Category Archives: school

Calm or productive

This morning started out a little rough for me. I asked EC a couple of weeks ago to cull the multiple boxes of school stuff from last year and pick out which items she wants to put in her portfolio. I guess she didn’t understand what I meant. She threw away all of her previous work from grades K-3 and she threw away her sibling’s portfolio work (only kindergarten) and she filled the portfolio’s with random memorabilia and knick knacks. I didn’t discover this till today, so there’s no chance of climbing through the recycling and getting stuff back.

I about blew a gasket.

I didn’t call names. I didn’t scream about how terrible they were. But I did scream that I was very angry. When I calmed down I said (perhaps inappropriately) that a lot of the reason I am so meticulous about keeping this documentation is because I need to make sure no one can ever say I’m not educating my kids and take them away. EC internalized this as “I threw away the portfolio documentation and that means I’m going to be taken away.” We’ve since talked about how there aren’t actually legal requirements to keep this documentation and my fear of CPS is very irrational given that we are unlikely to be looked at as a family at risk. We talked about the difference between a rational fear and an irrational fear.

I think we’ve all calmed down. But I’ve been the opposite of productive since then. Because I need to put most of my mental and emotional energy into calming down. I uhhh also neglected to take any pot till 1pm, which doesn’t help.

Noah says I didn’t cross a line but the line was getting reeeeeal close and I was teetering.

It’s weird having another adult in the house to walk around following me as I rant. It makes me think I’m glad he missed the first three years of my parenting because I was a much bigger bitch.

My poor children.

I sent out another email looking for a therapist for EC. She has fallen through the cracks in the past few months because the folks who looked possible for her didn’t pan out. I need to get that in line though. It’s not ok that she justifies me screaming at her. That’s fucked up and not ok and she needs to have her own therapist who can help her feel like no one should be screaming at her. Not even her mother.

She isn’t always ok with me screaming at her. I don’t get a free pass. But if I’m yelling at her about something she really did she will often say, “Oh I deserve this one.”

NO. YOU MAY DESERVE TO HAVE SOMEONE TALK TO YOU SHARPLY BUT NO ONE DESERVES TO BE SCREAMED AT UNLESS THEY ARE COMMITTING ASSAULT. SCREAMING IS A SIGN THAT SOMEONE HAS LOST CONTROL AND THAT’S BULLSHIT.

She needs a therapist. I say it to her all the damn time. I phrase it as, “I lost control and I was wrong.”

She doesn’t want me to feel bad.

That’s broken and we need to fix it. I get to feel bad for my shitty actions, too.

My children continue to be my favorite people.

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I mentioned to my kids yesterday that I had mentally observed that our Disneyland trip was scheduled for when I am 35 weeks pregnant. The first thing my kid said was, “Wow mom that’s really late in the pregnancy. I think we should cancel.”

Then the other kid suggested, “Would it be possible to move it up and go earlier? It’s really not wise to go at the very end.”

My kids are so awesome and wonderful and nice to me.

So I called DVC (the Disney time share company) and explained my situation. Of course they were happy to find a way to get us in early. In fact… we are going in two weeks. The week between our anniversary and my birthday.

It’s a really good thing I hadn’t invited someone else and scheduled around their conflicts. I get to just… do what I want. That’s so much easier.

We are looking into what California missions we are going to visit on the trip. It’s 4th grade time… we need California history this year….

And we are debating between 2 and 3 days in the park leaning heavily towards 2. Because mostly we want to go rest and just be mellow together.

I love my family.

Perspective

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Do you know what I think is funny? When someone has been teaching for 20 years so they know EVERYTHING about teaching. It could not possibly be different than their experience. Oh, they’ve taught at 4 schools in two cities–one city is international so has nothing to do with the US system. So teaching at 3 schools in one city qualifies you as an expert on everything having to do with education.

Fascinating. Tell me more about your broad and diverse experiences. I would love to hear about them. Please tell me how the school system works. I. Am. So. Ignorant.

Family, opinions, planning

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There isn’t much in this world I like as much as I like how much my children want to spend time with me. Last night they begged me to sleep in their room between them. I was there for six hours until my back was hurting enough that I needed to change beds. I was sad to leave them, but gosh I get to hurting.

I read a lot of development stuff. There are some seriously contradictory opinions out there. Some folks (who will remain nameless cause I ain’t sending support their way) really believe it is terrible for me to provide as much support and physical affection as I provide. “Children need to get used to being alone.”

I got used to being alone. It broke something inside of me I don’t know how to fix. Naw, I’m good with not doing that to my kids. We deal with the separation that we need to deal with, but I don’t force space between us. My kids ask for space as they desire more of it and I let go and give them a little push. “Sure! Try your wings! Jump out of the nest! Do it! Do it!” But I’m standing behind them at first before I fling myself headlong at the ground to be there to catch them if they need it.

My children aren’t really alone as they try things. Sometimes I stop and reflect that my children are some of the least-alone people I’ve ever personally known. I did that. Wait: I did that.

Holy tomato. I took this hole inside of me and I decided “Ok that piece is not getting passed on” and I haven’t. I have been able to do what I set out to do.

My kids treat one another like they are a matched set. They get whiny about how much time they are separate for camps a few times a year. They are together and happy about it every day. My constant harping on how they are a team must help. I tell myself. Because I want to feel useful. It’s working.

I have children who believe deep in their bones that we are happier, stronger, and better together as a group than we can be alone. After I grew up feeling like I poisoned everything I touched. How did that come to be?

It started with Noah. It started with the fact that I don’t poison him, I help him. I make him feel more motivated and alive and inspired than he has ever been in his whole life. Nothing ever jump started him like me.

That’s pretty cool because he was a neat guy when I met him. He’s grown up so beautifully. I’m not entirely sure I married a man. He really may have still been a boy. At this point, he’s a man and it is so beautiful. He’s responsible. He’s diligent. He’s caring. Where he has tendencies towards flakiness or fucking up he has devised elaborate systems of checks and balances so he can’t drop anything important on accident. He taught himself how to stop fucking up. That’s huge, yo.

I appreciate how self-reinforcing our family values are. We value hard work and the pursuit of health. We think exercise and outside time are necessary to health and if the grown ups are slacking and lazy the kids tell us to get off our butts and do it. It is a glorious system. My kids think that life is a balance of work and rest and if you do too much of one or the other you develop problems so you have to pay attention to your schedule. When I work too much, they come down on me to rest. “Mom you will get sick. Don’t act like this.” My kids will comment on how we need more protein and vegetables to balance out the sugar we eat.

They are going to be some micromanaging motherfuckers when they are grown. It will allow them to be excellent at a wide variety of careers.

My kids are fierce. They are always the most female-presenting looking kids in the fighting group at whatever kid event we go to. They love to fight and they are getting better and better at sportskidship. Less gloating over winning. More “that was a really fun game, thank you for playing with me”. It is a work in progress. I use the word fierce because that is the most common word that random parents observe about my kids. “Wow they are fierce.” “Yup, they are.”

My kids have never been taught to soften themselves because people expect that from folks born with a vulva. Psh. Whatever.

In our house we talk about what it means to be a person born with a vulva and a uterus and what it means to be a girl and a woman. We are very clear that there are some maintenance acts that happen to anyone with these body parts but that doesn’t make you a girl or a woman just like having long hair wouldn’t make you a boy or a girl. But whether you are a boy or a girl you have to care for long hair–it’s just something that takes effort. Bodies take work and the nature of that work does not define who you are.

I’m well aware that there are people in this world who do not approve of how I am raising my children. I’m well aware that there is no “right way” to parent. I don’t think I’m doing it th One Twue Way. I think I’m adapting to my quirks and issues and my childrens’ quirks and issues and my partner’s quirks and issues and devising a system that makes us happy. That doesn’t mean it applies to other people.

Sweet cheese I don’t think I know what you should be doing. You are so different from me. You have such wildly different needs from this parenting journey. If I told you what to do I would hurt you and I would probably hurt your kids.

I need to remind myself of that more often. Even when I have a very strong opinion about an aspect of other people’s parenting I need to shut my fucking mouth. I’ve been failing at that lately in a specific case. I need to back all the way off. I can’t control other peoples actions. I need to stop trying.

Sometimes it is haaaaaaaaaaaaaaard not sharing my opinion.

Suck it up, wench.

I know there are a multitude of reasons I would make different decisions. Just one small aspect of our life would have to change and I would believe I needed to alter almost everything. I don’t think my path is the right one. It’s just the one I’m on.

I ask my kids about school regularly. I am not married to home schooling (even though I love it for entirely selfish reasons and I would cheerfully keep them around forever) I am choosing it as the right path for now. I really didn’t want to send my children to school before the age of 7 or 8 for a variety of developmental reasons… but past that… school is probably fine or healthy unless you have reason to know that a specific school is a bad match for a given kid. I just seriously think the US fucks up early education.

Up until I started painting my house like mad I flat yelled at anyone who hinted in any way that I was an artist. Because in kindergarden I was told I couldn’t do art right and I would never be good at it.

I wanted my kids to skip the imprinting of kindergarden.

Achievement: unlocked.

Now what?

I’m pretty sure I should stop calling us unschoolers. We are eclectically home schooling. We aren’t following a formal curriculum but we are borrowing aspects of a bunch of different curriculums and wandering back and forth as I see fit. I’m also making a bunch up because I’m totally trained in how to do that.

This is getting way fun. Youngest Child is being allowed to very slowly work through first grade. Kiddo is in first grade and I don’t need to push at all. Kiddo opts in to doing work. (I said kiddo didn’t need to start till next year but they were bored.) So I pushed Eldest Child a bit and at this point she is solidly where she would be if she had been doing academics for the last three years.

The amount of progress they have both demonstrated this year kind of blows my mind. Eldest Child started off the year seriously delayed academically and she isn’t anymore. Holy crap. I have always been just praying I wasn’t fucking her over too much. I was totally taking it on faith that things would work the way they did.

Thank. Fucking. Goodness it worked out. That wasn’t actually guaranteed. Science experiments involve the possibility of complete failure.

I’ve been aware from day one that I’m not raising my children in a given cultural tradition. I’m raising them as a science experiment in which I get to control the variables. Yeah, yeah I researched a ton of theories first. I’m not just flying blind. I’m making conscious choices. This is a science experiment. Let’s see if I can hold it together for 20 or 30 years. 30 god damn years. I didn’t want that many years of parenting. I wanted to have kids closer together than that. Sigh.

I want more kids. I want them so much it is a constant ache inside of me. People tell me to adopt. People tell me to find “Chosen Family”.

I want more people who are related to me. Who come back. Who want to see me. There is a fierce ache inside of me.

I have so many cousins and aunts and uncles and a mother and a sister and a brother and nephews and a niece…

And they prefer loyalty to rapists over me.

I want to have children. This is my only chance at having the kind of family that other people get to have. I know people who adopt and have it go well. I know people who were adopted who had a shit show of a life experience because they never ever got over the fact that they didn’t get to stay with their mother.

It’s a roll of the dice with someone’s life. I respect people who can do it. I’m not in that place.

I wouldn’t write about it so often but someone or other brings it up with me every god damn week.

Noah and I talk about moving somewhere more rural in a few years. Somewhere we could have a much bigger house and spending a decade or two fostering kids. Fostering children is different. I have always felt a call towards fostering. But I’m not in the right place in my life for it for a variety of reasons.

I’m working towards it.

But I want more children and my window on that opportunity is not going to be open much longer. My body is not exactly in perfect working order and that’s not going to improve when I hit 40.

Hey I’ll be having kids in the same age range as most of my friends who have kids who are the same age as my older kids. See, I do want to emulate your life experiences. Sorta. In that way that my emulations usually barely resemble the originals.

I like that we are all different. I like that we need such different kinds of support. I learn so much from knowing you. I learn about things that I could never understand without your explanations. Thank you for your patience with me.

I try to not be too obnoxious with my lack of initial understanding.

Individuation is going to have to be a thing next year. I’ve subsumed in a way that is eating me. I noticed something yesterday. I completely flipped out and started dating when Pam left. I think that Pam was filling a huge intimacy hole in my life and I didn’t know or understand what that meant until she was gone.

I miss you Pam. I support you in what you are doing. I know it has value and I know you need to do it. You are learning things you need to learn. I miss you. You have value all the time. You have extreme value to me personally. I support you in not always prioritizing my needs. I really do. But I’m allowed to miss you. That’s ok.

Everyone who loves me is busy as fuck. It isn’t personal. It has nothing to do with me and I’m not allowed to be cranky about it, not really. I pick people who have a lot going on to love intensely. That’s something I do.

I need to figure out how to have consistent contact with folks. We are going to try some arrangements of inviting folks over. We’ll test some approaches. Some things will work. Some things will fail. Both results will teach us stuff.

It’s going to be an adventure to start trying harder to have non-sexual relationships with some folks I like having sex with. For a lot of the past ten years I have just avoided specific people at times when it wasn’t opportune to be jumping them. I have treated more than one man kinda like a meat stick and I need to stop that. I need to expand some of my comfort zone. I need to get better at enforcing boundaries other than with actual walls.

This will be a drama filled adventure. Oh fun.

I hope we don’t fuck up too badly. Erf. I hope that I manage to learn these lessons without more turnover of friendships.

I like the people I know. I would prefer to keep them.

Sometimes people ask me with paranoia about my agenda for wanting to know them. What I want to get from you is pretty simple: understanding of how and why another person makes the choices they make. If you let me learn about you I will be able to make better, kinder decisions in the future because my understanding of what people might need will be expanded. Thank you.

And if there is anything I can do for you that helps reduce the pain you feel at being alive, let me know. I fucking live for that shit.

Life is hard. I need you. I am a selfish bastard and I wish you needed me too. Most of you don’t need me and I get that. I accept it because there really isn’t another option. But I wish you needed me the way I need you. I cannot be an understanding person without trying to understand you.

I really want to understand people as a larger group. As a collective. I have to do that through individuals. My data is entirely made up of anecdotes and I’m ok with that.

Only in the anecdotes do I hear the why behind peoples beliefs and actions.

I’m going to rewrite Outrunning Suicide next year and I’m going to do it through talking to children. I’m going to find some and work through the chapters one by one with kids. If I can’t explain it in a way that the younger kids can get… it is still too advanced. Right now it is challenging for some adults to read. That’s not the book I’m trying to write. So I need to rip it apart and break it down into smaller pieces.

It’s going to be a lot of work. That’s ok. It is worthy work.

I need to feel like I am doing more in this world than just being super nice to my crotch droppings. I mean, it’s a good thing to do… but I need more than that. Writing the books I have in my head is part of how I will establish the reputation and credibility I will need for building the incest database. My runway on that is extending by an extra ten years. I should put that time to good use and write some of the other books I need to write.

I know I have at least ten books in me and I’m still working on the second one. Time to get the lead out.

I’m getting closer to being able to understand how to tell Part 2.

I know there are several books in me about family dynamics aimed at children. Aimed at teaching them a vocabulary with which to seek out help.

I think I have a truly terrifying children’s board book to graphic novel series in me that slowly unveils layers of stories of abuse. It’s going to be really god damn disturbing. But educational. “When I was a child I spake as a child; when I became a man I put away childish things.” How does understanding of these topics grow and change and morph? What does the boogeyman mean? How is it used? How could it be useful? What is just… entertainment? What do we owe as family obligation?

Am I ever going to be the grownup I see in my head? Will I ever feel like I am a real person who deserves to be loved because they have ruddy well earned it?

I frequently see people espouse the view that no one should have to earn love. We all just deserve it. Well. I can see how you would want to believe that. Sure. I haven’t experienced a world where that is how it works. I could rail at the world for existing in this form or I could work really hard to try and earn love. I’m going to fuck up sometimes. It is going to backfire sometimes. Standing still and stomping my feet and saying, “But I deserve it so give it to me” hasn’t ever worked for me.

I’ve had to work on my behavior. My mood swings. My actions in the world. My fucking facial expressions. My kids won’t even let me fucking cuss much anymore. What the hell.

I have had to learn to tolerate types of touch that irritate me and I’ve had to learn how to reject types of touch I like a lot in order to have this life. It is a painstaking process.

There are people in this world who get to occupy positions they haven’t really earned. That hasn’t been my life experience very often. I work. That’s how I get things.

Time to stop typing. I missed you, internet.

Sex and fucking up

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I had a great chat yesterday. It made me think about a lot of how I’ve screwed up this year.

Sex is complicated. We have sex for so many reasons. For connection, intimacy, orgasms, bonding, feeling-not-alone-in-this-minute.

The thing is, that’s complicated. Why didn’t I pick Noah for every time I wanted sex this year? Because that’s complicated. Sometimes sex with a particular person is loaded with implications across your whole life you can’t handle and you want the ease of sex with someone else. Sometimes I wanted to feel like I still had the ability to connect with new people.

New people have been very instrumental to my survival. I get that it isn’t something that is a big deal to everyone. I know that lots of people have been safer in the known communities of their lives. I have survived by over and over again throwing myself backwards into the arms of strangers and just praying they would catch me. At this point it is no longer a survival mechanism but it is an ingrained habit. That’s complicated.

I don’t think I chased sex as self harm this round but I have certainly done so in the past. Sometimes the choice is, “Do I hurt myself in a known and predictable way because I don’t like myself very much or do I take the risk that this person will be nicer to me than I am able to be to myself or maybe they will hurt me more than I would hurt myself. Roll the dice.”

That’s a choice I’ve made many times in my life. If you haven’t had to deal with the cognitive load of poverty plus severe traumatization… you probably won’t understand. It will seem baffling to you that someone would make such a choice.

I’m glad you’ve never been there. That’s awesome for you.

I’ve been there a lot. I’m not there lately, but I have zero judgment for someone else finding themself in that position. It happens.

There have absolutely been nights when I’ve picked up a stranger and fucked them instead of hurting myself because I didn’t think I could stop until I put me in a hospital.

Was that a bad choice? I really don’t think so. I think I made the best choice I could given all the circumstances of my life in that moment.

It is hard to keep the larger picture in mind when you are judging one particular choice. Choices that were completely reasonable for me at different points in my life shouldn’t be judged the exact same way at this point in my life. I’m in different circumstances. I have different options.

To put it bluntly: I can have an emergency “weekend trip to relax” at this stage of my life. If I feel like I’m going to freak out and do something drastic… I can make it a very safe kind of drastic. Because I’m rich.

But that was literally not available to me before marriage.

Money. Money. Money.

If you have enough money, time, support, fill in the blank to have better options… who the fuck are you to judge someone doing the best they can!?

Get off your high horse.

But I’m really not in the same position as I once was.

How in the hell is any of my behavior this year justifiable? Hunh, hunh?

I’m not sure I can “justify” my behavior. I think I can explain it. I don’t think my explanations are “good enough” from many points of view and there’s not much I can do about that.

I learned things I needed to learn. I was able to find words for problems I wasn’t able to find words for until I processed all the way through some extreme emotions. I was able to change boundaries that were a big problem for me.

Could I have found a way to do it without freaking out and breaking a lot of rules?

Maybe. I tried. I failed.

I succeeded when I blew the boat up.

Things are going a lot better in a variety of ways. Was it worth the cost? Yes. To me. Was it to Noah? He’s still deciding. He’s still raw. That’s fair.

Sometimes we don’t do things to people and they hurt anyway. I didn’t go out and fuck people to hurt Noah. That’s not why it happened. We are all autonomous beings running our own stories and our behavior is not always about our partners. We have our own narrative running. It isn’t about you.

Even if we love you. Even if there could be negative consequences for you. We can’t make every single choice only about you. That’s not a way to be a person.

Would it be nice if our choices didn’t hurt you? Yes.

Yes.

I played a very careful line this year. I didn’t actually do stuff that was that risky to my life. I mostly went out and spent extra time with my friends. People who have been good to me for a long time. I had a tremendous amount of fun. It will help keep me warm for years to come. Was it worth the price I paid?

Probably. Does that mean I can do it like that again? No. I really can’t. It would break Noah.

What does that mean? Our relationship functions based on a lot of trust and mutual worship. If I kill that then I’m kinda destroying both of our reason to live. Whether or not I’m doing something at Noah… I need to pay attention to the impact. My life is completely intwined with him.

If I rock the boat he feels every wave. There is not a lot of separation there.

I’m not sure we will ever get to the point of being “polyamorous” even if we are allowed to discuss it in ten years. But it is ok to have sex with our friends sometimes if we do it together. Is that my ideal? I don’t know. I don’t think my ideal is more fair so I guess it will have to be ok.

There is no fair.

I get why we are both so possessive. I see the holes in both of us that we use one another to fill.

Sex with friends is different than the anonymous sex I also like. They scratch different itches. Sex with friends is safer and more predictable (not in a bad way). Anonymous sex allows me to feel like I am touching the core of connection between strangers. It is both intimate and distant in a way that feels like a spiritual practice to me. The trust and risk are intense rushes.

But my life is wrapped around Noah. So whether or not I’m doing something at him… he will feel it.

Noah doesn’t feel so awesome about my having sex with other people. He wants me to keep my worship at home. When we are having sex with other people together, that’s ok. That’s not scary or hard. Well, sometimes it is logistically hard or a position is hard or… but it’s not threatening in the same way. We are having an adventure together. No one is left to sit with their imagination and fear.

Noah really doesn’t want me to go off alone any more than I want him to. Seems fair. Annoying, but closer to fair than most things ever get.

Why annoying? Because I am selfish selfish selfish selfish selfish. A lot of the reason I have sex is for the orgasm and changing partners increases that like a motherfucker. Sigh.

No life is perfect.

(For the record: Noah has been working hard on this and has had a pretty fucking outstanding success recently. There’s an A for effort and result.)

I know he’s trying. I can see it. I don’t think it would be possible to look at Noah and not see that he is trying as hard as he possibly can for me.

I’m so annoying and hard.

He works far harder than anyone can ask for; that kind of effort is a freely given gift. I know how lucky I am. My physical and mental health issues have not been easy. But Noah considers my companionship worth the cost.

How in the hell did I end up here?

I auditioned hundreds of people and Noah won the part.

I think we are much better and more interesting together than we ever were apart.

I’m looking forward to pregnancy. I get so exhausted that our pace of life will utterly collapse. Yeah, yeah, pregnancy isn’t a disability yeah yeah pregnant women should carry on as if nothing was happening…

I can’t. Gestating is fucking hard in my body. Remodeling and resettling the house has to be complete by January. Next year I’m going to work on academics with my big kids, sit around, sleep, exercise, eat and go grocery shopping.

I’m probably not going to get much else done, to be honest. And that’ll continue for at least 3-6 months after the baby is born.

I’m toast. Breeding is hard.

I’ve completed the cycle and come out the far side more than once so I’m very aware of what it looks like for me.

I’m really excited about the possibility of a pregnancy where I am in much better physical shape to start with (hello marathon and half marathons, you have halo effect I still feel) and I have my IBS mostly under control and I can breathe through my nose. This will be a different experience. I’m also older. This will also be a medicalized experience (hiya bleed out problems) which is kinda terrifying for me.

All the feelings. And my back is giving me trouble. I need to finish this damn remodel. But bending over really kinda sucks.

I’ll get through it. Put a corset on and get your work done, woman.

It’s kinda funny how we all adapt to the tasks life puts in front of us. This art shit weighs on my soul. I really am more calm in my home because of the art work. It is so easy to ground in my house. When you are here you are really in a particular, individual place. That’s a big deal for me. In other peoples homes, in most of the homes I’ve ever lived in… they all kinda blend together. Sure the knick knacks and furniture are sorta different… but the white walls meet the white ceilings and I want to crawl under a table and cry.

No, it’s not rational.

I do not want a fancy “nice” bathroom that looks like it could be in a hotel somewhere. And I’m willing to pay a ridiculous amount of money for the experience I want to have. Every doctor I have wants me to take baths as often as I can. I spend time in my bathroom. I recycle the water too. To deal with my hippy guilt. (The internet tells me that epsom salts, baking soda, vinegar, and sugar are all fine for plants on a small scale so my bath water is fine for my plants. Woo hoo.)

We’ve had a broken toilet for a long time. We’ve been using the grey water to flush the toilet. I’m thrilled that with the increased bath capacity of water I will also be able to use the water for more plants. I’ve always used some of it sometimes… but never for plants if someone has used shampoo or soap.

Why am I so tolerant of my friends having quirks or needing accommodation for their mental health needs? Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha.

Uhm, err, just because I’m a nice person?

*cough*

Because I fucking obsess over what to do with my bath water. I got no stones to throw on people needing to do their thing.

Oh man. I’m going to go through a pregnancy in a bathtub big enough to roll over in. Oh the glory.

Spoiled rotten motherfucker.

I really like my house.

Did I mention I’m having candle holders permanently installed on the walls of the bathroom? And there are skylights above it?

The walls are going to be glittering scenes of autumn and winter. I’m working on them.

My house is a very particular place. I like it so much.

I need to clean it. But that’s a problem for a different day. It won’t be really cleaned until the remodel is done. Too much dust and dirt is being generated every day. Not worth a deep clean. I’ll probably splurge on professionals in January at the start of the pregnancy.

Then I’ll spend a year basking in my family. In 2016 I was supposed to learn how to love myself. I don’t know that I managed, exactly. But I’ll spend 2017 hanging out and letting my family love me. That’s… almost the same thing?

Today will be a Zen sorta day. Noah has a dentist appointment. I’m watching a neighbor’s child in the morning and walking them to school. It’s kinda funny. Then I get to come home and get the kids onto chores and academics while I work. I will have to find a way to do work that is right next to them so we can talk while they do their stuff. They always have questions, which is very appropriate.

Tonight we are going to trick or treat with friends we haven’t seen much in the year since we’ve been back from the road trip. We’ve been really bad friends this year. I’ve dropped everyone and everything on the floor for this remodel. And I do it when I’m doing the breeding thing too.

Uhm, I’m sorry. I will crawl out of a hole again in the future. I hope you still like me then.

But yes. Touching base with old friends. Longevity is a big deal for me. A dear woman I know is deeply associated with a phrase: “Friends come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime.”

I’m really curious which threads are deep enough in the weave that I will know them for most of my life. I am made up of the people who know me. The people who carry my story with them when they go. I am made up of the people who sometimes ruefully think, “What would Krissy do?”

I am a creation in your mind as much as I am anything at all. And the fact that you think about me. That fact is enough to mean that even when I fuck up, I am maybe not beyond forgiveness.

Sure, you can validate me.

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Well that was fucking awesome. Eldest Child had her evaluation at Stanford today. They told me everything I wanted to hear, everything I expected to hear, and then lots of nice things thrown in for a cherry on top.

Specifically: yes this child has ADHD. Both inattentive and hyperactive/impulsive so she’s not one of those one sided ADD children.

Also: verbally she is incredibly high, right at the gifted level and academically she is all over the map. Her reading is at grade level (HA! That happened JUST RECENTLY) and her writing and math are both at first grade level. I said, “That makes sense because she’s working on the 1st grade workbooks in both of those areas.” They suggested that if she doesn’t catch up by the end of the school year I might want to investigate resources in the school district for helping in those areas. They think she might have a learning disability but they suspect that whatever I’m doing is helping her deal with it to the point where it isn’t particularly diagnosable at this point.

That was what I wanted to hear and what I expected to hear. That was very validating.

Then they threw in a bunch of nice stuff like, “We rarely get to see children as happy as her; it’s a real treat.” “I kinda wish you could teach classes to our other families, you really have a lot of this figured out.” “Most of the recommendations we are going to send you are things you are already doing–good job.”

All of the doctors we spoke to expressed that in their opinion with different parents or if she was in school… she would be struggling emotionally and academically. They said, “She is very lucky that you have been willing to build a whole world around her needs. It’s a wonderful thing to see.”

I honestly didn’t expect to get this much of a pat on the back. They literally had nothing to say that I was doing blatantly wrong.

I’m so forking glad that we did this.

Too much, again. Damnit.

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Stuff is creeping in. Today: having lunch with a friend then we are getting tattoos. Tonight I’m having dinner with a lovely friend. Tomorrow is all the massage. The kids also have stuff to get to.

It isn’t that what I’m doing is hard, it is that I’m having to switch gears on what I’m thinking about. I was thinking about that process lately: transitioning. I’ve been staring at the kids all week and thinking about the idea of transitioning from one activity to another and how do we do it?

A friend asked me how I feel about classes that my kids sign up for. Do I insist on attendance? Err… it doesn’t come up much? My kids aren’t very scheduled. Our classes are exciting treats that we are very happy to learn about. There is no dragging. It isn’t hard for us to get out of the house (mostly) because I start getting ready about three hours before we need to leave.

Most days we sit down at breakfast and talk about the structure of the day. What are we doing? Where are we going? I give the kids an idea of what to expect and when I’ll start prompting them to get ready.

Very rarely I run into the room and say, “Oh shoot! I didn’t look at a clock and I forgot _____ and we need to walk out the door RIGHT NOW!!!”

I am shocked that when I do this the kids usually jump up in the air and start rushing to get ready like someone is chasing them with a hot poker. They have bought in to “this is our life and we are obligated to show up when we say we will”.

I talk a lot about respecting teachers because they choose to share what they know with people who want to learn. That’s a gift and an honor. You must respect the efforts of teachers.

Kinda funny given how anti school I am, right? I’m not anti teachers. I’m anti-Industrial-Era-conformity-brainwashing.

That’s not the same thing as learning or education or teachers. In fact I have incredible respect for the process of learning.

Not that every school (public or otherwise) works the same way. I know. But it’s a crapshoot year by year. In “school” you don’t get to pick your teachers, mostly. In life you do. College is a weird hybrid of “school” and life because you have some choice but not that much. You pick your place of education more. (Not that most people research the teaching staff much before picking a university.) You get to drop classes and take a different teacher if you don’t like an approach… sometimes.

I have multiple bad grades (D or F) on my record because of personality conflicts with teachers. Does that mean I know nothing about those subjects? Nope. It means that bitch didn’t like me.

That happens.

School is about measuring how you jump through the random hoops that someone decides to set for you. You think it is even and fair how those hoops are divvied out? Ha. Ha. Ha.

Standardized tests are flat out abusive to most minority populations. Why? Because they say, “Hey, how quickly can you identify all this random shit from White American Culture? Not fast? Then you’re stupid.”

That’s abusive.

And school in America in the year 2016 is about, “How fast can you regurgitate facts about this culture to prove you are ‘smart’.”

Yes there are exceptions. Yes there are good teachers in public schools and there are good private schools.

Are those private schools available to people who are very poor? No? Then school in America is about regurgitating facts. I don’t care that your kid might be getting away with having a good experience. The majority of American children are not.

How do I know this? Why am I so god damn confident of what I know? Because I went to 25 schools. Then 7 universities. Then I substituted in about 8 schools. Then I taught in 4 schools.

It’s not a huge sample size. But it’s big enough to let me see a diversity most people get to pretend doesn’t exist. I went to schools in rural areas, in neighborhoods of a predominate ethnic identity other than white, in rich schools, in poor schools, and many levels in between. I’ve seen Silicon Valley, Compton, and rural Oklahoma.

I can’t speak to the east coast from personal experience. But I read a lot of teachers. I’m pretty sure I’m right from coast to coast. Teachers are talking about the problems in the system. All you have to do is go look a little bit and you’ll find criticism. You’ll never run out of it to read.

I don’t think my way is right or mass actionable. I don’t think the solution to our broken schooling system is everyone opting out to home school. But I don’t know how to force the solutions that are necessary. I don’t know how to force a non-abusive mechanism on top of an abusive system and I just can’t be part of that abusive system any more. Not as a student and not as a parent.

Could I be a teacher in that system? Sure. Why? Because I’m subversive as fuck and I think the kids who are there need people like me whenever possible. Will I sacrifice everything in my life on the altar of helping other peoples kids?

No. I made these two people. I’m responsible for them.

Yesterday I cracked. I stopped asking the kids to help and I sent them outside to play. They had a glorious day and I got the house like 75% of the way to clean. Yes, I know people believe that I clean frantically full time and my house is always spotless so it isn’t that much work (or something). Well, actually…. (I find myself using that more often because it is now a banned phrase in many places. I try to only do it when I’m being a snot and refuting ideas about myself that annoy me.) I don’t clean that much. My house turns into a pit just like everyone else’s house. But I host big parties pretty frequently and I usually spend about a week cleaning before hand. So people think my house is always clean.

It’s a ruse.

I can usually flight of the bumblebee and feel presentable for dinner guests. And my kids have to pick up their toys before they get screens so our house doesn’t get that bad. Only mostly they clean by shoving whichever behind whatever and into wherever. So every so often we have to dump ever drawer, every shelf, every everything in order to find things. Because seriously after a while we can’t find anything and then everyone expects me to be a fucking homing beacon and they ask me 9,032 times a day where “x” is.

I can’t.

They ask me to buy them new shoes because they can’t find any to wear. I clean their room and find four pairs. That kinda thing.

So a few times a year we face overwhelming chaos. For the love of toast I don’t know how families with two working parents ever clean at all. When it gets bad (like me being gone two weekends in a row so things kinda pile up extra hard, and we are remodeling, and school level transitioning) it will take a solid 8-10 days of me cleaning for 4-10 hours/day.

(There’s always a day in the middle where I clean for four hours then collapse in a heap and cry for a while.)

This cleaning is extra epic because Youngest child has to be entirely moved out of that bedroom indefinitely for the remodel. They are currently replacing the wall/window and that room is not sealed to the out doors. (They have built the new bathroom walls/front wall in front of it, but it’s not all done and everything.) Lots of construction debris in there. Kiddo can’t use that room.

So they are sharing again for a bit. Which was ridiculous extra cleaning and sorting. Frankly I think they were god damn awesome.

At one point Eldest Child started crying and said, “I’m just not good at cleaning. I’m not smart at this and I never will be.”

I laughed and laughed and laughed. She looked at me and said, “WHAT?!”

“You act like I fell out of my mother’s womb being able to clean. I couldn’t do it when I was seven. Frankly I think you have more skill than I had at that age.”

She blinked for a bit, dried her eyes, and got up and made tremendous progress all in a big burst. At the end she grinned at me and said, “Ok I am getting better.”

Cocky little thing. Yes, you are. Every day. Every year. You are getting better.

So I think about these things because transitioning eats into progress. The more times I have to transition in a day the less progress I make on all tasks. This is a well documented phenomena. You can spend four years taking a Spanish class, or four months of immersion. And after the immersion experience you will be far more fluent.

Some guys I know were bitching at me that I should really stop what I’m doing with my life and learn all about the influential music from 1968.

I told them I don’t have time and they demanded that I justify what is more important than that. I rattled off what I’m doing with my life. They kinda blinked at me and said, “Ok maybe you don’t have time.”

No shit, Sherlock.

Everyone has different stuff going on in their lives. Everyone has a different comfort level of transitions. I don’t need to judge what other people need in order to feel comfortable. That internal Holy Fucking Shit No reaction needs to be turned off. Ain’t nobody trying to tell me that I need to pick it up. Not really.

My inside voice is changing. I do hear you.

Chill. The. Fuck. Out.

Why do I talk to myself? Because over time I am changing how I react to different stimuli. It was said that a lot of what is interesting about me now is that I do fewer global freak outs. When something is upsetting to me I don’t scream about everyone and everything. I can say exactly what I’m upset about and why and I can usually trace it down to the root. That’s letting me pull the weeds. I can tell which tendrils are a problem.

It’s ok that I failed in the school environment. I mean, I was usually an A/B student (except for personality conflicts) and I’m still a failure in the school environment. It isn’t that I’m unintelligent. But I cannot conform in the ways required to go period to period learning in the teeny chunks that can hopefully be absorbed by a large enough percentage of people to not be a complete waste of time to everyone. Woo.

Do you know why I was a good teacher? Because I met before school, during breaks, after school, and on Saturdays with students who could not understand what I was teaching and I helped them catch up on foundational information they missed along the way.

I can’t give that much of myself to people outside my family right now. My kids need that time from me. Why? Because we have some fucked up brain chemistry and DNA from generations of trauma. We need to do what we are doing right now.

We are learning how to adapt to life. We are learning how to learn. We are learning shit loads of stuff that we will be able to use later. We are planning. We are growing.

And we are doing it slowly. We are doing it by concentrating on one thing at a time for a few weeks.

That way we can spend many hours a day on one task and make substantial progress at it instead of spending 15 minutes here and 15 minutes there.

It is hard. It is physically and mentally and emotionally taxing. But I enjoy it. I feel rewarded. I feel like my reward is the conversation I get to have around the table every meal. My kids fucking think.

I know so much intense analysis of My Little Pony characters that it is ridiculous because I don’t think I’ve ever watched an episode. I know their back stories, motivations, and things that are being foreshadowed. Yeah. My kid told me, “They are seriously foreshadowing something about her in this episode….” Then later I heard, “In this episode they broke the fourth wall to…”

I asked her if she knows what breaking the fourth wall actually means. Nope. So I explained. In great detail. With lots of examples. Afterwards she started rattling off examples.

Yup. Like that.

I treat my children like if they don’t know something yet it is because I have not yet done a good enough job of talking about it. So I’d better get on that.

I really like my life.

I like feeling responsible. Resiliency experts say that people are most likely to be successful if they internalize that they must be responsible. In other words: we must find a way or make a way. So we do.

I feel that way about anti-racist stuff. Incest research. Home schooling. Teaching my kids how to take care of their shit.

I believe I must make this work. Period. So I will.

What does that actually fucking mean? It means that I picked this life. Who the fuck knows why. So I’m going to live it to the absolute fullest. With great privilege comes great responsibility. I’m one of the luckiest mother fuckers born in the history of all time.

How did that happen?

Even with all the trauma. So fucking what. Every level of person experiences trauma. That’s universal. Not every being experiences trauma (lucky bastards) but every level of human experience has trauma.

What traumatizes one person is standard, normal, and appropriate to someone else. So check your fucking judgment, wench. (talking to myself…)

I have an idea for the tattoo. I’m not going to write it out in advance. But I’m going to have a wonderful time talking to my artist today. He’s so wonderful.

And I’m having lunch with a friend first. Then dinner with a different friend.

I don’t in any way want to complain about the fullness of my life. I am blessed. I am loved. People seek out my company on my terms. Because they consider the effort to be worth what they get in return.

I can’t judge that. I need to just say thank you.

I’m trying to slow down. Frankly the remodel is driving me batty. They are banging all day long. So every second all day long I have to process hitting sounds and decide they aren’t a threat.

That wears me out.

But I have to be home. For Reasons.

So I’m doing what I can to destress in the house. My anxiety is spiking like a motherfucker. But! I know it is temporary so I can have something I badly want and I’ll get to have it as long as I live here. Sounds worth putting up with.

But it hurts my body. It’ll end soon.

Every time I transition from thinking, “Is that the door?” back to whatever I’m doing… it takes a penalty spoon.

So I’m thinking about transitions like fuck right now. How many activities can I manage to get done in a day? How much work? How many different kinds of tasks? I think it is funny how different stages of cleaning feel different to me. I can’t declutter a room, organize it, then remove filth all in a go. I just can’t transition like that. I have to declutter the house. Then organize it. Then clean. I can’t go back and forth because I experience distress physically and psychiatrically.

Transitions are that hard for me. I will fall to the floor and sob and not be able to do whatever it is you want of me because I just can’t.

That’s something that has been a pattern in my life for a very long time and I’m just kind of recognizing what that means in my head. Oh. Flooding. Oh. That’s…

Oh.

Yeah. That.

I like intense connections with a lot of fucking bandwidth. So when I need to spread that bandwidth out between 37 different distractions instead of 2-3…

I hurt.

It isn’t anyone else’s fault. But I’m trying to figure out what managing that means. I need this to get better. I need to stop flooding when I walk near someone else’s life because I feel like I should try to conform and I can’t I can’t I can’t.

No one god damn asked you to. Chill. The. Fuck. Out.

I’m trying.

It’s funny to stop and think, “This is actually a huge improvement!”

Good grief.

There are a high number of specific high intensity things I want to get done in this life. I won’t get them done in 15 minutes of prep at a time. That’s ok. I don’t need to schedule my life how other people do. It is working for them. Stop projecting.

We all want different things. Health means something different to every person.

I’m trying to figure out what it means to me. This is proving to be more complicated than expected. Not sure if that is because I was naive to start with or what. Anything is possible.

I’m making a lot of progress with my pain stuff. (The overall refraining from typing is helping. Hey–it’s Friday. I kinda took a few days off… I am trying to moderate…)

I’m making progress on pain stuff. My bowels are… well… I’m told this is progress? I don’t fucking know. But it is weirder than hell. I mostly stopped with the pills for a few days (because obviously my body was freaking out) on the doctors recommendation and the freak out ended right away. This is supposedly a sign that things are working right on schedule. I will resume sloughing the parasites from my liver later today. Oh joy. But! I’m seeing… uhm… something fucking weird that I’m told is results?

Pooooooooooooooooooooop.

We talk about poop while eating all the time.

Muahahahaha

My kids are very comfortable saying, “I’m going to eat lots of vegetables because your body sucks.”

If you can’t be a good example, be a horrible warning. Do one or the other and then do that motherfucker.

I guess?

Yesterday I screwed up. I put in a load of laundry and I didn’t even think about what I was washing. A new dress up clothes thing was put in the basket. It had never been washed. It was bright fucking red. So all the martial arts uniforms were very pink.

Oooooops. Shit. Like rose colored pink. Dark rose. I was all, “NOOOOOOOO!”

Then I thought about my mama and I breathed a prayer of thanks. “Hey kids? Want to learn how to fix a mistake?” I used oxygen brightener and bleach and I boiled it on the stove top and those fuckers are white as snow once again.

Because my mama taught me what to do.

That’s a good memory. Thank you, mama.

Thank you for teaching me how to do my laundry on the stove because that was what we had and you were going to make sure I had the skills to be presentable no matter what happened to me or how bad my life was. You tried. Thank you.

During this process my friend was over and she asked if I wanted her to do the poking/stirring over the fire. I didn’t want her to. I felt entirely Zen in that moment. I am where I want to be doing what I want to do. I’m showing my kids how I fix a mistake. It takes time and effort. But it’ll be ok.

It was one of the most intensely blissful moments I’ve experienced in a while. That’s flow.

If I cared very much about getting out of my house and not being “stuck” with these experiences as the woman… I wouldn’t get to have that. I’m glad I get to have that. I’m glad I get to see the value in my mother.

I miss you, mama.

I miss all the friends I’m not reaching out to because I’m overwhelmed. I’ll come back. I’ll have spoons some day.

In March we have social stuff planned on the first two days. Then… uhm… I don’t know about the Easter party. Wonder how my bathroom will be? Err… I’ll let people know two weeks before?

I think that I need to not schedule anything else in March. Which is intimidating. I’m not resting. I’m working and socializing because I’m so desperate to catch up on the work. I need to rest and I won’t stop working so socializing needs to be back burnered for a few weeks. Just Do Eeeet.

What work do I feel so pressed to do? Well… we are transitioning from preschool to elementary school. Which is a fuck ton of work for me. (I don’t know how you folks who home school with kids in preschool, elementary, middle, & high school do it. How do you find space?! )

The thing I miss the most about teaching in a school is the prep time plus the right to control what everyone was going to be learning. This is much harder. I have to prepare on the fly for a range of topics. It’s brutal some days in terms of cognitive load. It is fucking hard breaking down every little thing into schemas and concepts and repeatable skill training.

This is why other sane people outsource this shit. But we have some genetic stuff to consider that will make us always on the edge of the bell curve. I’m glad the training exists for people in the center of the bell curve. Yay you!

Hi, I’m Krissy. I’m an outlier.

Name the metric.

I just uhm…. like to be difficult?

IT ISN’T PERSONAL, OK!?!

I should stop now. If I get up and start moving now I’ll have all my morning prep done before Noah finishes breakfast and I will be able to eat at the same time as them instead of sitting down as they finish eating. I’m a pain in the ass to take care of. I struggle to think the effort is really merited.

Know something that I find wacky? Youngest child just fucking loves to stand there and hand me pill after pill after pill. Kid says, “You have to fix the problems. You have to get your poop better so you can digest food. I want you to die when you are very very very old. So here.” It varies somewhat, but this entire experience is just…

validating as fuck.

I’m trying to figure out what I need. My issues are complicated, layered, and difficult to solve. I know you are doing what you need to do to solve your issues and it doesn’t look much like what I’m doing.

I need to figure out how to not feel so fucking bad about that. It’s ok that I need stuff other people don’t need. That doesn’t mean I’m bad. That doesn’t mean I should die so I stop stealing resources from more worthy people. It has to be ok that I need what I need.

It isn’t fair that I have the money to pay for it and other people don’t. There is no fair. There is no deserve. There is no way to have things come out even.

I had to believe there is no deserve when it was really bad. I have to believe it about the good stuff too. Or …. or I just can’t. I can’t do this. I can’t get fucking pompous and shitty and “Oh I have a good life because I deserve it. Because I worked harder than other people.”

Gag. Cough. Puke. Bullshit.

No. I really didn’t work harder than other people. Ok, I worked harder than some people. But not harder than everyone. Some people worked ten times as hard as me. They didn’t get where I am.

It’s not because I’m getting what I deserve.

Nothing is fair.

4,050 words. I should stop anyway. Oh my poor wrists. But I feel better. I feel like I’m finding the words to the parts I need to talk about without talking about what I don’t need to talk about.

That feels better.

How do I get to be me without hurting other people?

That’s the journey.

Resources

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I like talking to people on social media. Recently I came across a nice young person who is heading off to grad school. Yay! Good for you. I made a semi-off-handed comment about “Are you pursuing services?” and I was asked what I was talking about.

I brought it up because this is a person of color heading to a school in an extremely white state. I’m *sure* support exists.

This person expressed surprise. There are services? What kind of services? What kind of support exists? How can I get help?

We are exchanging emails now. I feel like a Grade A Asshole, but one of the first things I suggested was reaching out to the Black Student Union and asking them about the culture on campus. Then you can talk to a local doctor in your home state, get an official on-the-record diagnosis (of problems you have already had for decades–this isn’t about making shit up, this is about a paper trail) and get support.

This person was shocked. They had never considered reaching out for that kind of support.

I didn’t know this support existed when I went to grad school. If I knew then what I know now… I would never have had to take a hand written test. I could have typed the final exam and I would have a masters degree. With my history there is *no excuse* for a school withholding a degree because I can’t hand write. My future work will not depend on my ability to hand write.

I feel weird suggesting resources that are *not for me*. It feels.. inappropriate. And yet!

I want more people of color to succeed in college and join the well-paid labor market. Resources help that happen. It doesn’t take a lot of time out of my day to reach out on social media to strangers who mention that stuff is going on for them. I don’t spend an hour a day. And countless people have told me that I show up on the exact right day to tell them something useful.

I really appreciate social media.

I like changes.

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Things are moving around in the house. This is glorious for me. I love rearranging. Lots of furniture has left. Very little is going to replace it. We will get a small dresser for Calli. But the armoire and huge dresser are gone. This means Calli’s room and the garage feel much more open and spacious.

The van is mostly packed. Tomorrow I will probably get everything else out of the garage and side shed. Food won’t be packed and that’s ok. There are a few hanging details left to arrange, but things are plugging along.

I ordered Shanna a larger bathing suit because all of her size 6 stuff is getting ridiculously small. She’s between size 6 and 7–it depends on the brand and the style of clothing. It’s kind of funny, this is the closest her age and her size have been in her life.

Signed on for AAA. The ultra-woo-hoo version where they will tow you for 200 miles. Card is in the mail.

Emailed the travel itinerary to most folks. I’m sure I missed some people.

Because I’m a dork I now have Shanna’s birthday present, Santa present, Christmas jammies, and a new fun outfit. Most of these things have just kind of been sitting around waiting for her to get to this size. They are not new purchases. So I will have to look for Calli on the road. They both have ornaments for this year, barrettes, and a glitter tattoo thing for their stockings. I am not going to be willing to come home from this trip and do a lot of Christmas shopping. So I’m trying to be mostly done before I leave.

I have a bad habit of buying stuff WAY too big. Which means stuff sits around waiting for Shanna to grow into things. Then I scramble to have Calli get something. But, she actually gets stuff she wants. Shanna gets whatever I bought however long ago. Ha.

I’m resettling the school stuff. Only 12 more days in our school year. Things are going so fast.

Hindi study

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Last year we somehow stumbled across an advertisement for Hindi lessons at the local temple. (It is on the end of our block.) All four of us went to the first round of classes and it was pretty fun. This year Shanna said she didn’t want to sit still every week and only Calli asked to enroll.

I find the study of Hindi to be stimulating in a way that few things have been. Having to memorize different letters and connect them to sounds that don’t exist in my language feels an order of magnitude different from studying languages with a similar alphabet (like Spanish). I’m not saying harder–I’m not sure if it is harder. But it feels different.

I studied Spanish in school–both high school and college. I am nothing near fluent. But the study of Hindi is teaching me that I have a significant vocabulary–my problem is verb conjugation. When the teacher asks us to create a sentence in Hindi to answer a question I always have a complete sentence in Spanish pop into my head and I have to consciously not say it. Wrong language. But having these little epiphanies over and over that I could probably actually go to South America and communicate fine after a month is pretty huge for me. I have lots of impostor syndrome. I think I am stupid and incapable of learning many things. Then I find out that I ALREADY KNOW THINGS!!!

It is hard to explain how exciting this feels. On one hand, people regularly tell me I am intimidating because I am smart/educated. On the other hand, I feel like I’m not talented nor smart nor educated because I know people who have gone way deeper into almost any topic than I have. I’m good at viewing things in the way that makes me look bad.

Hindi is causing me to feel pride in my ability to learn in a way that few things have. For one thing: I’m turning around and teaching Shanna once we get home. She is making progress as fast or faster than Calli and Calli is actually attending the class. It is like ASL only better. ASL was harder for me to feel pride in because Shanna picked it up at two or three times the rate I did and I always felt stupid and like I am too slow to be able to say what is happening in my mind. I just can’t make my hands go fast enough.

Hindi isn’t like this. I shouldn’t feel so much pride that I am picking up concepts faster than many of the 6-7-8 year old kids in the class.. but they are growing up in houses where this language is a daily occurrence. I do feel pride that I am managing to study on my own well enough that I am picking things up faster than people who are learning more about their native language. (They all speak English in most of their lives and Hindi almost exclusively at home based on what they say in class.)

I’m not competing with the kids. That’s not the point. But I have fairly clear proof that I am learning and I am not stupid. I’m progressing quickly. Having it be so crystal clear that I am learning is… it feels really good. I feel proud of myself.

Today we had kind of a weird class. Some of the teachers were ill so they combined levels 1, 2, 3, and 4. This meant that the class was too slow for half the people and way too fast for the other half. Ahhh group teaching. The teacher who teaching level 4 was disappointed in me that I couldn’t come up with a Hindi sentence describing what I will do on Halloween. Uhm, the only verb I know is “is”. I know colors. I can count. I’m on my way to knowing the alphabet. No… I don’t yet know how to say, “On October 31st we will dress up and go trick or treating.” Nope, don’t have that vocabulary yet. But I may work on it this week and write down the phonetic sentence and say it next week. Because she’d be thrilled I looked it up.

I find it strange that I feel so good about the positive affirmations from the teachers. Why do I care? They are strangers and it’s not like this is going on my permanent record. But I care.

Hindi requires a similar kind of discipline as training for the marathon. I have to show up consistently and do the study. Every single day. I have to train. I have to live my life as if attaining mastery of the language is a goal. Just like training for the marathon. I have to not skip runs because I feel whiny. I have to do it anyway or my body will not be ready on the crucial day. If I don’t study Hindi I won’t ever be able to go to India and study farming with people who have questionable English. I want it so bad I feel an ache in my bones.

I want to be able to talk to people in other countries about farming and incest. I’m kind of weird. I want to go meet people when I learn farming and build relationships and come back years later after they know me and trust me and then get their communities to talk to me about incest. I have a plan.

I feel grateful that some days I wake up and it doesn’t feel like I’m trapped in limbo. I’m on a journey. I’m not waiting for the future to happen to me. I’m living my future. I am doing what I always wanted to do. I am home schooling my children in security and love. I am learning languages so I can go learn from people who have entirely different life experiences than me. I am getting to enjoy the companionship and growth of my children such that I am truly getting to see a happy, healthy childhood up close. I am ridiculously blessed.

When I have conflicts with my kids and I feel very anxious about them it is important to keep in mind that I get along with them better than I’ve ever gotten along with anyone. That doesn’t mean it is always smooth sailing. I am pretty sure I will never have a relationship that is all smooth sailing. That doesn’t mean I should opt-out of relationships and it doesn’t mean I should try hard to keep people away from me.

Life is complicated. I’m grateful that this portion of my journey involves getting to engage in study that improves my sense of self esteem while also significantly furthering my life goals. Often those two aspects do not move in tandem. I am lucky.

Ok, now that I’ve done my Hindi for the day time to run. It’s a wonderfully easy Saturday. This is my shortest Saturday run until April. I should find joy in that. From here on out it gets harder.

Luckily, I can do it. I already have so I have no fear. The half marathon Thanksgiving weekend (my race is on Saturday) will be easy. My informalish goal is to manage a 11:50 or better pace. I was super close last time until mile 11 when my ankles seized. More stretching this training schedule. I’m also doing more weight lifting. Being stronger seems mandatory for more speed at this stage. And 26.2 miles just doesn’t sound that far any more. March will be here soon and I’ll run that far and be fine. It blows my mind.

I am more than I ever thought I could be.

Progress

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The kids have blasted through a few different milestones this week. I should record this so I don’t forget. Both kids are now swimming without a life vest. This is huge. Both kids got off the bucket support in ice skating (Calli is doing better than Shanna). Last, but not least, both kids have suddenly decided they are interested in long bike rides.

I find it fascinating how neck and neck they are for physical skills. In a few years Calli will probably be far more advanced than Shanna at the rate she picks things up. They aren’t equally skilled in all areas of knowledge, but Calli has a great relationship with her body. Shanna reminds me of me. Ha.

I feel guilty anytime I say that they can be assholes, but when it comes to dealing with people who might take care of them it seems like fair warning. They can be sweet as pie and they can be serious assholes. You have to be prepared to hold boundaries and really fucking mean your “no” or they will make you sorry. They are tenacious and pushy in a way rarely tolerated in children.

I’m crossing my fingers it will work out in the long run. For now there are days when they are pretty hard to handle.

It isn’t about you (whoever you are) because they do it with me, Noah, K, and everyone else who has ever baby-sat. Children are supposed to test limits. I also believe that children are supposed to run smack into the brick wall of limits and be told NO. Because that is part of life. You don’t always get what you want and learning to manage that frustration is easier when you are under ten than it is over thirty.

I feel scared that I am doing them a disservice by allowing them to push as hard as they do. Most children are “broken” of that habit. I try to break my kids of the habit of shitting in the back yard. Backtalk is ok with me.

Pick your battles.

I want my daughters to be able to grow up and speak as assertively as any man. I don’t know many women who can. I know a few, because I hunt for such Amazonian Goddesses.

They bug me and delight me. They frustrate me and fill me with so much hope I feel like I will explode. Every day. I am grateful every day that I get to be with them. I stop and make time even when I’m being a pissy bitch.

“Today is kind of hard. But it is the best kind of hard I can imagine. I am grateful I get to be here doing what I’m doing.”

Shanna and I had a fight about something…can’t remember what about. It wasn’t a big one. She went to her room to cry. When I checked on her after a few minutes she said, “It feels like no one loves me today.”

I said, “Do you love me?”

“Yes.”

“Do you get mad at me sometimes?”

“Yes. You deserve it.”

“I’m not quibbling. But you can get mad at me without it taking away from how much you love me. Why do you think it works differently for me? You are the best thing that has ever happened to me and I love you to the moon and back. And sometimes you piss me off. Life is like that.”

She kinda laughed and hugged me.

When I really think about it… I feel bad for my mom. She probably does still love me. Even though she didn’t want me to start with. Even though she wasn’t very good at taking care of me. Even though I have pissed her off, maybe more than all her other children combined. She probably loves me.

I really hope my kids never need to pull away from me for their own safety.

This week has been tumultuous emotionally. But we’ve had internet connectivity stuff that prevented me from boring anyone with it. Huzzah?

Apparently today we are going dancing. Because someone finally responded with a yes. I was getting emotionally ready to back out on going. We don’t really have appropriate costuming. And Noah is not interested in dancing. And managing the kids while dealing with Noah’s unhappiness about being dragged to something he hates is always fun.

I was hoping that everyone would tell me no they weren’t going so I could skip it too.

I like to dance. I love dancing. Sometimes dragging a whole crew of people who need care of coaxing isn’t very fun. It is sounding really hard today. But a posse was formed so now I can’t back out. Even though it sounded like way more fun when I first heard of it months ago it doesn’t sound real fun today.

Noah didn’t go to bed last night. He’s probably going to be cranky. There is always the double whammy that being sleep deprived makes him cranky and then he’s extra cranky because I woke up in the middle of the night and yelled at him about not sleeping. Because when he doesn’t sleep at night he sleeps through the weekend. And we don’t have children who wake up at night anymore so I’m really sick to death of a partner who is cranky because of sleep dep. There is no excuse.

Only there are dozens of excuses and I’m an asshole for wanting to control his sleep so much.

Well, there are weeks when he naps enough during the days to make up a whole extra work day of time gone. Given that his time off amounts to a day of work amount of time off… he is effectively not available 7-9 hours of the day 7 days a week. And it’s not like he hangs out with them for all of the 4-6 hours he overlaps awake with them. Not even close.

The mothers helper kid stopped showing up. That’s a write off.

Getting actual, consistent support is hard. I’m tired.

I’m having a hard time with some communication stuff too. I don’t feel heard very much. When other people act like “they’ve heard all my shit because they’ve read the blog so when we get together it is their turn to talk” I feel… really shitty.

Writing on the blog doesn’t increase my sense of being seen all that much. I think it is important. I think it is helpful with a lot of my relationships. But I never blog about everything going through my head. I have so many layers of filters. If I mentioned x on the blog there is usually about fourteen layers of shit associated with x that I didn’t dare write about.

And people don’t really want to hear about it. I’ve already used my word count up for the day. Without ever once opening my mouth.

I’ve been wanting to bang my head a lot lately as a reminder to shut up. Shut up. Just shut up you stupid bitch.

I’m supposed to stand there and smile and be supportive about someone else’s issues and not say anything that might make anyone feel uncomfortable. Just shut up shut up shut up.

I don’t think it is “personal”. If I asked people about why communication stuff is wonky I would be dismissed or told I was imagining it or it was just my perception.

Ok fine. Maybe I should just stay home with my perception then. In my home with just my kids it doesn’t feel nearly as bad that I’m not allowed to talk about my shit. I knew that was the deal before I got into this situation. It doesn’t bother me very much with kids. I don’t want to hurt them and I know that knowing too much about people like me will hurt kids.

It is harder with adults. So much harder.

Today I run 4.5 miles before the dance event. Thank goodness today is a massage day.

For all that I seem to live at my pity party table I know I have a pretty fucking good life.

I’m going to go cry out my misery at Disney next year. Hilarious.

If I could stop wanting people and if I could start being happier with just being alone as I do things my life would probably be perfect. I really like what I get to do with my time in the main. Yeah, I won’t fill my hours exactly the same way when the kids are grown but I’m content with where I am for now.

If I could just stop feeling sad. If I could stop missing my mommy so much.

Shanna and Calli call one another “Sissy”. I’m not entirely sure how/where they picked it up but now I’m copying it with both of them.

That was what my sister wanted to be called. She would hit me if I used her real first name when I was little. She was Sissy. End of story.

Sometimes when I hear Shanna and Calli say ever so sweetly, “Sissy will you please help me?” “Oh Sissy I’d love to” I walk away and cry.

I feel like an asshole. Why am I crying? Because I’m so fucking jealous. My Sissy hated me so much. Get over it. I’m trying. Thus the crying in the early morning hours. Because crying is how you get over it.

I feel really sad. I did sleep well last night. A good 7.5 hours. That has been my sleep cycle for most of my life. I’ve been trying to eat those shitty vegetable things everyone tells me are “good for me”. I’m mostly eating them cooked, so I don’t get massive diarrhea but sometimes people put them in front of me raw and I try to be all GGG and eat them anyway. And I burn with punishment.

It is funny how suicidal thinking works. There is a difference (for me) between suicidal ideation where I feel like I am working on A Plan and the sad anxious feeling of wanting to give up. The wanting to give up feels like a dog whining in the corner. Small, helpless, not able to get up and do much for itself. Pitiful and pathetic and not worthy of notice. It isn’t threatening. It isn’t real.

There is a difference between the days when I have to more or less crawl across freeway overpasses because I want to jump so fucking badly and the days when I want to just hide under the desk rocking and crying and beating my head.

Hiding this from my children for 7-9 hours a day 7 days a week is really hard.

I need to just be grateful that I don’t have to do much cooking. That is the most frequent point at which I fail to keep my shit together. Thank you, Noah. I really appreciate it.

I need to give my arms a break. Is it bright enough outside to run yet? This time I need to eat something before I leave. That last weekend run where I took off having eaten nothing felt really bad. You require fuel in your tank.

Good thing I pack little squeeze packets of peanut butter and chocolate just in case. I’m smarter than I look. Or, more accurately, I’ve been stupid a lot of times and eventually I learned. So I’m probably not smarter than I look.

I need to give Noah a chance with today. No, he doesn’t like dancing. He tries to be nice about it. He will help with the kids. He will in general be reasonable company.

My expectations of him are really unfair and ridiculous. I’m sorry. I expect Noah to be cheerful and upbeat about pretty much everything and it isn’t very nice of me.

When I’m around someone who is in a shitty mood I tend to sink to their level and keep on sinking. When I’m around people who are upbeat and perky I can ride the wave with them. I feel like a jerk for needing other people to lead my emotional experience.

Sometimes it is hard for me to feel happiness at all without someone modeling how it is supposed to work. That’s a lot of what I like about my kids. They are so happy. Yes, they can be abrasive assholes and they will scream when they don’t like something. (working on that) But mostly minute by minute they are just…. happy. Life is really good. They get their needs met.

That’s a lot of why I like hanging out with them so much. I will fake happiness in order to buy the relationships I want. It is part of why I have such trouble at jobs. I don’t care that much about money. Beyond subsistence and minimal safety I was never real motivated to work hard for money. Enough was good enough.

At every job I’ve ever had there is far less impetus to be in a good mood. Why, so I can make a customer happy? What fucking ever.

But if my attitude is the difference between Shanna and Calli having a good day or a bad day, then I need to work on my attitude. As one of the moms in our group says, “You’ve got to have a good attitude…”

I can’t control the fact that I have mental illness and it has impact on my kids. What I can do is work to mitigate the damage. What I can do is behave in such a way that they will grow up and be able to understand how hard I worked at being good to them. I hope. Who knows. Maybe they will never give a shit. Most kids don’t seem to care about their parents much.

Doesn’t everyone want to feel appreciated?

One of my neighbors is talking about home schooling her kids next year. She talked about wanting to do it from the first day we met. I asked her what was stopping her and it came down to fear that she couldn’t do a good enough job.

Then last year she had a bunch of problems with the school. Her children are really not being appropriately served. So she’s considering home schooling a lot harder.

She asked a lot of questions. I feel I was pretty balanced. I started with my normal, “Of course there is a whole spectrum of opinions from radical in the direction of no direct teaching to school-at-home with every minute scheduled. I’ll talk about what I do first and then I will move on to different points in the spectrum and talk about the pros and cons. The important thing is to figure out what works for you and your child because there is no universal right answer.”

I’m a good advocate.

I really hope she will consider it because she REALLY WANTS TO and she is incredibly organized and focused. She would be good at home schooling. She’s big on answering questions with, “I don’t know the answer to that yet, let’s find out.” Perfect. That is the attitude you need. And she’s super happy to hang with her kids all the time.

I told her the only think she is potentially going to lose out on for her kids is the time they get to spend with her. If you miss a year of public school you can catch up in summer school if you are bright and motivated. Whoopie. Her kids are quite smart (fully literate in two language before third grade is amazing–she mostly taught them) and I don’t see a down side. The only thing holding her back is fear. (That’s what she said. I’m not projecting.)

But it is her life. Who knows. It would be cool though. Even though we probably wouldn’t be live-in-your-pocket besties (even though she lives ONE BLOCK AWAY) it would be nice to have another home schooler in Fremont.

We are going to have to join or create a Fremont home school group or something. Yes, we will still love all the Castro Valley and San Leandro and Oakland people…. but the road is equidistant in both directions. I can only do so much driving.

I wish I felt less desperate. I know that desperation is one of the fastest way to drive people away from you. The depth and intensity are scary. I don’t have a good reason. I’m sorry. Just breathe. Go get some food. Read a few chapters. In about 40 minutes it will be time to run.

Now I will nom a muffin that is poison for Jenny.

Scheduling, guilt, and other things.

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I had a great chat with one of the Godmamas yesterday about schedule stuff. They keep a really rigid schedule. They get up at the same time, eat the same foods daily, exercise on a rigid schedule, etc. I admire that and can’t do it.

The only food I have ever had that I can eat day after day without feeling stabby is ramen. And I shouldn’t eat that every day. It is down to 1-3 times a week and I feel a lot of pride in myself for weening my addiction down that far. I supplement my lunches on other days with “real food” involving vegetables and meat.

From month to month our schedule is dramatically different. The only consistent point is “busy”. It doesn’t matter if it is a month where we are busy at home with gardening and language stuff or if we are going out a lot or if I’m doing painting. From month to month our lives look so different.

I wonder if I am breaking my children. An awful lot of what public school has to offer children is stability and consistency. I do not underrate how important these are for child development and I concede that public schools are very good at stability.

I worry. I worry that I am not consistent enough to teach stability.

Most days I wake up between 3 and 5. I spend time in the garage until I come out around 6:30. Except for the days when the kids need me at more like 5. Those days I don’t get time off.

We eat breakfast every day but the time varies based on a lot of factors. We can eat as early as 5:45 and as late as 9. If we eat early we have second breakfast at 9:30 or 10. If we eat a late breakfast we don’t eat until lunch.

Our dinner can start anywhere between 4:45pm and 7pm depending on what is happening. Usually we start between 5 and 5:30.

We usually go to park days on Tuesdays but we skip one or two a month for a variety of reasons.

For some months of the year we have swim class. That is a once a week thing for the months we do the class. But we don’t take swim class in the summer and we sometimes have one or two other months in the year where Shanna says, “I’m ready for a break.” So we probably have been doing swim class for 6-8 months out of the year for the last few years.

Our diet is hugely variable. We eat a lot of different kinds of meat and a wide variety of vegetables. They rotate through because we get bored.

Our diet is partially so variable because I want my kids to be able to walk into any restaurant or any home and find something to eat. Everyone I have talked to who grew up with a really consistent diet struggles with that. They can eat a narrow range of “familiar” foods.

I want children who are freakishly adaptable. Kind of like me, without the trauma and anger. We’ll see.

My kids will eat ethnic food of absolutely any stripe. They will try anything once to see if they like it and usually they do. They are starting to not be into shrimp (like Noah and I–I think it is a group identification thing as much as a preference because it was abrupt) and they don’t like bell peppers. Past that, Shanna will absolutely eat everything and Calli probably will.

I run four days a week. Mostly. During the ~ 13 months of my life I have been a runner. (Those are non-consecutive and there was a gap of ~14 months in the middle.) Mostly my exercise is weird and sporadic.

Gardening is so inconsistent. Many months I spend less than two hours all month. Some months I spend 40-60 hours in the yard. Depends on what season it is.

I know that daycare babies often are on a strict napping schedule by the clock. I’ve heard of a couple of stay at home moms who manage similar schedules. I never did. My kids had random naps at random times, usually on me. We slept out of necessity and with great resistance. That’s not true. Naps were easy and awesome. I read and the kids slept on me. I miss naps. Lots of enforced sitting for me. My kids have never slept well alone.

Every morning I tell my kids what is going on during the day. I usually tell them three or four days in a row of what is happening. Unless it involves socializing with a flakey person. Then I tell them, “We might see a friend and I will tell you when confirmation happens.” Sometimes they hear that someone is coming over an hour before it happens because that is when I get confirmation. I feel guilty about running interference in this way with flakey people and I feel like I was seriously fucked up by being flaked on over and over. Better to just skip that early on.

I don’t even write/edit/make “writing people” progress every day.

I don’t even clean my house once a week. Sometimes I do. Then I skip doing it for weeks in a row. Luckily Noah never bitches.

The uncle has been showing up once a week (occasionally twice) for a while. That’s consistent.

I try to go see home schoolers at least once a week, sometimes twice a week. Some freakish weekends it happens three times in a week. It’s hard to predict.

Am I going to be able to teach them how to be functional grown ups? Do you have to be able to follow lock-step-predictable schedules for months or years in order to be functional?

With moving around so much as a child I think the only time I was “consistent” was the 2.5 years I was a public school teacher. And I wasn’t consistent the first year because I was part-time. Even when I was teaching full time for that 1.5 years my weeks varied from 50 hours to 70 hours long. That’s not very consistent. Of course I had summers off. I loved that job pace.

When you look at how trauma impacts the brain you see that it kinda sorta changes your DNA. Sorta, not really. The Godmama gave me a great metaphor (thanks!): Your DNA stays your DNA but if your DNA was a large bookshelf full of books, then your life experiences often decide which books you can fully access and read. Some books are not available to you because stuff happened.

That’s not just trauma related, actually. It’s part of the whole nature/nurture debate. We have our inherent traits and potential (good and bad) and how we are treated and what we experience activates different part of our DNA strand.

I think that is accurately stated.

So I have many generations of abuse behind me. I was probably going to be a repeated rape victim given my family background and tumultuous early life even if things had kinda improved by age ten. Things do run in families. How do I change that for my kids? What do I have to do to overcome the basic programming and instincts they have inherited?

I’m kinda terrified that the scheduling stuff plays into it somehow and I am Doing It All Wrong. I have a lot of stuff to fix in my kids. It isn’t true for every parent. My kids have a genetic legacy of alcoholism, drug addiction, sexual dysfunction, depression, suicide, anxiety, bipolar disorder, learning disabilities and potentially schizophrenia. That’s a long list of problems to have in your DNA.

How I treat them during their childhood goes a lot of the way to deciding which parts of their DNA will be activated or not. How they are treated by other people matters too.

I think my children are very sheltered. But apparently I mean something different by the term than other people do. My children are not kept ignorant. They are educated to the degree their little brains can hold the material. I’m not quite as bad as Rick Moranis is in Parenthood but I’m not that far behind either. Ahem.

I think my children are sheltered because they don’t have to find out how the world works yet. They don’t have to have many broken promises experiences. They don’t have to develop the kind of “patience” that kids develop in day care or school while they wait for other people to do their thing. My kids are sheltered from boredom.

Shanna has told me she was bored about four times. Each time resulted in me getting her up and forcing her to start cleaning. About 20 seconds later she said, “Hey I figured out what I would rather be doing so I’m not bored!” Ha.

I don’t want to be more scheduled because if we were more scheduled we would miss out on the days when I read for three hours. That just wouldn’t be in the schedule, let-me-tell-you. I could “commit” to 30-60 minutes per day. But it would have to be at some random time or I would have to choose to not do other things that day including turning down socializing opportunities. I could not agree to 30 minutes of reading right before bedtime. I fall asleep. I could not agree to 30 minutes right after breakfast because we frequently walk out the door immediately following eating.

There isn’t a time of day I could pick without impacting other parts of our life.

I’m very conscious to average more than seven hours in a week. But no, it isn’t regularly timed.

My patterns are more macro than daily. I look for averages over weeks and months. 7-8 homeschooling events in a month–I don’t care if there are three in one week it will balance for the month. I try to not drive more than three days a week. Dinner with three adult friends other than the uncle. (There is a very long list of people I slowly rotate through.)

I feel ashamed of myself for not being able to keep up more of a treadmill. I do what I can do in a day. I hope it all balances out in the long run.

I’m having some intense feelings of guilt because… err… actually Shanna is behind on standards because uhhh she can’t read. If she were in public school I would already be having chats with an upset teacher because my daughter is “behind”.

I didn’t start reading till 6.5. There are many schools of thought that believe that pushing reading before 7 or 8 years old is damaging. If a child spontaneously learns to read early–great. But forcing it isn’t a good idea.

So I have these conflicting forces. I feel guilty and like I should “push” harder in order to make it easier for her to potentially enter a classroom and be perfectly grade level. Even if she never enters school she should be the minimum level of competent to not get push back from teachers for being an ignorant homeschooled kid. I know she will be walking into stigma anyway. She can at least not be too far behind.

But I actually believe it would be silly and kind of damaging for me to push harder. It is really hard to not push. I’m kind of glad right now that I didn’t train in early childhood education. If I had acclimated to that curriculum I would be slipping shit in.

I don’t want to be coercive about learning right now. It’s a choice in principles.

I tried to have my kids even closer together. I knew that I am a lazy bastard and I am unlikely to want to do two full separate ways of teaching. I suspect I will be laissez faire (with a dash of authoritarian when it comes to safety rules) until Shanna hits 8 and Calli is 6. I will try to go gentler on Calli as I transition into more direct teaching in the first few years. Differentiated instruction is a complicated beast. But I doubt Calli will get the 8 years of soft living Shanna will get. Sorry younger sibling. That’s how it goes. But I don’t bother to push one without semi-dragging the other. That’s too hard.

Will I ever direct more? I don’t know. I know that I “could” have Shanna in music already. She doesn’t ask about those classes though. I’m waiting until she cares.

I don’t see a lot of benefit towards pushing her towards doing things or being things yet. She’s playing. She’s figuring out who and what she wants to be. She’ll let me know when she’s more sure of her interests and then I can nudge her along. Then I can help build the structure and scaffolding she will need to develop the necessary schema. Until I have a better idea I’m pretty scatter shot with what I talk about.

Hey Pam! The term is strewing. It is a method unschoolers employ. It generally means consciously having materials around and in front of your kids as a potential inducement to playing with it but you don’t schedule time. Like, we have tons of art supplies. I don’t ever schedule art projects. They just happen.

My kids are going to grow up and find out that I have no interest in science shit and be shocked. I certainly talk about it all the god damn time. I’m still drawing from the stores of what I was taught in the public system (thank you for existing) and supplementing with resources. We have several cubes of science books; I’m working on expanding what we have. (I love Ikea bookshelves and that love infects my writing–sorry.)

I know other people are good at using the library. My kids are reasonably decent with their own books and rip every library book we get. I don’t think that is nice of us so we don’t use the library. I try again every so often. This is an ongoing thing I work on. I’m grateful I have the privilege to buy so many really interesting books.

I just read to them. Noah does too.

We live in a time and a place with infinite opportunities. If you tie yourself down to one rigid schedule then you narrowly limit what opportunities you can follow. That’s ok. It allows you to be more focused on specific goals. But maybe that’s not an all the time way of life for everyone.

I whole-heartedly agree that it is probably the best lifestyle approach for someone going into medicine. You need consistency and body memory in every part of your day. I don’t though.

I feel bad about that. I feel broken and like I’m going to hurt my kids.

I don’t know. They can follow a routine for a set period of time. They are responsive to just about anything I throw at them. We do have periods of time where we eat a monotonous diet. Then I get fussy and change it.

We are planning to travel and intermingle in local, regional cultures–not just hit the tourist spots. We won’t be in a Made-Western-Person-Safe hotel. We can’t be rigid about our approach to the day and handle that well. It just wouldn’t go well.

I want my kids to be good at finding a new normal. Not focused on keeping their normal normal, damnit.

I don’t think I know what is right and other people are wrong. I think I have a very particular priority list that doesn’t look much like other peoples priorities and I worry about that. I am scared that I am doing it wrong.

Reflections

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Today I took the girls to visit an old friend of mine. I haven’t seen her much since I had kids. She’s older than me and she has a grown daughter. Talking to her is different now than it used to be.

Now she actively tries to tell me not to use her as an example. I don’t know if she was simply unaware of how I tried to pattern match off of her in the past or if it seemed more harmless.

Now she adamantly tells me that I should not make similar choices to her. She is not all that happy with the far side of the parenting road and she thinks that she made a lot of wrong choices.

Given that she is a specialist who works with developmentally delayed children (wow I know a lot of them) I did my normal poke, “Several friends think I should have Calli evaluated as potentially somewhere on the spectrum or possibly a speech delay. What do you think?”

She snickered. She said, “I have a 3.5 year old client who can point and say “unh” when he wants something. She’s really not delayed.”

This was kind of weird because I realized how much I want to brush off the encouraging and/or positive comments I receive about my children. Instead I worry and worry about the outliers who tell me, “I think you should ____”.

I never know how to feel about that. I don’t spend a lot of time talking about it, but lots of strangers stop me to grab my shoulders and stare at me in a really intense way and say, “Do you know how exceptional your child is?”

It happens every few months. I uhhh don’t know how to react. This is usually after ten or so minutes talking to Shanna. Talking about that sounds like bragging but honestly it makes me uncomfortable.

It’s not like it only comes from the sweet old grandmothers. It comes from a wide variety of people in a wide variety of circumstances. They are a lot easier to brush off and not think about much. I worry about the criticisms.

I want to believe that people are seeing the real experience of my life when they see potential areas I’m fucking up and not when it’s going right. The going right must be a fluke, right? I don’t believe compliments or positive statements. Although I’m not looney–I know my oldest child is advanced in speaking. But yeah. Whatever. How’s that going to effect the price of tea in China?

When I first knew a lot of my friends as mothers they were still young-ish mothers. I knew them through the periods they talk of with regret. It’s weird to now hear that side of it because I didn’t know anything at the time. I thought they were so great. Now they tell me not so much.

I’m worried, like I am. What am I fucking up? What am I missing? What am I not catching that a competent professional would catch?

Then I went on to read a thread on a homeschool email list about the idea of seeing a speech pathologist/therapist/getting kids evaluated for autism/etc other labels. The point was made that many, most issues (like speech stuff) would naturally resolve around six but we put kids into therapy earlier than that “so they don’t get used to the stigma of being deficient”. (Not my phrasing–emphasis is mine.)

It was a long thread and I’m quoting a very small part and the person I’m quoting had many interesting ideas so I’m not trying to paint it badly. But it was one of those “howdy there, juxtaposition” moments. (I’m working my way through a book on how people reach insights. It’s fascinating how connections layer.)

Anyway. The point was I think it is kind of interesting that I’m dithering about getting Calli evaluated. I have not been able to make up my mind if I want to pursue it or not. If she has speech delay it is extremely minor and most kids resolve minor issues on their own by six. She doesn’t have a severe speech issue. That is clear. She seems to have some difficulty with some sounds, but we do exercises. I’m not sure speech therapy would have much to offer her. The pediatrician does the basic autism screening and has at every appointment. The pediatrician says Calli is fine. But I worry.

And I hesitate to put my sticky little feet near the waters of the system. Do I really want my local school system building a dossier on my kids so that they can pester me about what I’m doing and whether I’m doing it right?

I go back and forth about how I feel about working with charter schools and it comes down to, ultimately, the fact that if I got the wrong “supervising teacher” to work with I would explode with rage.

That’s not so healthy or functional, I know.

I don’t do well with people who have a small amount of arbitrary power and then are petty. It’s a super common trait though and not a situation I really want to deal with.

But I worry about the idea that I am flying blind with no one to supervise me. The trouble is finding someone I respect who would be in an appropriate position to work with me. Mostly I just ask different people who have different specialties for informal evaluations.

Yeah. I feel mixed about the “methodology” I’m following. It’s uhm. Well. It’s unschooling. I don’t have a rubric of right or wrong. I’m just… doing.

What I’m trying to do is teach me and Shanna and Calli how to be polite to people. We have very good manners together. We can go to a grown-up only house and behave exactly how we should because there are Rules and we gosh darn spend the whole car ride there going over them. There are different rules for different places

I consciously and deliberately always specify why a rule exists.

You know that obnoxious “why” phase parents bitch about? We don’t have much of that here. I explain why before they can ever stop to consider how to react to an arbitrary rule. We don’t have many arbitrary rules.

Even “no food on the carpet” is “except on party days or very rarely with something that has NO CRUMBS”.

I need my children to be able to pick up on subtle behavior clues. I need it like I need water. It is not normal or natural to be as obsessed with it as I am. That means that it is not acceptable for me to expect my children to just be able to do it.

It means I have to explicitly teach my children how to evaluate how to talk to people. It means I have to go through and explain detailed body language stuff. We work on it a lot.

It’s controlling and wacky and crazy. But I tell them a lot, “I’m teaching you what I have learned. I don’t know everything. Sometimes I’m just flat wrong. As you grow up you will have different experiences than I’ve had and you will decide that I’m very wrong about some things. That happens to the best of us. For now, try to get some idea of what I’m looking at. It will take time and practice and you are going to make some mistakes and feel embarrassed. Brush it off and try again. You have to fail a million times before you can be an expert at anything.”

I want my kids to have the self confidence that comes from being allowed to try 30 things that fail before you find something that works.

And that means I frustrate the shit out of them.

I sorta think of myself as aspiring to be a cross of Mary Poppins, Mr. Miyagi, and Professor McGonagall. But more cuddly than that list implies.

I’m very demanding and exacting and I expect that is going to suck to live with long-term. We’ll see.

I don’t like curriculum but we talk about history a lot. I believe that studying history is important because many of the mistakes that we might make were already made by other people–go see how it worked out for them and then decide if you want that kind of result. We talk about historical people and periods and events and we read biographies.

When Shanna makes a grammar error and I correct her she does actually say, “Why was that wrong?” so I guess I get some “Why” questions. Mostly she says “What does ____ mean?”

I set the framework in their heads. We talk about space and biology and evolution and chemistry and physics and botany.

We haven’t been seriously working on language stuff but our play sometimes includes bouncing between using all the words in our collective vocabulary in every language we know to name objects in a space. It’s fun. They teach me words. (I verify things on the internet…) That will only get bigger as they get older. It’s a great way of getting them to sit still and be patient. I start by pointing at something and I will say it’s name/color/some descriptive term and someone will respond with a variation or move to a new object.

Unschooling means we spend our lives learning. The kids have spontaneous jam sessions where they sit down and make up song lyrics for a half hour to an hour. I uhhh look askance from a distance as someone who has always felt excluded from the cliqueish world of playing music. Shanna really likes making music and making up lyrics to go with what she is playing. It is a lot of fun to watch. It’s not “serious learning” but I would argue that it’s also important. She’s only five. Yes, some disciplines believe you can force children to learn even younger than she is. There is also some reason to believe it is better to start at more like seven or eight when the kid will really understand the range of options.

For now I’m comfortable with dithering. Or maybe I just think eight because that is when public schools start music. Who knows.

Shanna’s learning enough right now. She really does have a lot she’s trying to do.

We play math games. I don’t start them. I would probably avoid math much more if I could. Ugh. Shanna is very focused on math to my jaundiced view. She probably sits down to spontaneously do math work every week or two. She’s not a prodigy or anything but she’s interested and she feels like she is successful at it and she knows that understanding math is important for many careers. She doesn’t have any opening for bias that might imply she might be potentially bad at math.

We spend our days moving back and forth between subjects all day long. Cooking is chemistry and math. We talk about how much food costs. We talk about why we make the choices we make with the money we spend on food. There are a lot of shoot-off topics from there. Sometimes I do sit down and draw out how something would visually look if I think it would be hard for them to imagine.

But it’s all organic. (I don’t mean the hippy dippy shit.) I mean it just kind of happens. I respond to their questions all day long. I alternate filling their heads with so much information they sometimes look like they might explode with telling them, “I don’t know how to do it. You figure it out.”

We are loud people. We want to be heard. That is the last trait I want to extinguish in my kids. Same with not punishing them for whining. *I* whine. I’m not going to forking punish my kids for doing what I model. That would make me a despicable hypocrite.

I do not punish my kids for doing things I have taught them to do. Iron clad rule.

Does everyone live with rules? This many rules. So many rules. I feel like I am drowning in all the rules, rules, rules. Be this here. Be that there. Be something else someplace else.

I like the Biblical phrase “a house divided”.

Fall. Fall. Fall.

Only I’m not divided. I promised me I’d never do that. I would never split off my memories so that only certain parts of me existed at a time. Apparently that is one of the main ways folks like me get out of childhood. That’s what the specialists tell me.

I’m not splitting. But I’m learning how to be polite in a wide variety of different cultures and it’s hard. I think I only get to like 70% correct anywhere I try.

I always say too much. I’m too forward. I’m too loud. I’m too inappropriate (although this one has faded now that I only over-share sexually with some of Noah’s random co-workers at Christmas parties. Surely that’s uhm not as bad as I’ve ever been before. That’s been it for the last several years running.

This is big.

And yet I shouldn’t talk about it because it is indiscreet. But controlling hypersexuality doesn’t go away when you are married and monogamous and having moderately good sex with your husband. (I post about bad spells and he goes, “Ahh. An opportunity. So if I put in more effort I get more sex? H’okay then!”) We’re too tired for the earth shattering kind of sex. Some day we’ll get back there. *cross fingers*

I feel like that is the main overwhelming fact of parenthood. Exhaustion. I actually sleep pretty well these days. What, I only miss 2-7 hours in the average week lately? I’ve been sleeping pretty well. I wake up when I want to and not because I have to. That’s doing ok. But I’m still exhausted.

Yes, it’s a running day and I’m tired after eight miles. But it’s not that. I think the running makes me feel better about being this tired because I am whether I run or not. At least when I run I get to have this macho swagger for a while as I feel my rock hard thighs. Holy crap. I didn’t know my legs did that. (They stopped being rock hard when I defrosted and relaxed after the run… but they had like an hour there.. Maybe I need more mid-run stretching breaks… hm.)

I think that the schedule I should keep is either run or edit seven days a week. I only predictably have till 6:30am to work. The whole rest of the day is too overwhelming with kid-need-to-communicate. I love them so much but sometimes I feel like a wrung out sponge.

When I look kind of deflated Noah says, “Well we didn’t pick the low intensity kind of parenting.”

Nope. Not so much.

If I get through this twenty year period and I end up with adult children who want to be my friends and who can go off into the world and have happy lives…

I don’t want a codependent relationship forever. I don’t want two dependents. I want to engage in loud, wild, crazy sex in the middle of my living room. You can move out some day, kiddos. I have plans.

But I hope and pray every day that they will want to be my friend. I want to hear about their lives. I want to know what happens to them. Sure, I hope that they will tell me sometimes that I am a good mom. Mostly I hope that I will look at what they do with their life and think quietly to myself “That was a good choice.” I should keep my mouth shut. It is not my job to judge who they become as adults. Not one way or another.

I don’t judge them much now. I evaluate them. But I describe everything in terms of progress and development. There is no “good” or “bad”. I’m just making sure you are doing what a three year old should be able to do.

I worry that if I decide to have her evaluated she will have a very small delay and I will be told that I “really should pay for therapy so she won’t be more delayed later” (when that is only a faint possibility).

Yeah, I over think things.

If she has a 10% or 20% delay then she is still in the range of normal. She’s just not right at the center line or above it. I don’t believe there is a chance that she is more delayed than that. And her expressive language is advanced. I think she just has to grow into her mouth.

I want to give her time. I think that is all I have to give her. I don’t want to think of her as “behind”. She’s Calli. She’s not the most advanced in every single part of human development but she is certainly not struggling to be understood.

If she starts having problems having conversations with strangers because they can’t understand her then I will take her in for an evaluation. That seems like a good bar. As long as strangers can understand her and have a pick up conversation she is doing well enough for three.

Ok. I think I can stop worrying about that now. (I can dream, can’t I? Actually I can’t because I’ve started having pot at night again. Thank you blissful slumber. Yes, my tolerance is lower.)

I feel like I am so tired I will go fall in my bowl of soup. Maybe time to start getting ready for dinner. I’m so glad it is a leftovers night.

I planned out dinners for February and March. I’m pretty good about sticking to my schedule if I make it. I’m hoping to uhm bring down my food budget a little. It’s hard given some of my food priority stuff. I do my best to buy my meat from actual farmers. I make a big exception for sausage. I’m going to hell for the sausage. I have some very strong feelings about the unsustainability of factory farmed meat. But man I know how expensive it is to be all prissy about “food ethics”. Maybe this year I should be better about tracking food spending. I wonder what I’m putting where. I could look at vendors. on Mint… Hmmm. Now I’m procrastinating. Put down the darn keyboard, Krissy.

I need you.

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Those three words make my heart start racing like I just completed a sprint. You need me? OK! What do you need?! I CAN DO IT! This morning my baby woke up scared and needed to cuddle me. Easy peasy. I have a firm policy of waking up with a smile if my kids wake me up saying “I need you”. Ok. It’s my job to be there when you need me, so yes ma’am.

Do you know why my kids have good manners? Because I say yes ma’am and no ma’am to them for just about everything. If my kids scream at me I raise an eyebrow and say, “Try again” in a calm voice. If they scream a second time I say, “Do I respond well to screaming?” Then they visibly shake themselves off and calm down enough to ask for what they want.

Based on the dozens and dozens of books I’ve read about early childhood development the first 5-7 years of life should be spent on socialization, attachment formation, and learning to manage your emotions. I have gone through my life crippled by my inability to manage my emotions in times of stress and that is largely because I was not taught how to deal with my body. If I grew distressed I was punished.

I don’t let my kids have a lot of screen time because screen time is shown to increase emotional dysregulation. I feel it would be counter productive to hand them a bunch of emotional dysregulation during the period of their life when they are poorly regulated and struggling for basic control. I mean, they are pretty good and all… but they are 3 and 5. They are good for their ages and that means they have a lot of work left to do.

I think about this because when I babysit for other kids I learn that the short cuts I’ve worked on with my kids don’t work as well. My kids respond to “Try again”. “Will that work?” is enough to stop the vast majority of tantrums. “So what is your goal here?” is another favorite I lean on extensively. I talk them through how to get what they want without using methods that will result in escalation of conflict. That’s what I spend my days doing. I hang out with them and help them manage their emotions as they are doing what they want to do.

Other peoples children kind of look at me blankly if I just say “Try again” and that’s hard at this phase. I have to turn around and manage my own frustration and emotional dysregulation because my short hand didn’t communicate what I wanted it to communicate and so I am left struggling to find phrasing that will work which means a bunch of quick thinking. I shouldn’t complain. But man I am grateful I have been able to train my kids the way I have.

Yup, I’ve trained my kids. And it’s awesome.

I feel a lot of guilt for not actually having the control I wish I had. I feel a lot of shame for the fact that if my children were less well trained I would have a much harder time being nice. It is hard for me to be nice to other peoples kids who don’t respond to the training cues.

I *do not* yell or scream or shame or respond badly to children not understanding my cues. Instead I take a deep breathe and smile and out comes a whole flood of words that explains why I’m asking what I’m asking and I give them a whole bunch of suggestions for how to solve whatever problem is coming up.

But it’s hard. It wears my body out to emotionally flood that many times in a short period of time. I believe that the children deserve the respect so I’m going to deliver it even if it means I cry the whole way home because my body feels like shit and I’m tired and worn out. My stomach hurts so bad.

Sometimes my physical comfort is not the highest priority in my life. That’s hard. Sometimes my friends need help and I’m the one who could show up and supply the necessary help and I believe in Pay It Forward like I believe It Takes All Kinds. I HAVE to step up when friends have nowhere else to look for support. If I don’t then the ship will go down and it will be partially my fault.

No, not really. Other people having problems in their lives isn’t my fault. But if the reason I choose not to help is because it is hard and it makes me feel bad and I cry for an hour or two afterwards because of stress… that’s not a good enough reason to choose not to help in a crisis. That’s a good enough reason to not sign up for four home school outings in a week. That’s a good enough reason to not sign up for helping once a week indefinitely. But it’s not a good enough reason to refuse help in a crisis.

Which leads back to spoon management with my kids in my life.

I have to leave enough slack all the time to absorb occasional bursts of spoon excess in one area or another. This is part of why I’ve been reading so much lately. I’m trying to build slack into my spoon usage. There are times when all of a sudden I use extra spoons on a project or on driving or on helping other people and I have to be able to continue delivering the same quality and quantity of care to my kids.

Taking care of my kids is hard but worthwhile. I’ve been doing really well post-Christmas. I am staying more level. I’m responding in the right tone of voice and I’m responding in a timely fashion instead of sometimes choosing to let them fight it out because I can’t intervene in a timely fashion in the right way. (I don’t let them physically fight things out but sometimes if they want to have a screaming match over something I will tell them that they can scream at each other in the back yard.) Mostly I try to help them work things out. It’s exhausting to be a referee all day.

So given that my focus is on socialization, attachment formation, and emotional regulation it’s kind of funny when a friend says, “So how about their academics? When do you do that?”

Err… I don’t. Not really. I mean, I read to them a lot. I read to my kids for 5-15 hours a week depending on the week. Noah reads to the kids for an additional 5-10 hours a week. As often as possible I sucker my friends into reading to the kids.

I get workbooks when Shanna is given her “school allotment” and she goes shopping and says, “I think I should practice shaping letters so let’s get a workbook”. I never indicate that she should get out a workbook and practice. But the suckers are being used steadily. I feel kind of confused by her choosing to do worksheets, but whatever makes you happy kiddo.

That said: if you go through the kindergarten standards (Which I do–quite regularly) you would find that Shanna was more or less competent on the full curriculum before the start of her “kindergarden” year. Given that the state now believes children should be fluent readers in first grade she is *not* through the first grade curriculum but I think the state is on crack for expecting that anyway.

(I mean for science: one of the many things kids should know why different kinds of plants grow in different environments. Shanna can give you long lectures on the evolution of plants and animals. We watch a lot of documentaries and I feel pretty surprised by what she knows. She designs structures so she can talk about what things work better and why. Sure a lot of her structures are meant to be froofy princess shit, but whatever. I don’t care if you are building a castle or a space station–you are building. It works.)

I will confess that I need to get my hands on a globe so we can play with a flashlight and talk about the seasons more. We’ve talked about it representationally on flat maps… but that’s not the same. I need to get off my butt.

We work on the PE skills in malls all the time. How do you learn to be aware of your body? How do you move through crowds without bumping people? How do you decide which objects you can go under or over in a public place? Or must you go around them on the side? This is what kindergarden PE teaches. We play catch and kick ball. They do yoga and go on three mile walks a few times a week. (I’ve been better lately.) Sure, Calli gets piggy back rides for over a mile of the walk… but she’s hella short. She’ll get there.

I will confess that my kids are not fully versed on the “triumphs of American history” but they do know a lot about racial issues through the history of this country. Shanna call tell you about segregation and Jim Crow laws and why Rosa Parks was important. I’m going to keep doing things my way instead of talking about how awesome Paul Revere was. (I mean… really he was a patent thief and an asshole and there was a girl riding the alarm the same night as him but HISTORY IGNORES HER. Ahem.)

Given that all of the kindergarden reading/language arts standards are “With prompting and support” yes, Shanna can do all that is expected of a five year old. She can tell you about myths from different cultures. She can tell you that a poem rhymes and a narrative tells a story in plain English. She can identify the narrator and she understands “what’s the point” as “tell me about the plot”. She can count to 100 (and beyond, I think) and add and do basic subtraction. She understands the beginnings of numeral placement. She knows her shape and can talk about what is necessary for each kind of shape.

And no, I don’t spend time on academics. I’m not going to waste her time. But what I mean when I say “I don’t spend time on academics” is I don’t ever sit down with a curriculum written by someone else and say, “Ok now it is time for school.”

We talk about cylinders as we are putting dishes away. We talk about the difference between a square and a rectangle when we build raised beds in the back yard. We do addition practice in the car because she starts it.

I do not direct her learning much. I don’t pick the whack job documentaries she watches, though I try to watch with her. She can talk to you about generations of animals dying out–whole species! She’s fascinated by the way animals change over time. She’s pissed off that evolution doesn’t happen fast enough for her to really watch it in her lifetime.

I talk to my kids all day long about everything I see. “Why do you think they made this bench out of wood and this other one out of metal?” “What is this made out of?” My kid can tell you the merits of using different kinds of spatulas to cook different foods.

We do science by cooking and gardening. We talk about history all the time. I’m fond of saying, “We study history because humans have been alive a long time. Almost every mistake that you will want to make has already been made by someone else. You can learn a lot if you just read about people and their choices.”

My kids are growing up in a house where “hacking” DOES NOT MEAN following directions on a kit that some forking grown up made for you. No. That’s not how life works. You are not going to spend your life just following directions that someone else makes up. You are going to have to make your own directions. How do you do that?

If you want to learn to sew (which Shanna does) I can show you the basics and I can provide you with materials, but no I’m not going to do it while you watch and I’m not going to stand next to you and micromanage you doing it perfectly. You are going to mess up and feel frustration. You are going to have to learn how to rip out your own seams and try again.

I can’t make things easy for you. I wouldn’t even if I could. Life isn’t going to be easy.

My job is to help you learn emotional regulation and help you feel like you matter in the world so that you won’t spend your life wanting to kill yourself because you believe you are a worthless piece of shit.

Everything else you can learn as you go. I promise.

At the end of kindergarden they wanted to hold me back because I wasn’t mature enough. I’d been to five fucking kindergardens, no I wasn’t as “advanced” compared to the kids in the tiny school I was in last that year. The teacher thought I was stupid because I couldn’t read yet. I picked up reading in first grade and by second grade I was testing at the 10th grade level.

I’m not worried about early asymmetrical growth. Don’t you understand that the standards were created by bureaucrats and *not* educational specialists? (Go ask education specialists. You will find a few who endorse the standards but mostly they don’t like the idea of a national curriculum–people don’t work that way.)

“The things that are the hardest to learn are often the most rewarding once you master them. You have to keep trying even when something makes you mad.”

That’s what my kids hear over and over. A far cry from “I guess I can’t do math because I’m a girl.” That’s what I believed as a child. Because I was told that math was hard for me because I was just a stupid girl. Word for word. Over and over.

When my kids try to do something that is way too hard for them they say, “Whoa. I think I need to learn a bit more before I understand this.” I almost fell out of my chair laughing when Calli said that. She was confused but delighted that she made me laugh.

I think my saving grace with children is I don’t expect them to do much or support me. I understand that the support is a one way street. I do the supporting. That means I never get disappointed and lash out at them for not helping me when I want/need help. I have internalized so thoroughly that it isn’t their job.

That said they have more and more chores. Shanna unloads the dishwasher, clears the table, and keeps her stuff tidy. When she has to clean up her toys she often says, “What am I, your maid!?” I tell her that until I start forcing her to do laundry for the whole family and do the sweeping and mopping and vacuuming she doesn’t get to claim maid status. I’m teaching her to clean up after herself which means she is being her own maid… not mine. She generally doesn’t argue much.

And now I have a wonderful girl on my lap. She says she wants to watch The West Wing with me. heh.

leaving on a jet plane

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We leave our house for Texas in nine hours. I should probably go to Kaiser and refill my Ativan prescription today. That I can fly with. I’m very happy that I made 30 Ativan pills last six months. That’s about the correct rate of sleep assistance for me. (Last refill was the beginning of June.)

I slept for seven hours. That’s not enough after getting three hours the night before. I am SO VERY AWAKE.

The gingerbread house party deal was really awesome. Everyone had a lot of fun. The other moms were really proactive about jumping in and helping my kids during the actual construction of houses while I drifted around all spacey from lack of sleep. I really like the women I am spending time with in this home school group. I am progressively more “out” with all of them about a wide variety of topics. It is kind of weird how being out with them is making me feel more and less safe with them.

I feel more safe because so far I have gotten the opposite of rejection from all of them. They go out of their way to make sure I feel included and like my presence is a good thing in their lives. I could not possibly begin to express how impactful this is. They are not all “like me”. They are not tribe. They like me anyway. They think I have value. And they go out of their way to keep telling me that they want me around. That their kids FUCKING LOVE coming to my house. That feels so good. I’m not chasing everyone away. I’m not being bad.

I feel less safe because I’ve poured a lot of myself into them already. I am not as big a part of their lives as they are part of my life just because they have other people who take up space. They have families and churches and communities they have been part of for most of their lives.

I have a lot of level 3’s.

I love my level 3’s with all my heart and soul and I say prayers of thanks for them just about every day. I do not denigrate my level 3’s.

But it is very hard knowing that I have to be very careful all the time or I risk alienating people who are a huge part of my network. They don’t have to know they are a huge part of my network. I know.

I know that when I do things in my house I do it because I hope ____ will tell me I did the right thing. I know that when I respond to my kids I am actively channeling _____ because she is just plain better than me.

So the more I give of myself to this homeschooling group the more pain I am potentially opening myself up to in the future. That’s hard.

But I’m doing it anyway because this life thing goes better for most people than it has for me and I am responsible for providing this kind of environment for my children. It’s my job to work through my anxiety and provide them a community.

It is hard to once again feel like my experiences don’t matter. It does help that I know that my terror is irrational. My experience of being afraid when I am with home schoolers is not predicated on their behavior or attitudes. It is instead from my previous history with other people. I am trying hard not to project. I am trying to not believe that one personality quirk in common with someone who rejected me means that I will be rejected again. I don’t have a crystal ball.

Luckily home schoolers, regardless of the whole “pervy tribe” thing, are at heart people who want to do things their own way. This seems to transfer to a higher tolerance for people being very different. Pinterest has allowed me to see other sides of these ladies. Ha. (They may not swear around their kids but they are ok with swear words existing and being used and all.)

I’m glad I did the gingerbread house experience. Next year I will be making gingerbread boys and girls for the kids to decorate. Much less baking involved. My forefinger is still completely numb. Stupid knife.

I did not try to restrict the sugar intake because that would have been a losing battle. As a result Shanna went to sleep with a nasty stomach ache. She commented, “You know… I think that maybe next time I won’t eat so much sugar. This doesn’t feel very good.” I didn’t laugh. I’m proud of myself. Instead I cuddled her to sleep and said, “Yeah. We’ve all been there. You have to figure out what your body can handle. I’m sorry you hurt now.”

I need to back off on my cleaning expectations. They are 3 and 5. I have been turning into kind of an asshole for a few weeks and I don’t even know why. I’ve been refusing to engage in any play unless they clean up first. They aren’t ready for this. I apologized for my attitude. I’m not treating them like little kids and they are little kids. I need to be more patient.

I also need to reread my 3 and 5 year old books. Maybe I’ll take them to Texas with a highlighter. Then I can pass them on to K’s husband who told me he promised that he would read them if I highlighted the important and non-repetitive passages. They are kind of annoyingly repetitive. (He has a full time job, is in full time college, and he has two kids. I think it is reasonable to say “I can only handle the highlighted sections.”)

We would all be better parents if we really took into consideration the current physical development of our kids. They change so fast but still not as fast as we might hope on some days. It’s important to let them be kids. They will never ever get another chance. (Being an Adult Baby or interested in Age Play doesn’t count.)

The thing I like the most about my kids is that they really are always trying their best. Sometimes their best is not what I, as an asshole adult, want but it is their best. I can tell them it isn’t good enough and create that dynamic in their mind or I can say, “That is exactly what a five year old should be able to do. Excellent. You’ll get bigger and things will change.”

Shanna is starting to have serious interest in reading. Last night she complained to me that she’s really frustrated because the only words she knows how to spell are “Shanna, zoo, Calli, and love.” She wants to know more. I told her that it is ok that she doesn’t already know everything. She’s five. Her brain probably hasn’t quite switched yet so that learning reading is super easy–don’t get impatient. Soon it will get much easier and then you will be shocked by how fast it comes. I told her that if she wants to start really practicing, she can at any point. Whenever she is ready.

Unschooling is really emotionally complex. I have all these assumptions and desires and preferences. My kids meet and totally don’t meet them. I still believe that if I sat down on paper and explained my ideal child Shanna is it to a T. That makes me feel guilty and like I don’t love Calli enough.

I don’t think I love Shanna more. But she is what I would have designed on paper before having children. We are so deeply compatible that I worry that we aren’t and I’m making it up in my head and I will fuck her up by assuming we are.

Calli is more directly challenging to me on a minute by minute basis. She surprises me all day every day. I like it. She’s neat. She is starting to really come into her own. I love the way she will absolutely defend her own boundaries and then be nice once you have allowed her all the space she feels she needs.

Keep that up, wonderful girl. I am so proud of you. You clearly know that you get to take up space and exist. Watching you is so exciting. She likes being a benevolent tyrant. If you defer to her being in charge then she will be generous and kind and ridiculously sweet. If you try to insist that she isn’t in charge then she explodes. Luckily she is starting to be mollified by the idea that she is always her own boss. No, you aren’t the boss of Shanna. Sorry, kid. But you are your boss. I’m a temporary assistant manager.

Calli’s favorite game is “Mamas and babies” and I have to be the baby. I’m a thoroughly obnoxious and demanding baby. She loves it.

Calli keeps telling me she doesn’t want to grow up. She wants to be my tiny baby forever. Sometimes I feel like I’m not as important to Calli as I am to Shanna. Then I get my head out of my ass and I see that Calli is maybe more attached to me than Shanna.

Shanna likes me and I hope we will be friends when she grows up, but she is outward focused. She is going to be someone who wants a lot of friends in her life. I will not be the center of her world forever. I get the impression that Calli will seek out fewer people. I may always be more central in her life. Who knows. The future is a long way off. I’m enjoying these little flashes of how wrong I am about my assumptions. Calli is very attached. Calli is somewhat needy and I am struggling to really enthusiastically meet all those needs. I think I was more giving with Shanna.

I like them both so much. I feel so lucky that I get to hang out with them all day. I think it is funny how often Shanna talks about wanting to go to school “Some day when I am big!” but when I tell her that school involves being away from me all day she says, “Not yet. I don’t want to do that yet. In a few years. Then I will be ready.” She debates the merits of starting at 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14. She says she thinks that she will definitely no matter what be ready by 14. I told her I suspected that was true. By 14 she will be old enough and big enough that she will certainly want to go learn things I can’t teach her.

I mention that we want to spend the year she is 12 traveling, so maybe going for a year or two before then would be fun to find out what it is like before she travels? Maybe she just wants to wait till after that to start? I don’t know. It isn’t my decision.

Sometimes it is weird noticing how many parenting things I think aren’t my decision. Other people make these decisions for their kids. I don’t feel qualified. I don’t think I know what is inside their heads and inside their bodies. I don’t know what the best decision will be in the long run.

I maintain this feeling of being conflicted about home schooling. I love it as much as I believed I would when I was 17. I feel scared that I am doing this for my needs instead of theirs.

I continue to do research about education styles because I want to be as eclectic as possible. Every single theory of education has benefits and deficits. Some can be combined in useful ways to get the benefits of multiple disciplines and some are inherently contradictory. I’m trying to figure out how I can get out of my head enough to be objective about what they need instead of just doing what I feel comfortable with.

Home schooling isn’t about making my life easier. That’s not the point. It might coincidentally do so… but that’s not the point. If I start making decisions based on my convenience I will fuck up my kids and that’s not cool.

K, I’m almost done with the book you gave me. I think I have a lot of the earlier part of the series. I may take one or two on this trip. Wow these are easy to read. It’s another Tamora Pierce book for those who don’t know K’s taste. She is going to get me through the entire collection of stuff that author has written.

I’m not worried about my children learning to read. They want to read. As soon as their brains are ready it will come. If they have learning disabilities and it doesn’t come automatically that is something I will watch for and address. Dyslexia runs in my family. My kids want to read. That’s the important step. They know that books contain whole universes of awesome and they want to benefit. I’m not worried.

I feel so weird knowing that whatever problems emerge (they will happen–that’s how life works) I have a lot of ability to handle them. I don’t feel very helpless any more. Sometimes I feel paralyzed with fear but I know that if I can get my stupid body moving I will be able to do something that is acceptable even if it isn’t the absolute best solution ever in the history of ever.

It is weird feeling confident and unconfident at the same time. Is unconfident a word? (internet says it is a word.) Insecure?

Of course there are problems outside my scope. If my kid gets cancer there isn’t a lot I can do. I mean, we have insurance and I would take them to every doctor. I would beggar myself in the process with no worry about the future. Take care of my baby.

Let’s stick with educational worry, ok? That I can do something about.

It is weird knowing that if my kid came down with a major medical malady Noah’s family would probably pony up. I am not someone who has had that as a resource in this lifetime. From when I was very young I have consciously thought that if I get diagnosed with a terrible disease the right choice for me is to die as fast as possible because no one who has ever been responsible for me had the money to pay for much treatment. I don’t want my family to suffer after I’m dead because dying was expensive. But things are so different now.

I feel very weird about the way suicide keeps being pushed further and further back for me. It is feeling less and less like an option. I could not do that to Shanna and Calli. Even if I did have cancer. They deserve the fullness of every minute I can give them. Killing myself is actively hurting them, forever. I don’t want to do that to them. Suicide has become my constant feeling of “out”. I don’t have to take this (no matter what “this” I’m talking about). I can die.

Now I can’t. It is… weird. I want to see what my children are like in their 30’s and 40’s and 50’s. I want to find out what the repercussions of my parenting style are. They will exist. I’m going to do things wrong if I haven’t already. (I have.)

I believe with all my soul in what I am doing. I think the American school system is broken and I don’t want my kids to be part of it. I don’t want to work long and hard enough to pay for private schools when I’m not sure they are enough better to justify how much less I would see my kids. We have great upper division education. We don’t do so well with the littles.

Even a broken clock is right twice a day. There are amazing teachers within the system who do a great job. I think that some people luck into having positive public school experiences but it is a crap shoot. I don’t think I am the right parent to navigate my kid having a positive experience. I don’t think I can do it. I feel like a failure.

I do and I don’t. I feel like a failure for not being able to manage the public school system as a parent like I feel like a failure for not sewing. I feel like I “should” be able to but I can’t. Yet I don’t actually consider those skills mandatory for life.

Do I think I “could” learn how to manage the public school system? Sure. It’s a system. I could figure out how to hack it. It would be really hard and it would take a lot of time and energy and work and I don’t think it is worth it. Just like I could learn to sew but I don’t think it is worth upping my frustration level. The level of positive I would gain doesn’t outweigh the cost right now.

I believe there are different circumstances that would change my mind.

Everything is situational.

Judgmental asshole.

4 Replies

(I’m talking about me in the title.)

This morning I woke up to Pinterest, like I do. I was looking through homeschooling links, like I do.

I am a judgmental asshole. I really am. What am I being judgmental about this morning? Well, we have bought into school culture in some really pretty funny ways.

Uhm, you don’t have to go buy a bunch of expensive Montessori approved supplies in order for your child to learn to read. It’s not required. Seriously. I wish that people did not talk about learning to read as if it was this crazy esoteric skill that requires tons of props. Uhm, it requires books. Paper is helpful for scribbling, yes. But you don’t have to go out and buy fifteen different kind of letter shape things for your kid to practice tracing with their fingers in order to learn to read.

Oh man.

I get that these moms mean well. I’m certainly not saying anything to them about it. I just closed the tab.

I understand why these mothers feel insecure but I think it is a trap. I think that believing that we must create a “school” type environment at home is part of the way that we limit real learning.

Real learning is not about sitting down with Montessori Brand Toys.

My kids learn to read from street signs and posters up on the wall out in public. We talk about the letters and the sounds all the time. We don’t need to buy special stuff.

I worry about creating a structure where learning has to be done sequentially in an order someone else approves of. That is not how I learned.

I was thinking about it this morning. Why am I so completely hateful of school and the whole school system? (I’m not attacking my many friends who use the school system. I swear I am not. There are lots of good reasons for participating in school systems. I recognize all of them as valid and good and worthy. I don’t think anyone I know is to blame for the school system. I really and truly don’t.)

I went to 25 schools, including 5 high schools. If you figure I met at least 200 people at each high school and more than a hundred people at each elementary school (I’m really good at meeting people) that means I met many thousands of people.

I went from teacher to teacher and I saw that there were these boring steps that everyone had to plod through even though most people in the room caught on in less time than was spent. There was always one or two people struggling so the whole class had to wait. And wait. And wait.

Learning is an organic process that happens at wildly different speeds for different people. Some people like to trace a lot of letters. Sometimes my kids go in the back yard and practice tracing letters using sticks on dirt. It’s something I have seen them spontaneously do.

I don’t force my kids to sit down and do tracing work. I think it is beside the point of learning. And I think there is overwhelming evidence on the side that pushing kids hard towards academics before they are seven is overall somewhat harmful in their full life of learning. A lot of people who are forced to do stuff early burn out. They weren’t ready and it wasn’t fun so they learn to hate “school”.

I feel that bopping in and out of schools so fast is part of why I like learning. I had to do it independently. I learned to read because I was hungry for the knowledge and companionship of books. I went from not reading to reading adult books in less than two years.

I am also very raw today because I read 2.5 books about suicide yesterday. Lots of feelings swirling around in my body.

Affiliations. Succorance. Those are the needs in me that create the gaping, yawning maw that threatens to eat me alive. Those are the human needs that have been my problem my whole life.

So I went to these schools and I met many thousands of people. Mostly what I learned from the school experience is that I am bad because I do not fall into line and do exactly what other people do. But I was never trained in one school for many years so that I could learn a culture. I was always wrong. Let me tell you, teachers at Lakeside in Los Gatos had different expectations than they did in Dennison Texas. (I can’t even remember the name of the school. I could look it up. I don’t care that much.)

I learned over and over that I don’t know how to make real friends who will be part of my life. I will always be a freak. And I will always Do Everything Wrong. I never make a picture that looks exactly like every other picture in the room. Mine is always different and thus it is wrong.

I can’t buy my kids a bunch of Branded School Supplies and tell them that there is the One True Way To Learn.

I can’t do it.

I don’t trust systems. Systems have hurt me so very badly. Systems have shown me how little *I* matter.

So when I read things written by very well intentioned, loving people… I have strong feelings of oh my god no.

I don’t think other people are bad for following a system that more or less worked for them. I really don’t.

I am an auto-didact. I teach myself. Thus I also teach my children to be. There are a lot of things in this world that are worthy of learning about. I don’t know what will interest you. But I will talk to you extensively about how to go about acquiring information you want to have. I won’t dictate what information you need or how you get it.

I won’t put a bunch of tracing things in front of you and say now it is time for you to trace. I can’t do that.

I’m not even sure if it is really because I am a judgmental asshole (but I am) or if it is just my horror of forcing my children into rote learning.

I don’t decide it is time for them to learn how to trace. That’s not my job. Sometimes at stores Shanna will browse through books and ask for workbooks. I’ve bought her a couple. She has chosen to sit down with them a few times and trace. I’ve never handed it to her or initiated her working with it and I don’t think I ever will.

I don’t do that. That is not my role here.

I don’t think other people are bad. But I think they waste a lot of their own time trying to do things “right” when there is no such thing as right.

I feel sad that I still feel like I am doing everything wrong. Clearly my kids are on the road to reading. But I can’t force them through an Approved Process Of Learning.

I just can’t.

I won’t.

What I learned from the school system is that the system itself is much more important than any individual child within it. No one cares about all the little individual people who may need help or attention or support. That’s not what the system does. The system says, “I’m a system and I run. If you have a problem it is your problem.”

I’m glad that my friends who put their kids in traditional school are the kind of people who pay attention to their kids and their kids won’t fall through the cracks. My friends’ children are not the kids who are going to suffer the most. My friends’ kids are already pretty privileged and supported.

If you have good parents who love you it really doesn’t matter where you spend your days. You’ll learn and you’ll get the support you need. I didn’t have good parents.

It isn’t fair to blame the system because of its failure to save children like me. But I do think it is fair because one of the reasons the school system exists is supposedly to help kids like me. Oh well.

I think that any system designed to apply to multiple millions of people at the same time is going to fail more than half of the people involved at any given moment.

Half of all people are below average. Half of all people are above average. How in the fuck are you going to design one system that will serve both sides of that equation? Especially since we are all anti-tracking now. Everyone gets the SAME THING BECAUSE YOU ARE ALL ALIKE, RIGHT?!

Do you know why my kids will learn to read and write? Because they see their parents obsessively doing both. They know that the way to access pretty much the whole world and all of the things they want to do involves reading and writing.

I don’t think I will have to coax them or go through an elaborate many year process of forcing them to trace letters long before their brains are ready to read. Give me a break.

Since I’m pissing people off.

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The past few days have been an extreme emotional roller coaster, even for me. Fear, anxiety, anger, rage, sadness, grief, self-hatred, exhaustion, nausea and horrible body aches and pains. So I’m feeling sensitive and pissy.

I wrote about going to see the guy yesterday on the PTSD forum. Some people decided to chew me out because meeting up with him was stupid and there was “no possible potential for any healing I’m just trying to re-abuse myself.” Excuse me? And then one guy said that as a married woman I have no business meeting a married man alone for a conversation.

And my friends think that if I parent differently than them and if I judge the system in our country then I think they don’t love their children as much as I do.

Oh fuck it.

I don’t think I have implied that anyone who puts their kids in public school doesn’t love their kids.

I have wanted to home school my kids since I was seventeen and they weren’t yet a twinkle in my eye. Maybe me wanting something isn’t a reflection on whether or not you love your family.

Why do people need me to conform so bad in order to feel validated? I don’t want to try to blend in just so you feel more comfortable. That isn’t my job. I’m not putting you down for making the choices you are making. I’m saying I don’t want to make them.

Before Noah showed up and asked me to marry him Plan A was that I would continue being a part time high school teacher and have a kid by myself. Said child (my proto-Shanna) was going to have no choice but to go to public school. There wasn’t a different option. I don’t think I would have loved little proto-Shanna less than I love the actual Shanna I get to home school.

Not everyone is temperamentally suited to home schooling. I have flat met people who should not be doing it. I don’t think home schooling is universally appropriate.

I just think America is doing a very shitty job of educating its kids. If you have an actual argument with me, go ahead and try that. If you think that me saying that America is doing a shitty job of educating its kids means that you don’t love your kids…

Well good fucking grief. Can we or can we not have a conversation about large scale problems? Can we acknowledge that maybe I am aware that there are some good schools and of course there are some good teachers and of course there are districts with shit-loads of money and there are parents who are actively involved in their kids lives and…

I believe we need some sort of public education system. I believe that what we have is broken. It is still all we have right now. I don’t think that everyone can opt-out. I’m not trying to talk people into that.

If I’m going to be flat honest I don’t believe that every parent with a high school diploma is qualified to home school. There. I said it. I don’t think you have to go to get a teaching credential or graduate school, necessarily, but I think there is a blending of education, experience, and temperament which is far from universal.

I really don’t believe that everyone should home school. If I were having a harder time managing my temper–for example if I could not control myself and I resorted to hitting my kids I would stop home schooling. I would be aware that my kids need other people watching them and checking in on them and it is no longer at all appropriate for them to be isolated with me all day. Then they have no contrasting opinions on them being hit.

I think that home schooling involves a lot of specific sacrifices that I don’t think most people are prepared to make and without those sacrifices I think it is educational neglect. So there you go.

And I think it is highly likely that Shanna will not home school beyond second or third grade because she keeps asking to go to public school. I won’t send her for kindergarten or first because of philosophical reasons. I’m not willing to let a five or six year old over rule what I know about education just because recess sounds fun. Sorry. By second or third grade I will let her pick. I just want that base line.

Do I think that people are going to be failures if they are in the system in kindergarten and first grade? Of course not. Give me a fucking break.

I don’t think someone is going to be a failure at life if they live on hamburgers, mac’n’cheese, and hot dogs either. But I’m not going to feed my family that way. I don’t think that people who do hate their families. I just don’t want to do it.

I don’t think that public education is the devil. I think it is a waste of time. I don’t want my five year old dealing with someone else wasting her time. Other people believe that is just part of life and you need to get used to it. Still other people believe that it is what they need their kids to do and they need someone else to do most of the heavy lifting on teaching their kids how to behave. Actually, the public school system is usually better at teaching this than parents are. Patience.

These are valid approaches to life. Many people are well served by their conformity. I don’t think my kids would be.

My kids would come home to me. My kids would bring my phrasing and attitude to school. I’ve already gone through school with my phrasing and attitude. It doesn’t go well.

I know it wouldn’t be the same for my kids. For one thing they will never be enrolled in school in Texas–they won’t have long stories about all the teachers beating them. I had a smart mouth. The best way to cure someone with a smart mouth is to hit them, don’t you know? That way they will shut the fuck up when they are told. Or not. Maybe hitting them will make them twice as defiant. But that just means that they should be hit more!

I don’t think my kids are me. But I have seen kids of parents like me.

I know parents who have raised very successful people in the public education system. I don’t think I am capable of doing what they have done to make their children successful. Does that mean I love my children less because I cannot do what is required to make them comfortable moving alone with the herd?

That is the only reasonable corollary to people not loving their children if they don’t home school. Obviously I don’t love my children because I can’t help them through the public system. I can’t help them be “normal” so I’m not trying hard enough.

How about if different people make different choices based on ten thousand factors you may know nothing about and whether or not people love their children is just not something that can be judged from the outside?

I don’t think I am a better parent than most. I honestly don’t. I think that putting your kids in a good daycare and being present and happy with them for the available number of hours you have is just fine parenting. You are meeting their needs.

I want the things I want partially because I am being a selfish piece of shit and I am using my children as objects in the story of my life. *I* want to be a home schooling mom. Fuck you if you want to go to public school. (Ok, I have not said fuck you to my kids. At all. Ever. But I did tell Shanna that she didn’t get to pick kindergarten.) I worry about that. I worry about whether I am making the right decision or not.

I do not have a crystal ball. Just because I believe the public education system to be broken that does not mean I am going to do a better job. That’s hubris.

I don’t know if I will do a good job or not. I don’t know if I will do better or worse than if my kids were just enrolled in school. I really don’t know. I might completely fuck up. I accept that possible future. I like that if things turn out badly it will be all my fault.

A lot of the reason I am choosing to home school is because I can live with the knowledge that I have to be very careful and I have to take measured steps to do my job right. I can’t live with the knowledge that my kids are out in the world having to defend themselves at these tender ages.

Is that rational? No, not really. Is that a sound reason for home educating? Enh….. Good thing I don’t need a sound reason. I’m allowed to just do what I think is right. Yee haw. I love my state and country.

I swear to a god I don’t believe in that I am not sitting here thinking that only people who make decisions like me love their kids. I don’t believe that. I just think that other people take care of their kids in ways I don’t. That doesn’t make it wrong. It just makes it something I can’t do.

Maybe my inadequacy is a poor judge of whether or not someone else is loving.

I’m glad I went and talked to the man yesterday. When I told him I cried for three days after the wedding he looked like I kicked his puppy. He was very upset. He did not mean to hurt me.

I am not good at judging which things people do in a loving way and which things people do in a consciously hurtful way. I understand this about myself. I know this is a large blindspot.

I don’t judge whether or not people love their kids. Sometimes I do sit over here in my head and judge whether or not someones choices are working out for their kid as they hope… but it’s not about love. I don’t think that I can judge that. I try not to write down those judgments much.

Who the fuck am I to judge whether someone else is doing a good job? I see small snippets of their lives. I don’t know what is happening.

I can judge if something would work for me or not and then I have to just move on. I don’t have a crystal ball. I don’t know what will happen in thirty years. We will all find out.

I want to still know most of the people I know now. I don’t think I will be overall very successful at pre-judging who is going to have a happy life and who won’t.

That kind of means I need to not alienate people. Well shit.

I can’t influence what other people do very much. My friend Pam says I am inspirational but then she writes me long emails about wanting to hand out a bunch of work sheets when she’s subbing in a kindergarten class. I may be inspirational but people are still going to do what they are going to do. (I think it doesn’t actually matter what you do darling. You will have the kids for ~10 hours of their educational life. They are used to work sheets. It doesn’t matter if you hand them out or not. Love you.)

I can understand and believe that the system is broken and deficient and still understand that people have to conform to it en masse.

The punishments for not conforming are huge. I don’t wish a generational amount of punishment on people. I really don’t.

But my kids have to live with me. I am not a conformist. I teach my kids very consciously how to evaluate which rules to ignore and break. I will teach my children to be far more interested in their own will than in the will of someone else. Will this blow up in my face? Well… it might. I don’t have a crystal ball. I don’t know for sure that I am doing them any favors.

Does that mean I love my children less than the people who are teaching their children arguably more socially healthy coping methods?

I would feel sad if someone thought that. But I wouldn’t change my actions based on their evaluation. I love my kids. I believe I am adapting to their needs as they have them. I could easily be lying to myself.

I was talking to one of my neighborhood moms about the kids recently. She’s also a home schooler. But my kids are very different from her kid. Her kid is not allowed to scream, basically at all from what I can tell. (She’s a lot older so this is apples to oranges.) I noticed the moms reaction more than anything. We were talking about how I’m trying to manage the screaming lately.

My kids have strong opinions and I’m ok with them expressing their wants and desires. I just don’t want to be screamed at. My kids have a tendency to get loud. I have not trained loudness out of them. Does this mean I don’t love them? I’m not training them properly for society.

If you go through life worrying about whether or not your parenting choices make random other people think you love your kids you are going to spit into the wind and get your whole face covered in saliva. Not a fun feeling.

I can’t make my choices based on the appearance from the outside. I can’t make my choices based on trying to not offend people. I offend people. Moving on.

I think it is funny the way I ricochet between feeling like people disapproving of me and disliking me is a good reason to kill myself and thinking it is a good reason to believe I am doing the right thing.

Historically speaking, outliers are put to death for the good of the herd. I get this.

I also know that outliers are a lot of who drive progress. They are necessary and important parts of the system.

I don’t know what my kids will be like as grown ups. But I’m sure looking forward to finding out. I am not saying that people who make different choices than me dislike or don’t love their kids.

Give me a fucking break. If I’m not exactly like you does that mean I don’t love my kids?

Maybe it just means I know how to show my love in a very different way. I hope that doesn’t mean anything bad about me or about you. I hope that us being different is something that makes the world better.

It takes all kinds of kinds.

I think that no parenting decision, really no decision of any kind but I’m talking about parenting, can be judged in a vacuum. I have strong views about education. I know what I want to do with my kids. I know that I am able to make the set of choices I want to make due to a very specific and long list of privileges.

That doesn’t make me better than anyone else. It just means I am able to do what I want. Other people are able to do what they want.

There is not going to be a one-size-fits-all approach to parenting. There just isn’t. I kind of hope that means we can all be making right decisions instead of meaning that we are all making the wrong decisions.

Unschooling

8 Replies

I have a lot of volatile things in my head I can’t talk about. So I’m going to write about unschooling instead.

I was hanging out on Pinterest trying to distract myself from my current feelings so that I can get some kind of grip on myself for a day of painting. It isn’t happening fast.

I was looking through a lot of unschooling articles and I was pinning them, as you do, and I thought, “Holy crap I hope that none of my traditionally schooling friends see this and think I am saying mean things about their choices.”

I think our education model in this country is broken. I understand that there are a wide variety of reasons to opt-in to it despite it being fundamentally broken. But I think of it like opting-in to a relationship with an abusive parent because you can’t handle the pain of breaking things off. I get it. But I hope I don’t ever do it.

There are a wide variety of reasons I would put my kids in school and then undermine that shit as best I could at night. I don’t think my kids are too good for school. I think I have the luxury and privilege of being able to make a different decision and I really really want to.

I very consciously educated myself with the goal of being able to be… more or less an elite private tutor. I grew up in a place where I could see that people were being taught lessons by their families that I had no access to. I sometimes lived in extremely wealthy areas. Those kids just knew things about life I had no way of learning.

I wanted kids. It isn’t that I want my kids to grow up to be the smartest people ever. It isn’t that I want my kids to grow up and make lots of money. It isn’t that I want my kids to be perfect in any definable way. I have a very loose schema of criteria.

I want my children to believe that the bodily integrity of people matters. Yes, yes yes… many children come out of the public education system with this intact… blah blah blah. Lots don’t. My kids are already in the advantaged sect because they have parents who believe it regardless of the messages they would hear at a school blah blah blah.

I want my children to really grow up with that message being presented as de facto and it is not in most schools–public or private. If you have to raise your hand and ask permission to use the toilet and a teacher can tell you that you have to wait until the bell rings you do not have bodily integrity. Sorry.

I want my children to believe that information about stuff that interests you comes from a million different places. I don’t want them to think you sit down and do your lessons. I don’t want “school” to be something that bores you and wastes your time. I want my children to appreciate the inherent usefulness of mathematics so I talk about it allllllllllll day in a lot of different contexts. My daughters will not hear the message that girls are bad at math until that concept will make them laugh out loud with surprise. They will know they are good at maths. The person saying that is just kind of silly.

I want my kids to believe that boredom is a sign that you need to get up and start cleaning something. If you really don’t want to clean then you will find something better to do and all of a sudden you aren’t bored.

I understand the need for large scale child care. That is more or less how I view the public education system. We are a society based on parents being out-of-the-home. I want to live in my home. I want to do most of my work here.

If I were able to buy a property out in the middle of some rural place my habits would be totally logical. My proximity to cities does not change the basic nature of how I like living. I choose to not feel shame for feeling soothed by living in a way that is more like how my ancestors lived. Ok, they lived in family groups that were larger than mine but people lived in fairly closed communities. They didn’t have to deal with many people. Oh of course this is partially about my anxiety but I don’t see how kowtowing to a system I don’t believe in just so I can’t pretend that I don’t have anxiety will improve anything.

Lately Noah has been talking about trying to figure out how to actually break down what he has experienced in life and explain it so that kids who don’t have role models can have some idea of what people with privilege see. Ok, that wasn’t precisely how he phrased it. That conversation was a few days ago.

We don’t just stay *in the house*. We are outside a lot. We know our neighbors. We talk to people often. We have relationships. The relationships are getting deeper and more influential as the years go by. My children spend a lot of time with elderly people hearing stories about the Old Days. It’s really fun. I supervise but don’t intervene much in them figuring out how to talk to people.

Well, that’s not true. I help them prepare for conversations in advance. “When you meet someone, what do you say?” After conversations I talk about how it went. I talk to them about facial expressions and body language. I help them understand more about what just happened. “Do you understand why he laughed when I said _____?” I fill in the blanks and help the stories make more sense. I break it down. Stories about WWII become large and convoluted follow up conversations with millions of questions. I don’t direct much. I just answer anything. I look up what I don’t know.

I am a guide and a facilitator.

Will this go on forever? I don’t know. I don’t know how our needs will change. I know that at this moment in time I can’t imagine sending Shanna to a place where they would expect her to sit still (even with breaks) for four or five hours a day let alone six or seven. Some kindergardeners are in school for eight hours. They do have play periods but they do a *lot* of table work.

We complain constantly about an obesity epidemic and we chain children to chairs. What in the hell is going on? I will never put my children on a diet. The very idea makes me sick to my stomach. I will, however, ensure that they learn how to be very physically comfortable with walking at least ten miles a week. I’m becoming increasingly sure that Santa will be bringing bicycles. With bicycles we can get to all of our extra-curricular activities in town.

I pick swimming, martial arts, dance, language, gymnastics and rock climbing classes based on the ability to walk to them. I *have* walked my kids to every location they have taken classes at. We don’t always walk because we often have somewhere else to go before or afterwards but I prefer to walk. If we had bicycles I think I would just figure out how to not schedule things close to classes.

I do not want my children to be used to an air conditioned world. I want them to be used to using their own bodies to go places. I expect them to go do manual labor on farms in third world countries in a few years. They can’t be too soft.

I want them to actually see how it works in other parts of the world. I don’t want to show them pictures of the objectified third world. “Oh those poor oppressed people. All They Need Is A Honky.” Err, not so much. I want my children to meet people when they are young and have no belief that they have the key to life. I want them to just meet people who live differently and learn to love them.

Can you imagine Shanna and Calli living with someone for two and a half months without falling in love? If someone is remotely kind to them they will be hook line and sinker. Those kids like people. All people. They aren’t “color-blind”. They think all colors are beautiful. They want to meet everyone and talk to them. Ok, that’s Shanna’s deal. Calli is dubious.

I think Calli and I will hang back and watch. That will be ok too. That will also be a positive experience. Sometimes I feel like I am watching Shanna work a room. She wants to know everyone. I don’t even understand why. I didn’t implant that.

If she went to a school across the street from her house she would get to know the kids in this neighborhood better. The kids in this neighborhood come and go a lot because we have a lot of rentals. There are only a few owners with kids. She wouldn’t see much diversity. She would see a revolving door of poor brown children who come and go because their parents move. That is the neighborhood we live in.

You know… we play with the kids in the afternoons. I think we get enough of the “people don’t stay in your life” phenomena. My kids are improving their Spanish faster than any other language because a lot of the neighbor kids don’t speak English. We have an increasing segment that doesn’t speak English because they speak some variety of Asian language. Those kids aren’t usually allowed to play with us in the yard.

We play with anyone. If you are here, let’s play. It’s really fun.

I don’t want to spend my life driving to see pre-selected and approved people of appropriate IQ and education level and life philosophy of whatever. I also don’t want to spend my money on lots of being entertained for a few hours. I like most of my hobbies to be cheap or free.

I don’t want to opt-in to the system as I understand it. Given that I have attended twenty-five public schools across three states in a variety of socio-economic settings and then I went on to be a credentialed teacher… I think it is kind of idiotic to try and say that I am not understanding the system. I think I have enough experience that on this matter I get to just trust my gut.

It isn’t an evil place. I’m not trying to say that it is evil. But it is a waste of time. That is what it is designed to do. Waste time. I don’t want that. I don’t want my children to be taught that.

I have the privilege and luxury to make a different choice. I recognize that my choices are not open to everyone. I recognize that there are very good reasons for making different choices. I recognize that I would make different choices based on different life circumstances. I am not trying to put people down who put their kids in school.

I am saying I don’t want to and I don’t have to so I am not going to. Not until they are old enough to pick a course of study and go pursue what they want to be doing on their own. I am fully qualified to ensure they get the basics of life.

I think that I am actively choosing the term Unschooling because I don’t think that the Radical Unschoolers should get to hog the term. We do life learning. I don’t see that changing any year soon. I do not do permissive parenting. I think that refusing to set limits is abdicating your responsibilities as a parent. I think it is unfairly expecting a child to know an adult’s role. Children don’t know the limits yet. That’s kind of how childhood works.

Davy Crockett says, “Be sure you are right; then go ahead.”

I feel intense anxiety about most of my behavior in life. I don’t know how to be good or appropriate or worthy for the vast majority of life experiences.

But I god damn know how to be an elite personal tutor. I trained for that shit. The slow paced isolated life is really good for kids I read. Even if it makes grown ups think I should go get a job.

I think I’m under enough stress already. I don’t have to measure up. There isn’t actually a grading curve in life. But I went to public school. I keep expecting my bad report card. I keep expecting to be expelled or suspended. I absolutely expect to be punished for being an unpleasant person. How dare I exist in public space in a way that others find displeasing.

My kids don’t get punished for being children. My children don’t get yelled at for getting the hiccups. My children don’t get yelled at if their attention wanders and they want to switch activities.

I won’t have to deal with a teacher suggesting medication to calm my unruly child. I will instead just have to figure out how to get all of us enough exercise that we can manage inside behavior when we are inside. Or go outside again. It’s all good.

I want this life so much. I want to find out what someone is like when they are actually treated like a person for their whole life. I don’t know very many people who felt valued through school. I know some. It does happen sometimes. It doesn’t seem to happen in the majority of cases.

Shanna would probably get it. Calli would probably not. Shanna is loud and assertive and charming. Calli is loud and prone to feeling provoked so she attacks with great vigor and ends up looking like the aggressor.

I don’t have a crystal ball or anything. But I’ve seen an awful lot of patterns.

I don’t want my children to spend many hours a day with children who have been socialized to fat shame. No thanks.

I don’t want my eight year old believing she should be trying to be sexy.

Yeah, I’ll shelter them. And I’ll take them to dangerous parts of the world. And shelter them there too. They will always have a modified experience of the world. They won’t even understand it.

I will understand it. No one sheltered me. I don’t think that unsupervised long exposure to random men is something that will happen basically at all. Probably not with women either. My children will develop safe, appropriate relationships.

Is it overly protective of me? Fuck you.

I am not a helicopter parent. My children climb trees and talk to strangers and move around in the world doing shit I dislike all day long. But I am aware of what they are doing. I pay attention. I want to know what they are doing as they take up space in the world. I want knowing them to be my job.

It is a luxury and a privilege that I understand is not available to everyone. I also understand that not everyone would have the desire for this kind of relationship. I also understand that not everyone would have the capacity to be running this kind of constant background schema building exercises. I scaffold their life very carefully and appropriately. Silently. They live in a “yes” environment.

But I am not permissive. And I have really strict boundaries. I just acknowledge that things outside my boundaries are not mine to control.

I want the experience of learning healthy boundaries with people. I want the experience of long term relationships.

Maybe I am a selfish piece of shit for not trying harder to form adult relationships and instead having children. I can live with that. I want to have someone who actually cares about seeing me on Christmas. I want someone who wants to call me on their birthday and say, “Thanks for having me, mom.” (I have a friend who has to do that. I envy her mom. So I’m hoping this friend tells this story over and over as my kids grow up. That lesson can’t come from me.)

I wanted children. I know it is selfish. But I wanted them. Even though I am a crazy bitch. Far meaner crazy bitches than me have managed to not completely fuck up their kids.

Maybe with enough privilege and luxury anyone can be a good parent. Maybe.

I have the luxury and privilege of filling all of my time with things I want to do. I want to educate my kids. I do not want to school them.

If you build it; they will come?

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My favorite thing about being married to Noah is that all of my dreams seem… so very attainable. We talk a fair bit about what will happen after the house is paid off, after the WWOOF year, after Noah feels he will no longer be likely to be a full time professional coder. We won’t be this kind of rich forever. We will be a different kind of rich. What will we do with it?

We have been talking for a while now–years–about wanting to open a school. At this point our language is solidifying around wanting to start the year that would be Calli’s freshman year of high school. This wouldn’t be the right kind of school for Shanna, anyway.

We would like to run a boarding school for nerds. The curriculum will not look a lot like most schools. Kind of a cross between a free democratic school and a vo-tech program. How do you teach entrepreneurship? Luckily we are getting to know the people who are important in those worlds. We are learning what people need to know.

How do you teach responsibility? How do you teach compassion? How do you teach teenagers to believe that their agency actually matters?

I really like being married to Noah. I feel like I could not have a better partner. I feel so very lucky.

chaperones and resiliency

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This morning I read another article by Rebecca Watson. She is active in the atheist/skeptic community and the guys are trying hard to run her out of town on a rail because she is talking about sexual harassment. Let me contain my shock.

She is really defensive about it being her community too. That is a hubris I lack. I don’t have a community. I’m aware that if I go out into any community alone I am fairly likely to have someone say something impolite at best. At worst guys rape me. This is my real life experience. I was telling Noah the other night that one of the things that is hardest for me about our marriage is he doesn’t have any interest in going places with me. Either I go alone or I don’t go. I don’t want to be raped any more. So I don’t go.

I feel angry and betrayed by all of the cultures that tell me the way to be safe is to have a chaperone. Only girls who matter have chaperones. You only have people to protect you when your pussy is special. Mine isn’t. I am the one who is supposed to accept that bad shit so it doesn’t happen to nice girls. That is why whores like me exist.

I don’t go out a lot. I hide a lot. I go to a lot of therapy and have people bring up this word “resiliency” a lot. re·sil·ience

[ri-zil-yuhns, –zil-ee-uhns] Show IPA

noun

the power or ability to return to the original form, position, etc., after being bent, compressed, or stretched; elasticity.

ability to recover readily from illness, depression, adversity, or the like; buoyancy.

So, what is my original shape? I think it is more that I don’t have an original shape I am trying to get back to. I adapt freely to wherever I find myself. I do not return to normal. I just act like the new normal is all I have ever had.

I hear: “We don’t really understand resilience but it is clear that it is necessary for recovery from trauma. It is clear you have it in spades.” Usually said with eyes wide. How can someone survive what I have survived? You put your head down and keep walking.

I get the impression I am unusually willing to accept fault for the things that happen in my life. I can fairly clearly see how and where people react to me differently than they react to other people. People are influenced by my presence in the room–often in ways that seem to be negative.

I have one F on my transcript for my entire life. It was graduate school. A professor was so unpleasant to me that I withdrew from the class and let it turn into an F rather than deal with her. She is infamous in the department for being a problem. Other students in the class took me aside and gave me pep talks about how I should let her obvious hate bring me down–she’s not the best judge of character in the world. It was really funny seeing the other students react to her picking me as the person to pick on. I got a lot of advice on how to be quieter and avoid her attention so she would stop being so mean. I’d rather have a fucking F.

I was thinking about parenting and teaching this morning. I was a really good teacher. My kids worked themselves like dogs for me. They came in voluntarily on the weekend when I gave them an upper division college level assignment. We had to use multiple classrooms to seat everyone who came in for extra help. Their test scores all went up. I had an unusually low absence rate. I had the problem kids who hardly ever go to school. They would come to my period and no other.

When a “problem kid” started acting out I would semi-make a scene in class kicking them out. I was very clear that my “authority” must be respected. Once we got outside I would sit next to them and only barely look at them. Then I would start fishing. “You aren’t freaking out because of what that idiot said to you. I know you better than that. What is happening? Why are you upset?”

I carry with me the belief that I am not very important and my behavior has a fairly limited effect on the world. People are not upset because of me. They are upset because the things I say make them think of things. They are upset by what is in their head–not me.

I called the parents of gang-bangers into class and gave reports about how awesome their kids were. My students tried. One time I gave a test and the highest grade was a C-. I stood in front of every period and cried. I apologized for wasting their time. I apologized for being such a bad teacher that I failed to usefully present the information. I explained what I had done and why. I explained various ways we could try to represent the material and I asked them to vote on approach. Everyone passed the next test–and it wasn’t because it was easy.

I think I write that I stay home because I am afraid of being raped because that is the part that I can really understand. No duh. I don’t go to dance events because I can’t deal with how inconsequential I am. That makes me sound like a whiny baby. It’s hard for everyone to be new. No one gives much respect to people they don’t know and I’ve worked hard at making sure not many people know me.

I have spent my life as a girl and then as a woman. Outside of sexual attractiveness it has been made quite clear to me that my duties are to be: pleasant, charming, gracious, and complimentary towards men. If you don’t play this game then men don’t have time to talk to you. Or dance with you. They snub you openly. I used to get around this because some of the horniest men like feisty women. If I am not looking for sex I find that I don’t get a lot of tolerance. My brand of being annoying isn’t worth putting up with if I’m not going to put out.

The last time I went to a dance event alone it was awful. (When I went with DSH and blacksheep it was wonderful.) I love to dance. I love the feeling of ballroom dancing. It makes me giddy and happy in a way that few activities can. But it’s partner dancing. When I go and ask men to dance they pull back just a hair, I see the corner of their lip pull up in a sneer, then they tell me no. Then I see them proposition a younger and prettier woman. I do dance with women, but I’m not a good lead. I don’t have enough experience. I try but it’s obvious that the experience lacks the crucial elements that makes dance fun.

Noah hates to dance. Years ago he dated this woman. She brought him to dance events and told him that people would be thrilled to have him there and they would welcome him. She uhhh was lying through her teeth (with the best of intentions) and he had a much less warm experience. Instead he found out that he was a bad lead and not that good looking so women spurned him.

I’ve been noticing a lot lately that Noah and I are both funny looking in very complimentary ways. We are similarly awkward. I suspect that is why we make one another feel good. I’m really glad he likes looking at me. I like looking at him. Soon we have to decide if we are going to doom our kids to being funny looking like us or if we are going to cough up for orthodontics. I feel fairly angry by the current meme that you can’t be attractive if you have less than perfect teeth. I have funny looking teeth. If you don’t like them, fine. I won’t fucking smile at you.

Lately I spend a lot of time feeling like I am drifting with the days. I haven’t had a car in a week. That changes our life. I actually like it–I feel less harried. We should be picking it up this afternoon. Weeee.

I want to feel like we get to have a break from the cramming-for-a-test phase of our life. We need to settle in and relax. What does that mean? How is that sustainable? I don’t know. But I need to expect less of myself for a while. I’m very good at being more and more and more productive. But I cry a lot.

What does resiliency mean? It means that no matter how hard someone hits me or how brutally someone rapes me or if someone up and moves me hundreds of miles away where I don’t know anyone I insure that I can return to being calm if needed. I am careful about what things actually need to be in my day and which things can go. I refuse to be a “modern woman” and use makeup and style my hair. It’s a waste of time and it depends on time and equipment I don’t always want to carry around. Just no. I don’t care that other people do. But having that kind of affect requires time and energy and money. I don’t have any to spare on such activities. Not to mention that I cry every fucking day. Hell no I’m not wearing eye make up. Are you insane?

Resiliency means that I know what is important to me and I know that most of the time other people don’t share my priorities. I can’t let that matter. I have to be functional. I have to be able to deal with food for myself and other people. I can do x number of things in a day. Doing my hair rarely makes the list. Hell I rarely shower. No I don’t brush my teeth three times a day and floss twice a day. I am too busy devoting cycles of my brain to not becoming hysterical in public.

I get the impression that I think about my face about as much and as often as a highly-functioning person on the ASD. I’m aware that if my face looks hostile I will have problems. I have worked very hard on having a calm, neutral facial expression that isn’t intimidating. It’s easier for me than for guys. I have more problem with not being intimidating enough when I want to be.

The first supervisor I had as a student teacher was a wonderful old Sicilian guy. He was a bit taller than me and about two hundred pounds heavier than me. (I’m not skinny and never have been.) He told me that I would have problems with discipline because I was such a tiny little thing. I never had discipline problems. I am quite effective at becoming a force of nature when I want to. The problem is limiting that energy. Limiting that hostility and anger is a constant effort. At any moment of the day you could say one or two sentences to me that will cause me to want to jump up and start punching holes in the wall. I am always on the verge of rage.

Resiliency is being able to mask what I am feeling so well that people don’t have any idea who I am or what I am like. When they find out they recoil. A lot of the point of going out in public with a chaperone is so that you always have someone to moderate for you. Someone who kind of keeps an ear out for how you are talking and how you are being talked to–someone who wants to keep you safe. I do it for my kids. No one has ever done this for me.

I have always been dropped into new social groups where I am unknown and I have to carefully suss out who is ok with talking to me. I’m not good at the generic social warm up. It is both why I am attracted to facial piercings and why I don’t have any. They would advertise for me in ways that would make it easier to find tribe and harder to pass when I am feeling unsafe.

I have resiliency because I always know that I will find a quiet dark room to hide in. I will always manage to find somewhere to hide and lick my wounds. I’m competent at that. I will always find a way to have a space that is mine and I will defend it with vigor. I will limit who is invited to come over. I’m quite fussy about people in my space.

As more and more years go by I know enough people that I could probably find de facto wingmen for events. It’s not the same. I don’t have a bestie. I don’t have someone who knows me intensely well and kind of runs interference. I hear that is “unhealthy” yet when I look around it is an awful lot of how people adapt the world to them. They carry a reality distortion field around with them because they travel in groups and therefore wherever they are there is a substantial representation of their world view. Near as I can tell no one shares my world view. I am always the dissenting opinion.

I’d rather stay home than not speak. I’m not always up for being shouted down. Gosh my house is nice.

I am apparently feeling shy about pictures of my house. I can’t seem to bring myself to take them. My house is pretty shabby and I don’t feel open to criticism. I choose to do silly things rather than standard things. I am ok with lots of big chips in my paint because the kids draw on the walls anyway so I’m not going to try and fix anything right now. My baseboards are coming off the wall. All of the screens were ripped off by lovely destructive daughter. I could go on and on. I see all the “wrong”.

But I really like the lights. And I like the things I paint. I like looking at them. I feel happy when I do so. I like my yard more by the year. I’m kind of glad I don’t have more land to work. God that sounds like work. I think I would be a lot more angry about Noah’s complete lack of interest in helping if I had more land. This is the right amount for me to work alone. I’m trying to figure out how I am going to put in a hundred (or two hundred) strawberry plants this spring. A friend is looking for people to go in on an order. I may not buy a massage package from her husband for a while in order to fund this. But we go through strawberries like nobodies business. I’m thinking about it. I want to decide by tomorrow.

I have been feeling very whiny about the winter this year. I haven’t turned the heaters on yet. I’m trying to be stubborn and get to November. I think I am really trying to be stubborn because I want to see Shanna wear some of the damn clothes I buy her. She runs very warm. I am wearing knee socks and a long sleeved shirt under my footed fleece jammies. She has on a light sundress. I’m not sure I have the fortitude to out wait her. Goodness knows our heating bill could use it. We’ll see.

I should go start breakfast. Noah went in early so we can pick up the car this afternoon.

I feel like I can only describe this by saying that I feel like I am trudging uphill through a molasses swamp. With every few steps a new load drops on my head from a new tree. I don’t want to get up. I want to sit here on the floor and cry. I’m not going to. I’m going to work on that half smile. I will sigh deeply. I will stand up. I will go in the kitchen. Shanna asked for pancakes. We’ll see.

You just keep going

Do the best you can

Category Archives: school

Calm or productive

My children continue to be my favorite people.

Perspective

Family, opinions, planning

Sex and fucking up

Sure, you can validate me.

Too much, again. Damnit.

Resources

I like changes.

Hindi study

Progress

Scheduling, guilt, and other things.

Reflections

I need you.

leaving on a jet plane

Judgmental asshole.

Since I’m pissing people off.

If you build it; they will come?

chaperones and resiliency