I have to wait for money to arrive in those accounts. And I need to get a picture of my IDs in PDF form for the stupid mail forwarding company. Everything is 97 steps. Uploaded the jpgs. Now I wait for them to be reviewed.
Do the thing. Wait. Do the thing. Wait.
Hurry up. Stop.
Ugh.
Money is freaking me out.
I don’t know what to think or feel right now. Kinda numb. Ok. I’m going to stop being numbers productive. I’ve done at least 3 steps. That needs to be enough for today.
I heard the end. I kind of recognized it as it happened and I kind of recognize it in the rear view mirror.
I like doing things for people. I like feeling useful and valuable and like I am of service. It’s a pretty overly core part of my identity. Many of my relationships involve a lot of me doing work for benefit of other peoples lives. I like being a supporting character in your story. I love you and I want you to have a glorious story arc that has nothing to do with me. So I’ll show up and clean your house.
I’ll drive across state lines to unpack and repack you while you are too depressed and in pain to do it for yourself.
I’ll take you with me on major vacations, even to other countries.
I’ll buy a fucking time share so you can have the vacations you want that you can’t afford.
But when you spend a week ignoring me on the week that was supposed to make up for you ignoring me for a year and you turn to me and casually say, “Oh by the way I need to talk to you about using next years points for a trip with my family” that I am clearly not invited on….
I just because an ATM to you.
No. Done. Stop. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No.
Nobody gets to treat me like an ATM. Especially not a rich white person. I don’t think so.
That right there is my line. I can see it very clearly. You stopped seeing this as a relationship where you have to give back. I’m supposed to keep giving to you no matter how shittily you treat me. No matter how much you cancel plans with me because everyone and everything else is more important.
It was a solid year of you canceling 80%. You wanted me holding time open for you so that you could cancel at the last minute. That makes you feel wanted and loved and connected. You could show up if you felt like it. I feel like you very rarely fucking prioritize me while expecting me to prioritize you greatly physically, spiritually, and financially.
Never make someone your priority when you are their option.
I wanted to be as important to you as you are to me. I was an important source of labor and money. You didn’t show up to be support for me.
You promised me that you would have strong relationships with my kids. I can count how many times you’ve seriously spent time with them in the last three years on my fingers.
Stop acting like I can’t track things and notice patterns. I’m not stupid. You make promises you won’t deliver on and you broke my fucking heart.
And you told me that you dropping me was all my fault because I got too angry. A lot of why I was angry is because you make promises and don’t keep them. So this cycle is all my fault.
Ok. I will step out of it. I don’t need to be in it. Then it won’t continue. Then it won’t be my fault. That is the power I have.
I know. It is never your fault you cancel. You are disabled. Hi. According to the very expensive team of people I pay I am disabled. And I am hurting myself by trying to show up for people who have no regard for me or my limits.
When will I decide that I am worth treating like a person of value? Because as long as I keep getting myself into situations where I believe I must stay in the relationship because I have known them for X time and I need them to stay in my life or it means I am bad and unworthy of having relationships…. that’s not a good dynamic. I should keep people in my life if I feel better about myself with the relationship instead of worse.
I turned hard to her when the cheating debacle went sideways. I was not allowed to pour myself into romantic relationships. I tried to have a major non romantic relationship.
It was never as major on the other end. I am very optional. That’s healthy! I need to… understand that this is very optional.
And stop picking the option that makes me cry. Cause hey dumbass, if you keep doing the same thing over and over hoping that someday someone will finally treat you well… fuck it. Move on with your life. There are 7 billion people. Don’t chase people who are going to treat you like an ATM. That’s not psychologically healthy.
I caught up on transactions. I took screenshots. I’m too tired to do the write up. So weary.
If we are spending about the same on vacations as we donate… does that mitigate how selfish it is?
Since the beginning of my time on Mint I have spent $671,557.96 on my house. That’s all spending.
I started using Mint in September of 2009. So 9 years of tracking. Noah and I were married for three years before that and he bought the house in December of 2002 I think. Let’s call it 16 years of paying on the mortgage. I’m away one year from being done with it.
Obviously the home equity line of credit would own my ass for a few years if I stayed.
If I look at just the bathroom remodel let’s say I put in 9 months of labor (I put in over 2 years) and that I worked 10 hours a day 5 days a week. (In reality I often worked 12-16 hours/day and 6 or 7 days per week.) But just to make the number not seem inflated.
Very conservatively that’s 1,950 hours. I’ll call it 2,000 just to make it easier. I mean… really.
Then there’s the garage. That was not as laborious, but it took quite a bit of work. And the yards.
I understand that a lot of the painting in my house (bedrooms, living room, kitchen) are on the chopping block.
So let’s say that I have put an absolute minimum of 3,000 hours of work on my house.
In between principal and interest and other major home remodeling stuff I’m going to guess that Noah paid $150,000 before I started tracking on mint.
So we’ve paid out of pocket probably at least $800,000 for this house and yard and arbor and play set and and and.
How much is my time worth?
How much is my creativity worth?
Now, paying a lot of money for something doesn’t mean you can get that money back. Sometimes you can’t. That’s a fact and I get that.
Houses in my neighborhood are selling in under a month for over a million dollars.
How much do I value myself and the future I can have with Noah and my kids?
Questions.
If I make the house neutral enough but leave some symbolic art pieces (most of the garage, the hallway, the bathroom) I can probably find someone who is genuinely excited to own this house with the art.
I won’t get to visit the art again, but such is life.
I wanted to sell to a friend. I wanted to be able to visit the art. But if life isn’t going to grant me that serendipity it isn’t. I can cope.
This is going to be complicated.
I’m pretty sure that everyone who reads this knows I have issues with control. Selling the house is hard on a number of levels. I have put so much physical and emotional labor into this space. It’s complicated because I never wanted to live here… but I grew where I was planted.
I was willing to accept half a million dollars below market value so that I could visit my art in the future and I could feel appreciated for having made these cool things.
My friend came over yesterday and told me that their intention is to paint over the whole house. I think they will keep the tile in the bathroom, but I got the impression that even the trees might be painted over.
I felt like I was punched in the gut.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
I can’t devalue how much of my body and life went into this house. I can’t fuck my family financially so you can erase me.
They are going to paint over it with a nice cream.
A nice cream.
I mean, that’s a lovely thing to want. But you can pay market value for wanting that. Market value in my neighborhood starts at $1.2 million, not $750,000. Shitty condos in my area are selling for more than $750,000.
I am cannot subsidize your dreams at the expense of all of my own. Accepting that much less money means Noah will have to wait longer to retire and one of our biggest stated reasons for selling the house is so that Noah can retire earlier.
No.
I can’t accept that offer. I will hate myself until the day I die for accepting that my work here was worth so little money in the scheme of what things are worth in this valley.
The house was a nice cream when I moved in. (Not really. It was a crappy white. But what-fucking-ever.)
No.
I can’t subsidize that. I can’t. It would be violent erasure of myself for me to accept that. It would be accepting that I only deserve to get the actual money I’ve already paid back and my improvements are worthless.
No.
That’s… no.
Apparently my price to be erased is higher than that.
I didn’t do my annual end of year financial report.
My brain is so tired. I feel so stupid and incapable of thinking. Helping the kids through their chores is kind of my limit.
I feel guilty.
I know I should feel bad for my cousin. She failed because she has a laundry list of mental health problems. She doesn’t work at all because she is not competent to show up and do things. She was fired from the job I put her through college for because she couldn’t god damn file alphabetically.
She called me 72 hours before the flight to tell me she didn’t have an ID so she couldn’t get on the plane. I wired her money. She got the money late Wednesday night. She then slept through Thursday. She went to the DMV in the last hour it was open on Friday before Christmas. She did get an ID. She walked out 15 minutes past closing time with an ID.
Then she texts me 1.5 hours before she is supposed to be at the airport and says, “Can you change my flight so I can come at a later time because I can’t find anyone to take care of my dog.”
I told her that if she had planned in advance I could have helped her with finding dog care but changing the flights would be probably upwards of $400 and no… I’m not doing that for a $650 flight. When I sent you $200 for an ID this week. No.
So she isn’t coming. And now she’s sending me pity party texts about how upset she is about spending Christmas alone.
I spent almost a full year of my disposable income on this. So that she could choose not to fix any of the associated issues in a timely fashion.
But mental illness!
I think I need to not call her any more. Because this is so familiar. This is what dealing with my family is like. I’m not a person I’m an ATM who is supposed to solve all of their problems for them with money. Problems that could have been managed reasonably with just a little advance notice. Hell… I would have paid for boarding the dog if she had asked me in a timely fashion.
This is like my mom calling me 12 hours before her hysterectomy (that she knew about well in advance) and telling me that I have to give her $500 Right Now or she can’t have the surgery she needs.
I told my mom no.
Another expensive lesson: dealing with my family is just setting me up for heartache.
On the upside Christmas will probably be less stressful and dramatic this way. Being with Noah and the kids is lovely. I’m very lucky and grateful.
This is why I have more kids to have more family. It’s the only avenue available to me that will have the possibility of respectful relationships.
Today someone I like a lot asked me for advice about how their family can attain a lifestyle more like my family’s lifestyle. I feel like a fucking asshole but the only way I know to do that is be born to rich parents who will fund your Ivy League education with no loans.
Noah is where he is because of the start he got in life. Sure, he worked hard and he made smart choices along the way… but it’s bullshit to say he got here because he worked so hard. There wasn’t a bootstrap in sight.
Sure, he had an almost omniscient prescience to pick the programming language he specializes in. He picked it up when it was brand new and hardly anyone in the world knew it. He gave up his free time and his friends and allllllll kinds of good times with me to specialize in this because he believed this would be his best shot at being the kind of provider he wanted to be in this life. Let me not underestimate the fact that he has worked fucktastically hard on this language. After a lifetime of working hard on a variety of other languages. He did the work to make it through that Ivy League college and lots of people are literally incapable. I don’t want to denigrate that.
But we have this lifestyle because Noah was born to a rich family.
It’s not because we worked harder than other people. It’s because he had advantages and I have the ability to stretch a dollar to cover $40. Because I had to as a child.
Because when I was a child someone handing me $5 could make a huge difference in how I ate that month and I carry these lessons with me. So when I land in the position to manage a rich person’s money… I do pretty damn well.
It has been hard learning how to buy more expensive things less often… but I have learned. Mostly I was just used to buying the cheap shit and duct taping it back together when it broke.
Our lifestyle is insanely luxurious. I’m a god damn stay at home parent and Noah works in the garage. We travel a lot. We eat sooooooo well.
We don’t have everything. We make choices. Our cars are eleven years old and one is dying pretty intensely and we intend to cope with one car for as long as possible when the Prius dies. The minivan looks solid to last five or more years longer and I don’t care that it has dents and scrapes and the side view mirror has broken three times and it shakes when I drive… We don’t have excellent clothing in the main. Noah and I bought an insanely expensive set of outfits next year and we might wear then until we are buried. The kids get around $100 of new clothes in a year and otherwise… I buy used or they get hand me downs. They are in classes but not everything. They don’t get to go do fun activities that cost money constantly because I just refuse. Our entertainment budget hasn’t gone up with our income and I think that’s great.
Instead we hemorrhage money on health care. Wheeeeeeee.
And the bathroom. Ugh. That was twice as fucking expensive as I wanted it to be. Paying that off is going to hurt. When we finish paying off the bathroom we will have paid off about $600k in debt over the course of our marriage between the mortgage, school loans, remodeling, and cars.
Our lifestyle is simply not attainable if you did not get born to wealth. This isn’t because of me. This is Noah’s financial story and I’m just along for the ride; I like narrating.
I can do research and find service providers like these folks: https://divinejourney.org or http://www.reviveacupuncture.com/ and maybe find some kind of help.
I am grateful every single day that I can afford to pay for help. My life is blessed beyond anything I ever thought I would experience.