We fly home tomorrow. Malaysia was wonderful and I want to come back. I’m pretty sure Noah will be invited to the conference again next year and we will be in the country for more than two weeks next time. We will get out of KL and explore the more rural states. Everyone has told us to go to Penang and my response is, “Ok!” I met a really nice lady at the Batu Caves and she says she wants to spend a lot of time feeding me. Ok!

Before this trip Scotland and New Zealand were my bar for friendliness and I think it just got raised. I feel welcome here.

For the entire nation there are only .6% of people living below the poverty line. In the US it’s about 14%. It is fascinating being in a place where most of the country is ok. I mean, there is still a big difference between the lifestyles of the rich and the lower middle class… but the difference isn’t starvation and suffering.

I’m feeling quite good about being in a Muslim country instead of a predominantly Christian country. The difference is feeling so very humane.

I am going to see if it is possible to get another massage tonight before we fly home. That would be pretty ridiculously awesome. It would make the plane flight 100% better. Carrying the baby all the time jacks me up.

So we are going home to try to get the house ready and sell it. We will spend as much of January and February as possible freezing our asses off in Washington DC. That’s going to feel like a harsh reality after this burning heat. We will probably spend some of March in DC, not sure how much, before going off to Japan for March and part of April. Noah needs to be in Minneapolis in May. We will need to see the orthodontist somewhere in there. Maybe while he is doing his conference the kids and I will go to California. After that there are conferences in the Netherlands and the UK so I’ll get to go see Jenny. August is Nashville. Nothing else is announced for 2019 yet. I assume October will involve Malaysia again.

Today we are going to go see the National Museum. We’ve missed a lot of stuff because we left our sight seeing till the end and things have been a bit more physically stressful than we expected. The Petronas Towers (tallest twin towers in the world) are over 1,000 ft high and we went up to the top. When we came down we had hours of me and the kids feeling shaky and sick so we didn’t go do a bunch of sight seeing.

Oh good. We have lots left to do when we come back.

Eldest Child is just over a day behind on math. I have had such an emotional roller coaster as she’s caught up… but she’s basically there. Her life is going back to normal now and we are all so happy about it. And she’s about halfway through the 4th grade math textbook (which is where she was scheduled to be) so she will be 100% caught up to grade level by the time she starts 6th grade. And she’s going to be used to working at double time speed so I wouldn’t be shocked if she was a bit ahead by high school.

Even though I’ve felt eaten alive by worry over the past few months…. this is basically what the plan has been since she was little. She needed a seriously delayed start. She didn’t have the focus. Trying to force her into academics in first or second grade would have gone poorly. She needed the delay so very much and as a result now that she is busting her ass she has focus and drive she just couldn’t have had while younger.

She is feeling incredibly proud of herself. At this point she cheerfully says, “I still don’t love math, but clearly it is very easy for me. I have natural aptitude.”

That’s an absolutely outstanding attitude for her to have. It’s true. She does have natural aptitude. She can go through hundreds of new, challenging problems in a day and only ask 1-3 questions. And when she gets a problem wrong I can say, “Hm. Maybe you should look at that one again” and she does and then she smacks herself in the forehead and says “Oh good grief. Look, right there I messed up. I should have done x instead.”

I don’t think I had that at her age. I was already convinced I was stupid and bad at math. I hadn’t memorized the multiplication tables yet and I’d already had teachers in 5 schools tell me that I just sucked at math. They kept saying that my brain was wired wrong.

Fuck teachers.

When I got to college and math became more interesting all of a sudden I got better at it but I was still stymied by my complete lack of self confidence. It’s like how teachers told me I was bad at art so I was ready to fight anyone who told me I was artistic until I was in my 30’s. Teachers have so much power and they abuse it so much. I feel so much gratitude that my children are getting to grow up feeling like “I’m good at a lot of things but I don’t have to love everything I’m good at.”

I had a moment of internal ugh when I was talking to some of the speakers from the conference and the question was, “You don’t do anything other than take care of the kids?” Ouch. Yup. I’m a useless lump just sitting with my kids.

Being a private tutor the way I am is a fuck ton of work. No, I don’t also have a job because I would have to only sleep 4-6 hours a day. I am very lucky to only need to do one job. I know it’s a privilege. But schooling my children the way I do is so hard that uhhh more than 90% of parents just couldn’t do it. So acting like it is nothing? Uhm…. ok.

In order to provide the kind of education I’m providing most parents would be spending many tens of thousands of dollars a year. But ok. Yeah. I don’t do anything other than take care of my kids.

I’m an insecure pathetic nitwit.

I spent 10 years preparing for this job and I’m doing it very well. I wish I had more confidence in myself that it is a job worth doing.

Cause the other mothers at the con left their kids at home. The other mothers have real jobs and pay people to be daycare and then put their kids in school. Why am I not doing something with my life?

I would want to jump off a building if I had to do your job. It would kill my soul. I would cry a lot if I only got to see my children for a few hours a day and I was always dealing with sets of behaviors my children learned from other caregivers.

I don’t think it is wrong for other mothers to handle it that way. I have deep wounding that is being healed by the relationships I’m having. I’m hoping that with a few more years of this I will be really ready to watch my babies leave the nest and go off to have their own lives.

The kids and Noah and I had a really fun conversation yesterday about how your parents aren’t always as important as they are at this stage. You will outgrow us. You will have friends and partnerships that replace us. We won’t always be your most important people and we probably shouldn’t be. You can still love us and hopefully you will want to spend some time with us… errr, hopefully y’all will want to spend more time with us than Noah or I want to spend with our own mothers….

But you don’t owe us. We give you this gift of importance and time and love because we want to. Because giving this to you is important to us. That doesn’t mean you owe us back. You get to have your own path and you get to decide how much you include us on it.

Two of the female speakers at the conference brought their mothers. That’s pretty cool. I’d be down with that. But I don’t get to require it.

It is up to you all how much you want me in your life when you are an adult.

I feel incredibly confident that I am not preparing my children to be useless or dependent. I am just enjoying the fuck out of the stage when they are dependent. I don’t need to push them out of the nest any earlier than they want to leave. We all are still enjoying our life together very much and I want to maintain that as long as this works for everyone. Someday it won’t work any more and that will be right and correct when it happens.

We are mostly packed. The clothes we wear today I will wash tonight after we get home (we are all happy to sit around in our underwear in the heat anyway) and I’ll put the bathroom supplies away after we shower tonight.

Then back to California. Back to the violent US.

Noah asked me if I felt like my safety was more at risk in Malaysia from things like muggings or being attacked. I don’t think he expected me to laugh. No. I worry about cars running red lights here. I don’t worry about people attacking me. I worry about that at home where I am surrounded by white men. Not here.

I am afraid of my country. I am a lot less afraid in other places.

I am very grateful that I don’t have to be in the US for the rest of my life. I don’t know where we will land…. but I am grateful that I get to leave a white supremacist nation.

I remain thrilled with this city. The food is so good. The scenery is so beautiful. I am reminded by the army of people working to clean every moment of the day that this kind of beauty isn’t natural in the polluted world we live in. You can’t walk five minutes in KL without seeing people cleaning. Usually several. Like, the public bathrooms have attendants who mop out the stalls between people. (Bidets are everywhere and I get the impression that folks aren’t that good about keeping the water in the toilet.)

Side note about the most important data that everyone cares about: solid poop has resumed! I’m excited! The bidets are incredibly helpful and comfortable for my poor hemorrhoids that have not receded since my last pregnancy. And it occurs to me that above the water/food/sleep deprivation…. the thing that has always liquified my bowels the fastest…. heat. Damn it’s hot here. I’m adjusting though. I’m also taking these “don’t have diarrhea” pills that I got from the travel clinic. They aren’t a treatment, they are a preventative. They are mostly cow colostrum and I think they are helping. Anyway.

We are spending a lot of time in/near the local mall. Not because we are buying lots of clothes or random stuff but because that’s where the grocery stores are and you can cut through the mall to get to the park and holy tomato the mall is FULL of deeeeeelicious restaurants. We went there for lunch. We will go to a different restaurant there for dinner. Because holy cheese we want to try all the food.

Random note: in the fancy Thai restaurant we went to (the head chief used to be one of the main chefs for the king of Thailand) didn’t have yellow curry. That made me wonder if yellow curry is mainly a US adaptation? Kind of like how Chinese food in the US is not like real Chinese food?

There are two gigantic malls across the street from one another. Near as I can tell they are divided by price point: moderate or $$$$$$$. Like, every fancy brand I’ve ever heard of is here. I walk past the stores and don’t really notice what is in them because…. I would never shop there. But the food is good!

French brie costs ~ $35. Eeek. (We did not buy any.)

I am surprised by how many US brands I see in the grocery stores. Like, we bought Cheerios when our tummies were upset because it is familiar and simple.

It’s hot in a way that climbs inside you and makes you wilt and move slooooowwwweeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrr.

Frankly I don’t understand how these construction workers cope. It’s brutal.

I am still struggling with dealing with laundry. I have to run it constantly. But I’m still happier with cloth diapers because of situations like today. The only baby changing station is approximately a 1/4 mile walk from the food court down several stories. Fuck that. I will just squat in a bathroom stall and change the diaper on my lap. With cloth diapers that snap… easy peasy. No fuss. I can’t do that with a disposable. It slips and moves and never gets to the right dang position. I suck at disposables. I can’t do it with a velcro diaper either. Snaps =  awesome. But next time we travel I will bring fewer diapers. Our whole stash is pointless here.

The apartment… well it’s a good thing it won’t be allowed to be rented out anymore. The building is banning short term rentals. We check out the day before people incur punishments  for doing this. Whoops. But it’s dirty. And we found glass shards on the counter. And the pans were disgusting and not washed. It’s kinda gross.

Not relevant to KL, but cool in general: Eldest Child is caught up to this week of math! She’s still a couple of days behind but this is great! She has worked really hard. She has had days when she didn’t and I was frustrated…. but she has caught up. In the past two months she has done five months worth of math. And those five months of math are really more like six months in a normal academic year because she’s trying to get through two academic years in one year. So… she deserves recognition of that.

I’m struggling with the lack of pot. I’m being too bitchy. I made Middle Child cry today and I feel really bad about it. It’s not that I did anything big or really over the top. I’m just nit picking and sniping about stupid shit and I really need to stop. He doesn’t deserve this from me.

I feel like I have been picking on him lately and I really don’t like myself for it. He deserves better from me. He’s such a good kid. He tries so hard.

And…. it turns out EC has been using data on her phone because she wanted to look things up on fucking google when she is banned from the computer. Ok. Well. There goes my blood pressure.

We finally got the internet to work. *phew* I really didn’t want to move apartments given that Eldest Child puked yesterday, Middle Child feels like he could, and all of us have diarrhea.  

I have so many thoughts in my head. I can’t use pot so they are pretty overwhelming.

Why do I react with negativity when a lady asks me if I am enjoying my shopping? Why do I act like enjoying shopping is dirty and I am bad? I mean… my favorite kind of shopping is for groceries. But I do *love* grocery shopping. And I was doing grocery shopping in a foreign country! So I was very much enjoying it! But that felt… not ok? It’s weird.

My kids are so fried. I don’t think today is going to be very productive and I need to be kind about it. They are tired. They got through an incredibly rough day yesterday and didn’t hit *done* till 28 hours into it. That’s great.

I have this thing I do. I don’t think I’m worth very much so I try to substitute in the opinions of other people who have more esteem for me. This is complicated for so many reasons. If someone doesn’t have time for me does that mean I cease to have value as a person? If someone would prefer to spend their time with someone else, does that mean terrible things about me? My response at this point is anger instead of just feeling like I should kill myself. That’s… progress? It’s still not great.

I wish I didn’t have this terrible burning need to be with other people. I hurt myself so much trying to be available, trying to create opportunities for other people to spend time with me.

You know what? If those people wanted to spend more time with me they would probably… do that. They wouldn’t avoid me.

This is really weird and hard. Like, I’ve been hyperventilating and crying trying to figure out how I am going to handle visiting Jenny. I love Jenny so much. But I get on her nerves. We have a limited amount of time we can spend together before I start getting twitchy and feeling like everything I say/do/think is wrong and I am a terrible person. Jenny doesn’t say these things. She’s never said anything like that. She just sets boundaries, firmly. That’s important! That’s necessary! That’s part of why we have survived so many decades of friendship! My friendship with Jenny is one of the healthier relationships of my life. Lots of boundaries.

I *want* to go to the UK for the six month visitor visa and spend all that time staring at Jenny’s beautiful face.

I am abjectly terrified that after week three we would stop being friends. So I’m not going to go spend six months in Scotland. I need this relationship to continue. I need to be able to have her in my life and if that means a lot of restrictions and boundaries around what that means… so be it.

Relationships change. People change. Their needs and what they have to offer changes. I don’t think most people are good about being honest about this.

It is very very hard when people change what they have to offer and don’t talk about it. I do it. I’m shitty like that sometimes. I try to talk about what I am up for, but I fail. I fail over and over and over.

I don’t know how to go through life without hope. I am a very hopeful person. I set up these things to hope for and that keeps me moving forward. Finding a partner, having kids, home schooling, travel, my various friendships…

I have realistically had a higher than “expected” or deserved success rate.

It is not really ok that I’m such an asshole and so disappointed by life when I have gotten almost everything I wanted from my adult life. I am a selfish, small, ridiculous person. So much goes right. I really am lucky.

Sometimes things don’t work out how I hope. Sometimes I don’t even understand the size or shape of what I am hoping for until it is too late and the opportunity is lost and I am just filled with horrible disappointment and panic and anger and fury.

I am not claiming that this fury is justified, appropriate, or acceptable.

People are going to disappoint me. People are going to change what they have to offer.

People are going to not want to pay much attention to me sometimes. They are busy. They have other people who are more important.

Coping with that is hard.

It is hard to pretend that I don’t notice how much less important I am than I used to be. I understand that it is both appropriate and acceptable that I have been demoted. What I have to offer in this life is not good enough for everyone. Not because I suck, but because I have a distinctly limited quantity of time and energy to give.

I got married and had kids. I dropped out of social circles. I stopped being very active in other peoples lives. That’s on me.

It is *good* that people moved on and found more fulfilling connections. They should. I want them to. I want my friends to have partnerships or children or companionship that I cannot provide.

I do.

But sometimes I feel small and selfish because I am sad that I am less important than I want to be. Because I can spend months planning to see my friend and I am slapped in the face with the reality that I am not the most important person in their life.

I am not. I should not be. It would be a problem if I was because I am not enough. I cannot be enough. I don’t have enough to offer. I do the best I can and that is not good enough.

Errrrr especially with how *many* people I love…. I am not big enough.

But sometimes I am so sad. Sometimes it hurts. Sometimes I feel crushing disappointment. Sometimes I want to hurt these people I love because I am so upset about not being more to them.

That fucking sucks.

People tell me that you should give from an open heart and not do so because you want to get something back.

Sometimes I can. Sometimes I am hurting myself to give and when I don’t get back what I need to receive…

My bucket is just empty.

I have been struggling with feeling empty for a while. I keep trying to set things up such that my bucket gets filled. Then I get to the activity that would hopefully fill my bucket and instead it feels like my friend takes the bucket, flips it over, then drills a hole.

It hurts.

I am a future tripper. It is how I survive hating myself.

It is akin to people who say that they can’t buy clothes/go on a trip/do a cool thing until they lose weight.

If I work hard enough and give enough maybe someday I will cause other people to like me enough that I will get to like me too.

No matter how much I offer: time, energy, money, vacations… I can’t do enough for people that they will like me enough that I can like myself. That’s just going to fail.

I wish I felt more entitled to the love my children offer. But I’m afraid of being too enmeshed and hurting them. So I force distance and still look to my friends. And then that is mixed.

It would be wise for me to look to my friends less. Which is so complicated and hard. They have been my everything. Only now they can’t be. Just like I can’t be their everything.

I don’t know how to stop looking to my friends for the reflection of what I am worth.

But uhhhh frankly I need to. Because I am worth more than my friends can give me.

But I don’t want to be more than the reflection from my friends.

This shit is so hard.

I have never wanted to be an independent person. Not really. I want to be part of a pod, a group, a community… a *family*.

I have that now. And my friends are not part of it. I wish that fact didn’t make me feel so fucking bad. I feel like I am letting everyone down and being a horrible person. But it’s true. So much of life is like that. It fucking hurts. I don’t want the truth to be so painful. I want all of my friends to count as my family.

But at the end of the day… when they want to see their family… I am not on the list.

I had so damn many kids partially to cope with this. My friends have always loved me and spent time with me… then gone back to their families.

It *is* appropriate and right. They should.

But I’m sad.

I mean, I’m having lots of feelings all at once. That is part of what is so hard about not having pot.

I had a fun interaction with a security guard. As I was walking through a drive way to get to the GIANT mall he asked me how I was doing. I said I was fine and asked how he was. He was super melodramatic (in a fun way) and he told me, “Picture this: you are a princess and I am your body guard.” He then escorted me across the driveway and was funny and fun about all of it. When we got to the far side he asked me how I was feeling now. I told him I was definitely feeling like a princess. He was happy. (Conversation now paraphrased and I may not be doing him perfect justice.) He was funny and fun.

I’ve now been in Malaysia for over a day. I haven’t had a pissy feeling towards a person here yet. That may be a record for me. Ha. Malaysians are *so* nice. And *so* friendly. And *so* helpful.

I can’t gush enough about how nice people are being. Folks in the US find it odd how much I like being randomly helpful. But this country kind of feels like a whole bunch of people I understand.

Another weird bit that I’m noticing… this might a country that shares a few too many of my predilections. Like how I am an initiator and not good at follow up? Yeah… I feel like I see that around me.

Kuala Lumpur is an up and coming city. There are fantastic sky scrapers that absolutely rival everything nice in New York City. But they are cheek and jowl with old dilapidated buildings that seem on the verge of collapse. The roads are beautifully shaped… until they crumble at the edge.

Frankly I don’t know how they build this stuff given the weather. The soil must be mostly sand.

And the palm groves are magnificent. From the sky they are in carefully cultivated paths and rows.

We passed multiple herds of cows between the airport and the city. This country is so wonderfully urban… and rural… all within the same area. You don’t see multiple cow herds within 10 minutes of downtown New York. You won’t see cows between SFO and San Francisco.

This country is fascinating and beautiful. And dear cheese I love the rain.

This won’t be my forever place. But I’m really enjoying this.

And holy tomatoes on toast the food is goooooooooooooooooooooood.

We bought a large breakfast from a street vendor. 15 ringgit for all of us. That’s just over $4.

Apparently folks cook lots at home and come out and sell for a bit then run out of food and someone else comes to the spot a little while later.

I see what our laws are trying to protect people from. Yet being here makes me think that the US regulates way too much. I’m not even sure what laws I would redact.

In completely random news: her sweetness has a little bit of a rash. Not in her private areas, on her back and the outside of her thighs. I’m not sure what is going on. It’s been there for a couple of days. I’m watching it and slathering it in Aquafor. If it is still there when we are here for a few more days I will email her doctor so she can come in the day after we get back.

My kids are not doing poorly on academics… but I am struggling to be as patient with them as I should be. I’ve been testy all day. We are all over tired. We are all out of patience. And I’m unmedicated. This sucks.

When I went grocery shopping I bought a lot of shit. Toilet paper, mouthwash, tea, sugar, milk, salad, nuts, a lunch meat packet, a little bit of toothpaste, fruit (a bunch), water… I think that is all? It was $40! I had two heavy bags to carry! It was like a trip to the dollar store, yo.

I am not sure we are going to be able to stay in this apartment. Which is stressful as fuck. There isn’t internet. And that’s a problem given that Noah has to work these two weeks. The host isn’t responding to the three messages I left today. That’s not good. It makes sense that the host is less than responsive. We are his last clients. The building has signs up saying that two days after we leave no more AirBnB in the building. I wouldn’t be shocked if they are douches about it.

Ok, that’s my only negative experience with a local.

Lunch was a mix of salad greens, nuts, and pastrami. That was awesome. And now when I go have dinner I will feel super awesome about eating anything that seems appealing. Ha.

I do love my children. I am grateful every day that I have Noah. I am a lucky woman. I have a family.