Tag Archives: random

PMDD is so awful

I am on day 42 of my cycle. I start running low on hormones around day 26/27/28. I usually start sometime between day 28 and day 35. It’s been pretty consistent since the last kid. I am… not ok this time. I can feel the complete and total lack of energy or happiness or give. My bones feel worn out and terrible. The numbness in my hands is super bad at this point. I know that a lot of that is how much I’m painting but progressively over the last week it has gotten worse and overwhelming and awful.

My whole body is hurting. I haven’t had many spells like this since I moved here. This is a California-level of pain. I feel sad and irritable and angry and disappointed in so many people and situations and results that I feel unable to cope. I am not suicidal; which is a blessing–that doesn’t darken my door much anymore. I just feel like I’d like to crawl in my bed and cry for a few days until my period starts because I am completely out of cope. In the overall scheme of things that is a relatively healthy and sane impulse and I feel proud that I am in this place now instead of where my lows took me ten years ago.

It is weird being able to list things that I miss about California and reasons that there were advantages there that I don’t have here… while completely knowing that I am overall doing better here than I ever have. Do I still have pain? Yes; particularly when I am drifting back towards California-style work habits that I know are dramatically not good for my body. Do I still have some anxiety? Yes; my anxiety here is so different. I can’t put a number on this to do like a “rate your pain” scale. Knowing that I will never run into Dan or Paul or my mother or my sister or Auntie or Anna or Brittney or or or or or means that I no longer live with hypervigilance. It’s not that I believe that nothing bad can happen to me I just fully accept that scanning the room for exits is not going to be helpful in any of the bad things that happen to me going forward. I can’t tell with a casual glance who is going to be a problem so I just… don’t.

I mean, when the dude got out of his car to yell at me and smack my hand I didn’t freeze up or start crying or react poorly until after he drove away. I stood my ground (in a suitably gun free manner) and I defended myself verbally and I took his picture. I did what I think I should do. And now I don’t scan looking for him or his car because I am pretty confident that if he ran into me in town and harrassed me again I would simply call the police and tell them we had another problematic interaction and he would get in trouble. They put a mark on his record.

I am living in a small town where the police get upset about that kind of thing between strangers. It is still hard to solve between neighbors… but that’s a whole different dynamic. Stranger assault is prosecuted.

I’m anxious about saying the wrong thing to people I am trying to make friends with. That isn’t gone but it is different from California. I find it intensely healthy for me to be consciously aware that people here don’t owe me anything. I haven’t been doing things for people for years with the hope that someday things would shift and they would support me when I needed it because they love me. That’s very freeing.

Even though typing this is terrifying for me I’m going to do it because this space has to be for me if it is going to work. Even things with Jenny have leveled off and found a comfortable stasis. We are not trying to live in one another’s back pockets because we are both cat-like and we like a lot of space. There are topics we kind of avoid because it feels like those aren’t the best ones for us. It’s feeling really comfortable and happy for me. I can only project and not speak like I really know how she feels but she isn’t expressing any dissatisfaction with our relationship. I feel like I pushed too hard when I moved here and we had to work out how to deal with each of us having our prickly points and it has worked out. She remains one of the people I love most in the world. I would bury bodies for her. If something catastrophic happened I would absolutely rescue her or her kids or her husband. I believe with my whole soul that she would show up for me in an emergency. I am feeling safe and comfortable that we have managed to find a nice place between us. I suspect in 5-10 years when our kids are older we will see each other a tiny bit more than we do right now but we are both people who are very comfortable in our own company and that’s not a bad thing.

I’m slowly working on other relationships in town and that’s slow going and complicated because people are like that. I like living here and I think it is going to be a good space for me in the long run. I worry a little about Noah’s place here because he is a lot more constrained than I am in terms of going out and meeting people. He’s going to need friends in the long run too and having them all be on his computer is mixed.

Kids are a pain in the butt. I’m just saying. This has been a bad week for me in terms of my emotional state and that’s no one’s fault. Also: my kids have been buttheads a few times and we’ve had words. I feel so intensely proud of myself because we had words. I didn’t shout. I didn’t scream. No one was punished or denigrated. “Hey this thing is happening and it’s not ok and we need to talk about why.”

Ok, take a deep breath and really feel that. Even when I am upset and I want to freak out because of hormones… we talk. I say, “Hey let’s explore some of the angles you aren’t seeing on your own right now.” When we are done they understand why I am asking for a change (it may or may not happen–let’s be real) but they aren’t angry with me for bringing it up. I understand more about why it’s going on from their perspective. It’s not ok to just silence people when they are inconvenient. Children aren’t problems they are *having* problems and talking about why is important.

It is so hard that my older kids are very much in a place where many of their problems are now things I cannot fix because it isn’t about me. The main upside of that is they are starting to feel in their bellies that it is true when I say the same thing about my problems. “I’m not upset about you. I’m having a problem.” I can see Little Girl struggling through what the older kids went through and she is directly acting out her stuff with her dolls and it’s interesting. I feel so much more emotionally/mentally distant from the process now than I did when the older kids were that size. I will roleplay with her with her dolls.

So yesterday morning I woke up and I felt awful and I cried some. It’s not because anyone did anything. Then Little Girl came in and joined me for a snuggle and she does this thing where she likes to dig her feet into my legs. Sometimes it is ok and sometimes my body hurts and it is super painful. I was already crying so of course she felt bad and took it on herself. Later she had a whole scene with her dolls where she was talking about them hurting her by poking her legs so she was putting them in time out because it’s not ok to be mean to her. I roleplayed one of the babies and talked about how I wasn’t trying to be mean; I was trying to be close because I love her. Is there a way I can be super close without hurting her? I am scared to go in time out right now because that means I broke a rule and I don’t want to feel like snuggling is breaking a rule. She was so kind and loving and caretaking with her baby. It was really wonderful to watch. “Oh my gosh! You are right! Snuggling is not breaking a rule. Maybe we should change where we are snuggling so that you don’t hit my legs and hurt me.”

My grinch heart grew three sizes.

(At this point pretty much the only rule she breaks is screaming in the house and you have to take big voices to your bedroom. This is not California and I can’t insist that all screaming has to be in the yard because of weather.)

I don’t talk about the big kids much anymore because they deserve privacy and walking the line is complex. But I do want to say that it is fascinating to me just how much they still ache for my approval. (They get a lot of it–I’m not saying this is a hollow thing.)

My Oldest Girl is pushing so hard to individuate and good golly hormones have hit her like a freight train and she has so much hostility about injustice and difficulty in the world. Saying good morning at the wrong time is fairly likely to get a stiff middle finger. I go with it. I try hard not to take almost any of it personally. We are dancing around the balancing act of “I’m still your mother so sometimes I am going to be obnoxious and I will want to give you a hug and a kiss. If you truly object in the moment you are allowed to refuse but mostly it’s a good idea to let me do it.” She is doing a lot better in terms of mental health since she stopped going to school. Things were getting really bad for a while there. We come from families that have a lot of depression and anxiety and PTSD and suicide. It would be highly unethical and neglectful for me to not act quickly when I can see my child melting down because of abuse they are receiving. She is starting to blossom again. She is returning to herself and I love seeing it. It’s going to be a process for her to find friends here and school is not going to be the solution. Her art blows my mind. She has so much talent and skill and she practices all the dang time. Her writing is fun and engaging and she is absolutely brilliant at creating pictures in your mind of what is happening to her characters. She still needs a bit more work on exposition but that’s not a terrible lacking–just something to think about and work towards a bit more. She is strong and fit and confident and willing to speak up for herself. And she’s taller than me and built like 30-something Taylor Swift and I cannot even.

My wonderful and delightful Enby is still plugging along. Puberty is happening and it’s a roller coaster. It’s interesting how the acting out is different now from when they were younger. They have so much more self control than they used to have. They still have giant feelings that are hard to manage at times but they know which direction they are growing towards/working on when it comes to expressing those feelings and they are consciously and deliberately learning skills around that. I am so impressed by the effort they put in to being self aware. They are baking and cooking and tweaking recipes and being brave and adventurous. I am sad we didn’t get a better evaluation done at Stanford before we left because they clearly have some specific learning challenge going on and I’m struggling with figuring out what it is. They really have a hard time with some aspects of education and we are trying a few different things because I don’t know what direction is the right one. They are making progress but I think they are always going to be a person who is much better with kinesthetic and active and oral learning rather than on paper learning. It’s really cool watching them learn coping skills around that. They want competence and if they have to route around an area of challenge for that… well just get on with it. They alternate between being this absolutely startlingly compassionate person and being a normal kid. I see them being on this see saw towards adulthood and it is so clearly part of the process they need to follow. They progress intensely then they regress a bit then they leap again. The more patience I show and the more scaffolding I supply the bigger each leap is and the smaller the regression. If I am impatient or difficult about the regression then it intensifies and they can’t leap again for quite a while.

It is fascinating living with these children. The Oldest doesn’t need my approval all the time–once in a while she succeeds in order to spite me. The Middle craves approval like it is heroin. They will beg, borrow, steal, to get it. They do not function well at all if I am anything other than a full throated cheerleader. Rebukes and course corrections have to be delivered with the softest of touches or they wilt and don’t recover for days… sometimes weeks. The Littlest is so small that she still needs tons of redirections towards “Oh hey it would be great if you….” “Oh golly if you do x then y will happen and that’s not good.” I suspect she is going to be more on the spitfire end as she grows. Her threenager year has been so very long.

This post brought to you by the good news that one of my buddies now works in the paint store and he is encouraged to give a friends and family discount to people and basically no one he knows buys paint. I was talking about the sorry shape of my arms right now and how I am pushing myself raising the clock before the paint dies and he told me to take a break. It won’t be nearly as expensive of an issue to fix as I fear. Ok. I will listen.

So I stopped painting a week before my purported end date. I have a ton of other work to do that has been sliding through the cracks. This will be in no way a bad thing. I am exhausted in a way that means I am not sleeping enough because I can’t shut my brain off to sleep. I’m craving alcohol like mad. I think at my next cycle of talking to the GP and psych nurse I will say that I think I am ready to both increase the Amitriptyline and the Lisdexamfetamine.

I am still on very low doses of both and getting closer to a normal dose would be useful at this point. My blood pressure readings are so so so much better on 30mg of Amitriptyline. I’m back in the high 120’s-low 130’s/high 70’s-low 80’s. There is still room for improvement but that’s not dangerous or scary. More Amitriptyline would possibly help with that. Losing weight would probably help with that.

These medications are breaking the stalemate of my weight plateau. I’m still eating whatever I want whenever I want. I am drinking some alcohol (in the range of 4-6 units/week because I know drinking is not recommended on these meds) but not nearly as much as I was. I am not doing tons of exercise because I have been in the house painting all the time but I am still doing the twice weekly yoga and I’m riding in the neighborhood of 20-ish miles a week and even occasionally getting in a decent length walk. I’m not sedentary but I’m not over-exercising in a way that would cause weight loss. So I really believe the drop is as a result of the medications at this point. I didn’t think to weigh myself right when I started the medications. The first data point I have in this year was in February and I was 211. In late August I was at 203. As of this week I saw 199 for the first time in a long time. I repeat: I am not dieting. What I am doing is taking medications that change my brain chemistry and increase my serotonin changes how my brain processes dopamine. That’s making my body not feel like it needs to hold on to fat in the same way. I’m not doing this because I want to lose weight; I am noting physical changes in a way that can be measured. Things like mood are harder.

The PMDD window is something that can overcome the positive effect of any medication in my experience. I am seriously dreading the peri-menopause experience of my cycles gradually lengthening. I expect the next ten years to be hard. But it’s not like any decade has been easy so get on with it. I am deeply grateful that I have gotten to the point where when I feel really low that does not increase suicidal ideation or fixation. I am grateful that I don’t struggle with the desire to mutilate my body anymore. It is complicated as fuck dealing with my children as they have times of feeling like they want to hurt themselves. I am grateful to the marrow of my bones that they know they can trust me and talk to me when they feel like that. Yes, you can always come in my bed and snuggle if you feel you are scared and you aren’t safe to be alone. Puberty is a horrible time and we’ll talk and we’ll get you through this.

If therapists were available they would be in therapy. I didn’t understand the depth of privilege we had in California around mental health. My entire life trajectory happened because therapy was plentiful and that would not have been possible in other places. All my kids have is me. That’s fucking daunting. (I mean, they have friends and we are making community connections…) We talk a lot about having thoughts and feeling impulses doesn’t mean anything bad about you. Let’s talk about the possible consequences if you follow through. I’m not saying I will punish you; I’m saying that once you cross the line into these behaviors there are people in the community who are bound by law to intervene so if they find out this is what will happen. It’s out of my hands. Let’s talk about strategies and ways of coping and figuring out what other things could be done instead. Let’s build habits around feeling distressed so that when something even worse happens you have some pre-built ruts in your brain for how to handle bad things. Let’s talk about distorted feelings and projecting and learning how to scan your central nervous system and what tools exist to help you feel grounded and like you can wait to act–this feeling does not require a response RIGHT NOW. For the record no one is actively suicidal, no one has any kind of plan, and people are not engaging in the sort of behavior that would involve mandatory removal from the house.

What is happening is that they both have had to deal with bullying and additionally people have been telling my daughter that she should kill herself. They are both just children and this has been hard for them. They have every predisposition genetically towards mental health struggles. Life was never going to be a walk in the park. There were always going to be dark times. But you can bet your fucking buttons that I am going to teach them how to light a candle in the dark. (I got some LED candles so nobody else tries to burn down my fucking house. Oh good grief.)

They are kids. They are all so different. I like all of them. I am annoyed by all of them. I admire all of them. I enjoy spending time with all of them. I don’t know what their future will bring but I sure hope that I get to be an enthusiastic cheerleader as they go do all the things they will do. I tell them that when they don’t believe in themselves they can borrow some of my faith in them. I will never ever run out.

Too many thoughts

Things I am thinking about instead of sleeping, a not-all-inclusive-list:

  • Ways to make the house more insulated and easier to heat.
  • Ways to add more self-sustaining energy sources to the house so that I don’t have to depend on oil for heat.
  • Ways to make a greenhouse on one corner of my house as a multi-story add on (possibly a pipe dream).
  • Reasons I probably shouldn’t ever do expensive remodeling of the house.
  • Drawings I wish I was doing.
  • Painting I might do starting in a few weeks.
  • How to be more consistent in my habits.
  • How to add more permaculture to my yard in a way that uses companion planting to enrich the soil as I go.
  • Trying not to feel mad at myself for not working on sewing yet.
  • I want to cut my hair mostly because I am feeling a distinct lack of control over fucking everything in my life and it’s feeling like One More Thing in a way that is currently bothering me.
  • Why is it so hard to get back into the habit of doing PT?
  • Why the fuck didn’t the editor I hired help me be less fucking repetitive in that damn book?
  • Cheezits this book is god damn depressing and I don’t know how other people managed to get through it.
  • I need to get the bones of this speech together.
  • I have a lot of veggies to cook. Oof. Food is so never ending. I’m tired of having to eat.
  • Hamilton is way better than I thought would be. I’m always so late to the party

Musing about people being weird.

(friends-locked only because they have a Stalin-esque policy about it not being ok to talk about stuff off site.)

I spend a lot of time on Mothering.com these days since you lame bastards wonderful people don’t post enough on lj. Some of the things I read about baffle me.

Ok, I don’t think I had heard much about hoarding as an illness before reading there. The stuff that people go through dealing with hoarding relatives sounds like a complete nightmare. Of course, there is my Uncle Bob. He’s a hoarder and he has made his property look like shit even though it probably could be worth close to a million dollars given its location. oy.

And the chick who is so offended that her friend asked her to not come to a birthday party after deliberately exposing her kids to chicken pox. She is ranting that her kids aren’t in the contagious window and how dare people not respect science!!! Uhm, if you are a non-vaxxer ranting about how people don’t pay attention to science you are pretty f’in funny. And as soon as you said that next time you deliberately expose your children to a disease you just won’t tell anyone because how dare they expect you to quarantine your kids? Uhm. You are the reason non-vaxxers are considered a public health menace, thanks bitch.

And when someone says, “It makes it way harder to deal with difficult toddler behavior when someone is judging me” having many many people rush in to judge the mom and tell her she’s handling everything wrong? Well I think that is irony in action.

Mostly I just find MDC to be a neverending source of reasons to be grateful that my husband isn’t a fucking asshole like most husbands and I feel like I’m maybe not so judgmental after all. Cause compared to most of them I barely judge anyone ever! 😀

ETA: WTF! I deleted something very snotty and put that it wasn’t worth the smack down from the mods and I got a smack down from a mod because I was rude. She said my original post was fine but it was totally inappropriate and rude to say that about the moderators. Fucking fascist dictatorship. Sometimes I hate the site. (The user agreement says that it is never ok to respond to someone in a rude or adversarial manner and I had been very aggressive towards someone. Apparently that is more acceptable than implying that the mods might call me on it. Oh go to fucking hell.)

Complete and total self indulgence

This is really not normally my speed. Most of the time my attitude is, “What a complete and total waste of money.” But uhm this pregnancy I seem to be feeling differently. I think that at least part of my change in attitude right this moment is I now understand just how little time and energy I will have after the baby arrives. And I have very little physical ability to do some of this right now. Oy.

So! I am thinking about doing a spa day. It makes me cringe thinking about how expensive it will be. Yet, I’m going to do it. Uhm, if anyone doesn’t want to hear about it don’t open the cut. Continue reading

Random weekending

I love getting to spend three days in a row with Noah. <3 Mostly we puttered and got house chores done but we had a few breaks for fun. Two things in particular: we took Shanna to Build a Bear because she has often expressed that she wants a bear that is -just hers-. All of her stuffed animals are hand me downs and I think she is tired of hearing that 'x' thing was Mommy's or Aunt Jenny's or Daddy's or... :D So she picked a blue bear and named him Blue. Alrighty then. :) And she did animal role play for the first time. I thought that was pretty cool and noteworthy. She picked a duck, specifically the anthropomorphic Elmer from The Sissy Duckling which has been one of her favorite longer books since she was too small to sit through a long book. 🙂

Pregnancy is all festive and such. I feel ginormous. As I see pictures of other people who are at about the same stage of pregnancy as me I feel confirmed in feeling ginormous. Why am I so much bigger than average?! Oy. Still not gaining weight. I’m currently reading Bradley’s, Husband-Coached Childbirth and it has some good pointers once you wade through all the obnoxious Christian references.

Today is going to be way too busy. I’m tired already. There will be over 100 miles of driving today. Ugh. But I’ll get to see my niece graduate from high school. That will be a good thing. I’m really glad she made it.

I was out of the house all day yesterday and came home kind of cranky. I’m not feeling stellar today either. I always feel icki the day after dental work for some reason even though this was pretty mild in terms of dental stuff. I will try to respond to comments tomorrow when I’m being less of a pill. I’m not mad at anyone or cranky with anything you are likely to figure out. 🙂

In other news: the implant process is completely done. I have a ‘tooth’ in that spot for the first time in 2.5 years. It’s kind of weird.

Identity

I noticed something today that I consider interesting. When I glance around at the profiles of mothers I know in various social networking sites almost all of the mothers with young children have pictures of themselves with their children as their primary picture and sometimes their partner/husband is in the picture. It is very rare for a father to have a picture of himself and his child as his primary picture. Once parents have teenagers it is fairly uncommon to have pictures of the kids in a primary profile picture at all. In fact, for most fathers of young children you have to spend some time hunting to find mention of their kids/pictures of them. And once you find pictures you notice that the father has 1-5 pictures of his kids (out of dozens or hundreds of photos) whereas the mother in the same relationship has the kid(s) in almost all pictures up.

I hear a lot about how women give up too much of their identity to their children. I wonder if this attitude comes about because men don’t give up enough of their identity to having children and in our society the default ‘personhood’ is being a man and women are wrong for where and how they deviate from that norm. If you think about it, that is very much how (at least American) society works. Women are shafted in the work place because they need maternity leave/sick leave to care for children/time off during the day to take care of appointments for children. This is all left to the sole providence of women in the vast majority of cases. Yes, there are some exceptions but they are exceedingly rare. I believe that companies get away with their nasty anti-woman policies because the default is that everyone should behave like a man therefore women are bad/wrong for when they need something different.

Back to my original point about parents. I’ve been thinking about this kind of stuff a lot. Women are told not to give themselves up to being a mother. I hear it. I’m told to go out and have a separate identity. The thing is, there are only so many hours in the day. Having a toddler is a shitload of work and I really don’t see how I could do much more than I am doing lately and still be as present as I am with my daughter. I’m not willing to put my daughter in daycare for a wide variety of reasons, not least of which is I’d have to get a job to pay for it and then I would be gone all the time working and I would have even less time for myself than I get now. 😛 My job was brutal on me for having a separate identity anyway.

My point being that I think that it is crap that women are told they should be less invested in their identity as a parent when men are not told they should be more invested in their identity as a parent. Yes, there needs to be a balance but I don’t think men are doing better than women they are just fucking up in the opposite direction. There has to be some meeting in the middle and I’m not exactly sure where it is.

Still looking for balance

I have this little problem. I have a hard time being bad at things. This is a problem because there are a lot of things I really want to do/be able to do and I have enormous psychological issues getting past the ‘beginner’ stage. I would rather madly love to be able to sew and be crafty. When I run into small issues I more or less stomp my feet and declare that I just can’t do it and I go cry. Very mature and all that. But I don’t exactly want Shanna to be like this because there is a whole world of things she currently can’t do. So I need to start working on this. It’s hard for me.

I also have this problem of feeling like if I take downtime then obviously I am a lazy git and I just suck. This isn’t true, but guilt overwhelms me a lot of the time. This is even worse because I project this onto Noah and treat him like he is a lazy git for wanting down time. It’s not very nice of me. In my defense I have done a lot of work on that and I am way better towards him than I used to be. I can still improve quite a bit though.

Some days I feel overwhelmed by the long list of ways in which I am a deeply flawed human being. There are so many things “I need to work on” that I feel like there isn’t much of a point and I should just quit. I obviously suck. Why bother working on anything? ARGH!

I finally got the Google Reader set up today. This pleases me. Now I can actually keep up with the myriad of neat parenting and homeschooling blogs I like. See, I did something new to me. I realize it wasn’t rocket science or anything but that little hurtle is a big one for me.

We finished doing the insulation! By “we” of course I mean Taylor. I think I owe Taylor something like five years of favors for this project. I do help…a little… but mostly he has been doing the work. Of course I feel a lot of guilt for this. This project has given me some interesting stuff to chew on. I really admire guys who are handy and into household projects. I think that is just fricken awesome. Of course then I married a guy who isn’t like that. It means that I have a hard time appreciating it sufficiently when Noah does stuff because I treat him like he still isn’t doing enough–that’s not exactly incentive for him to try, now is it? Let me be clear here: Noah does a lot of stuff around the house. He just doesn’t do house projects for fun. They are different categories of stuff. Noah’s idea of a fun project is something involving a computer and several hours of me and Shanna leaving him alone. 🙂 It’s different. So if I want house project stuff done I should work on getting better at doing it myself. I am more grateful to Taylor than I can adequately express in this space because fiberglass insulation by myself with Shanna would be an f’in nightmare. Thank God I didn’t have to do that. It would have taken me a year. But I need to stop getting myself into situations where I expect a man to come rescue me. I need to get better at doing stuff myself or not starting at all. Erf.

I’m having a hard time finding balance between social time and time at home. I feel super super busy lately and I’m falling behind on house chores. But if I stay home much more I start feeling depressed and lonely. I don’t know where the ‘just right’ balance is here and it’s hard. Maybe part of the problem is that I spend too much time out of the house being social and almost zero time in my house being social. Hm.

Brain dump

-I got some plants from essaying in I think January (maybe early February) and planted them pretty randomly in my yard. They are still alive and thriving with inconsistent watering using only gray water from washing dishes. I think that is pretty rad. Of course my yard still looks like shit but that’s because of all the huge expanses of bare dirt between the small pockets of healthy thriving plants. 🙂 I need to plant more stuff out there.

-By contrast my food plants in the back yard aren’t doing so hot. I water them using fresh water because I have concerns about dumping that much soap on food plants. I don’t water them very consistently. oops. I did get a lot of tomatoes and they are all still alive so I feel like that was an ok first growing season of my life. 🙂

-Noah and I had a “conversation” *cough* this morning about how we each need to take responsibility for own happiness. Mostly this consisted of me being very upset about how hard I have tried to make him happy but my efforts have failed. So forget that noise. That strategy is obviously not working and it is time to try a new one. My wonderful husband managed to stay calm and collected and not bent out of shape when my tone of voice sucked. I’m so lucky to have him.

-Shanna went out back and played in her sand box for over half an hour this morning with no prompting from me. This getting bigger business is awesome.

-I keep thinking that I should track my emotions over a few months and see how it coincides with my cycle. I have been pretty upbeat and cheerful and energetic today and far more willing to put out energy in a social way than I was a few days ago when I whined about how no one loves me. I think that a complete lack of menstrual cycle was a lot of why I was in such a good mood for the whole first year of Shanna’s life. I stepped off the roller coaster and it was so nice.

-I think that the reason I feel so alienated in mom groups is because I am not there because we have much in common other than spawning. I feel like it is the worst parts of going to public school all over again. You are together with people you may or may not like for an arbitrary reason. Wow does that not work for me. I wish more of my friends would spawn. And then have the energy to be at least a little social. 😛

And now Shanna needs a nap. So I run off. 🙂

Random thought exercise

If I ever win the lottery (I really should buy tickets once in a while) my family would of course want money from me because they are thoroughly charming souls that way. It would be kind of cool to buy a piece of property outright that is not very built up and put a couple of houses on it for them. Specifically houses like these. They would have completed individual little houses. I would probably even build a “town hall” in the center of the little houses so that everyone had a big dining room/kitchen to hang out in when they wanted to get together.

It’s really not an awful idea.

Bits and pieces to get them out of my head

Looks like trying to have more of a relationship with my family was a bad idea. 🙁 It’s time to withdraw from that again. Noah gave me some really good advice on how to do it without exploding a drama bomb.

I got into a really bad place for a while there where I was doing the martyr thing full time. That doesn’t help anyone least of all me. I need to knock that crap off. Noah can take care of his own happiness.

Shanna now, quite delightfully, says “owwwww sigh”. For those of you without children this means outside. It’s awesome. She loves her swing so much. I’m thrilled that I got the idea from and and I bought one. 🙂

I’m shifting things around in the house a lot more trying to figure out what arrangements will make me happiest long term because the long term is how long we are here. I really really want to make a cool playroom for the kidlet so I’m looking into that. I have a bunch of cool links that I might post later.

I’m feeling frustrated by the fact that people very very rarely initiate social interaction with me. Why is it that I have to do all of it?

My last tattoo appointment is on August 3rd. We’ll be stopping birth control after that. That means I’m taking advantage of the ability to drink. 🙂

Noah and I had a wonderful date on Monday where we had breathtakingly good food. Being married to a foodie is the best thing ever.

I’m not being good about exercise just lately. This is another thing I need to work on.

Urf and arf. Time to start walking towards the bus stop. I bet Shanna is going to love the trip on BART again. 🙂

Hey smart people

I’m being asked a question I’m not sure how to answer. This website: http://www.thelocal.se/20336/20090629/ says that they are finding that DNA changes as a result of C-sections. My understanding would be that it would be as the result of trauma. The moms on a mailing list I’m on don’t understand how DNA can change. My understanding is that DNA can be damaged and damage is change. Am I wrong? I have found a variety of other articles documenting DNA change after trauma but I guess I’m just not explaining it well?

The internet is slow

Or so complains a friend. 🙂 So that means I will have to entertain you all. Dangerous.

Hmmmm… yesterday I went and met a new-to-me mommy (*wave*) and she seems pretty cool. The right blend of snarky and crunchy combined with the fact that she is a non-techie married to a geek. I hope this relationship goes somewhere. 🙂

Today I had a Miss Laura over. That’s always lovely. Now we have chicken and potatoes in the crock pot with vindaloo sauce.

Hm. That’s not very entertaining. Ooh! I’ll play a game. How about if I say some number of statements (uhm… 20? Can I come up with that many?) about people who are regular readers/posters on my journal. Then y’all can see if you can pick yourself out of the list. (Of course I am only guessing at who the entire list of regular readers are, but I have some suspicions.)

1. Your art is neato. I think your blog is neato. You should post more. 🙂 Don’t be overcome by inertia!
2. I think I should come to BR and have you watch my kid. She’s fun. 🙂
3. You are the only short story author I actually take the time to read when you post new stuff. You should feel all special.
4. Competency and good cheer are the things I associate with you most strongly.
5. Yeah, Spider man shirts are totally over-rated. 😛
6. I wish I could build a house there. I really do. Poopy commuting.
7. I think your hair should be purple next. 😀
8. Dude, you should post about something other than travel. Like, I don’t have the foggiest idea what you actually do for a living and I’ve known you for a long time. (yeah you’re a geek, who isn’t around here? except for me of course.)
9. We would actually get around to having dinner if you CALLED ME.
10. I really hope we end up moving to the same place. That would be neat.
11. No shit dude, I think you are the funniest chick (I wanted to put person but if I did then everyone would assume it’s a guy and that’s just not so.) I know. Now, if we could work on your self esteem we would be golden.
12. You must know I love you. A day of eating chocolate is not my thing. 🙂
13. I don’t think I miss dancing as a whole all that much but I really miss dancing with you.
14. I don’t think I should call your dad anymore. I get the impression he would rather hear my news from you.
15. Can your family adopt me? Especially your mom.
16. I shouldn’t be envious, but I am because I can’t believe you dropped your baby weight already.
17. So, how is the weather up there? Are you freezing yet? Are you still happy you moved?
18. I’m glad that your cat is smart enough to know that you still need the routine.
19. I feel guilty when I read about your knitting and gardening. I would like to be so cool. 🙂
20. When are you going to visit this coast again? It’s always nice talking with you and it looks like I won’t be making it east this year.
21. I’m glad you finally got something like support from that stupid school.
22. You do a good job of giving tactful advice even when it isn’t solicited. I’m amazed at how well you walk the line of not pissing me off. And you have to be the most respectful debater I’ve ever encountered. Good job. 🙂

Ok. I need to go play with Shanna now. 🙂

Just to be a shit.

Elsenet someone said how much they hate cryptic posts. Just because I am a tremendous shithead I’m going to once again post 10 things I would like to say to people. Persons may or may not be on lj so feel free to be paranoid if you wanna. 😀

1. Sweetheart, stop trying to please your mother. You are working towards ruining your life really fast in this process.
2. I think you have very good reason to be mad at him. Don’t forget to preserve your boundaries.
3. In years to come I am going to wonder if dating you would have gone well.
4. I wish I could either banish you from the periphery of my social group or become friends. This awkwardness is just annoying.
5. You stop talking to me for long periods when you are ashamed to tell me what you are doing. Maybe you should rethink what you are doing. Anything you feel ashamed of can’t be good.
6. I’m crossing my fingers that you find the right person.
7. I appreciate you seeking me out. That feels really good.
8. Please learn to sleep without my boob in your mouth. (Ok, maybe y’all can figure out who this one is to.)
9. I wish you called more. By more I really mean that you do it at all.
10. I’m envious of you. I wish I was that pretty.

Just life

I made steal cut oats for breakfast. We had strawberries, walnuts, whole milk, and a little bit of brown sugar mixed in. It was fabulous.

Today was a cooking day. We have tri-tip prepared as well as chicken cooked with orange and pineapple and a little bit of rum. I boiled the rutabagas and potatoes and smashed them up together with a lot of butter and milk. I haven’t figured out what I am doing with the chard yet this week. hm. We still have asparagus and artichoke to cook but I figure those can wait a day or so.

Between cooking and cleaning house I don’t seem to find/make time to sew. This is very annoying. It doesn’t help that I feel like I really ought to be studying for the comp exam. Twelve more days.

Have I mentioned that I feel growing anxiety about this test? This is my last shot. If I fuck this up I’m just done. That’s kind of stressful.

I want to have an affair with my husband. I miss having that sort of intense interaction with him.

My daughter is getting more and more kid-like every day. I find her endlessly fascinating. And exasperating. Definitely exasperating. 🙂 She is sleeping for shit these days and that’s feeling really hard.

I need to get off my ass and plan the birthday party. *sigh*

I managed to get off the acceptance letter to the roofer and the information for the estate lawyer. I met with someone (ironically–he’s my sister’s ex-boyfriend. the only boyfriend of hers that I have ever liked) today about putting solar panels on our roof. It’s looking very likely. That’s productivity. We are still waiting to hear back from the accountant. By this time next month we may well be many tens of thousands of dollars poorer.

My back hurts and I’m not getting enough exercise. There is simply not enough time in the day.

Any feminist who questions the worth of what I do with my time can kiss my lily-white-ass. Those of you who are working moms–how do you manage to sleep?! I don’t have enough time for all of my stuff and you all have to do what I do and work. Y’all must be crazy.