Author Archives: Krissy Gibbs

About Krissy Gibbs

Just your average hippy white trash incest survivor stay at home mom. Is there an average for us? No? Oh well.

Days 21 and 22 (whoops)

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21 first- no pills

Breakfast: gf pancakes, banana, peanut butter, maple syrup

Snack: gf English muffin, peanut butter, raspberry jam

Dinner: soup made with turkey stock, turkey, venison, bok choy, soy sauce, green beans, carrots, bell pepper, celery

It was a festive pooping day.

2:30am- green/black, cloudy, not solid (blueberries!)

7:45am- formed poop, two logs

9:15am- three small brown pieces, very sticky and hard to wipe up

11:45am- yellow, multiple soft pieces that quickly dissolve

Day 22- took pot and fuck the rest of the fucking puke-inducing vitamins

Breakfast: gf pancakes, peanut butter, maple syrup, banana, grape juice, peppermint tea

2nd Brekkie: rice cereal, rice milk, maple syrup, turkey bacon

Lunch: two chicken soft tacos from Taco Bell with no cheese (I was told I could have wheat…) This was my first eating out in over three weeks. It tasted sinfully good.

Dinner: turkey soup (what a let down after the AWESOME of fast food)

3:30am- small yellow pieces, log shaped, smooth looking like toothpaste

? afternoon- small chunks but not real distinctive

 

So far the doctor of woo says that I am cleared for wheat (THIS IS SO EXCITING), sugar, and all cooking oils/fat. *phew* The dairy treatment didn’t take (and given how many sub-parts I am “reacting” to he says that isn’t surprising. If you are only “reacting” to one small part of something one treatment is often enough. If you react to every subcomponent it can take a couple of treatments.) so we redid it and I get to cross my fingers for Monday.

So I had wheat today. Let’s see how festive my poop is tomorrow. Awesome.

Hoops, self-care, and being mercenary.

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Today was the kind of day where I walk out of therapy saying, “That’s why I pay for therapy.” It doesn’t happen every time. I’ve spent the last two weeks wondering why I pay for therapy. Then I get reminded. Because I’m not good at framing things.

Today my therapist and I spent a lot of time talking about my friendships with women. She asked me if I have noticed that I like to pick (for my closest relationships) women who are not good at taking care of themselves, let alone anyone else. I reflected for a few minutes and said yeah, I’ve noticed. My “besties” have pretty much been universally people who can’t feed themselves regularly and appropriately, most of them can’t finish school or work or clean their own houses. They don’t exercise. Many of them have trouble with hygiene (and I have low standards).

I don’t say that to be mean, I say it because it is true. I pick a lot of people like that. I could go down a list. They are all functional in some ways at some times. But not consistently and not across the board. They are all people who struggle with the basics of their own self-care.

Then I enter into a relationship and turn my neeeeeeeeeeediness towards them and.. guess what? They let me down. Because they can’t take care of themselves or their actual dependents… let alone me. It isn’t a reasonable expectation of them. I don’t go pick people with a whole drawer full of spoons. Then when they can’t take care of me I feel like it is a statement of my worth as a human. I decide that since they can’t/won’t care for me in the ways I need/want I should die.

This has been a consistent pattern of mine for decades.

I get into relationships with people who can’t take care of themselves and then when they can’t care for me it feels like they don’t love me enough. Very much like my mom. It feels like no one will ever love me enough.

But Noah does. He can’t meet all of my needs, but he does love me enough. Getting one of those people in a lifetime is a lucky break not attained by most people. I shouldn’t complain. I shouldn’t be so greedy.

My therapist suggested that I need to stop thinking about these people as sources of support. The trouble is, I tend to treat people like they are on the inside or the outside. Either I can ask them for things or I can’t. So if I have to pull back from expecting things from someone, I push them all the way outside the box. I don’t know how to have a middle ground.

I’m struggling with this with Sarah. (Former housemate Sarah–remember her?) We are trying to find our way back to friendship. But she got shoved outside the box. How do I let someone in a little but not all the way? (To be fair, she’s gotta be in a similar position because I was more volatile and problematic when we had problems. I am inherently scarier.) It was nice taking the Impact class with her. When I started crying and feeling scared there was someone in the room who understood why I was crying. I didn’t have to explain anything. She just knows. She’s already put in all the hours and hours of time listening to the stories so she understands. Whatever difficulty we have in dealing with one another’s needs… we understand one anothers’ history. So in the class I could turn to her for physical comfort when I generally won’t let anyone touch me.

I feel like there needs to be an in between slot. Not in the box not outside the box. Part of the frame of the box. There and accepted and loved but… not to be depended upon.

I can’t expect people to know how to treat me even after many years of telling them. People don’t listen. I know that. They don’t actually care that much. They may “care” but they don’t care enough to adapt their style of interacting with people. (No shaming here, I am similarly entrenched in being who I am.) I don’t gentle-down very well for people. I struggled like hell to behave appropriately around Jenny and my niece when they visited. I am not good at adapting to other peoples needs. I don’t think that other people have trouble adapting to me because they are terrible, unloving people. I’m hard.

I know that I am hard. Sometimes Noah starts rattling off all the ways I need to be accommodated: all the things he has to pay attention to, all the topics he has to avoid, the body language he has had to carefully learn. I feel pretty bad for him, actually. I don’t entirely understand why it is worth his effort. But it is.

Why do I manage to ignore the fact that Noah thinks it is worth jumping through hundreds of hoops but I dwell on the fact that other people can’t clear some.

It isn’t that my friends do nothing for me. It isn’t that they don’t adapt in any ways. It isn’t that they don’t care. It isn’t that they aren’t trying. I am hard. That isn’t their fault and it isn’t appropriate to get mad at them for doing their best.

Ok, then what do I do? When I can’t get mad at other people because they are doing their best, that is when I tend to decide that I should die because I am so terrible for asking for my needs. Over reaction much?

My shrink suggests pulling back. She said that I put too much energy into wanting friendships because I don’t have anything else to distract me, like a job. I told her that it isn’t that I need a job. I don’t have much of a family and my friends get all the energy that I would put towards my family complete with all the broken that resulted from my actual relationships with my family.

I do have a family now. One complete with no abuse. I am the most potentially problematic person in the house and I actually manage to keep a pretty tight rein on my crazy with my kids. (Noah gets more backlash.) I’m not perfect, but I have it on good authority that perfect parents raise incredibly fucked up kids. I’m better off not trying for perfect.

My shrink then clarified that by “distraction” she meant interactions with adults. I pointed out that when I worked, I was a teacher and I had the same problem I have now. Clearly a job isn’t the solution.

What is the solution? It occurs to me that the highest possible payoff for my energy is to really focus on being appropriate with my kids and home schooling them so that in 20-30 years maybe they will be the relationships I have wanted my whole life. That really is my best shot.

It isn’t really worth putting that much energy into most friendships. I will know them for a few years, maybe a decade or so, and they will wander off to their Next Thing. I do the same thing. I’m not being judgmental. It is ok that people do that.

My shrink suggests that I should stop deciding that people are my friends and thus anything they do is ok. Instead I should look at their behavior and decide if someone is acting like my friend and when they aren’t I should create distance. Not because I’m being mean, because I am taking care of myself.

Recently I went off on poor Pam about hoops I don’t want to jump through. I was bitching and whining in context of home schooling. I want x kind of event but I only want it y distance from my house with z frame work and other people want me to do something else! What the heck! I don’t want to jump through their hoops! For example, today park day is 27 miles from my house. No, I don’t fucking want to drive that far to sit at a park. Not because I have a problem with anyone there (I actually feel like this group is remarkably delightful) but more because I have to drive past almost 100 parks to get to the one that is close to the house of the organizer and uhm… yeah no. Yes, they move around. But they generally stay closer to the house of the organizer. Cause she’s smart like that. She’s been doing this many years and she’s not going to drive all over the place because she’s gotten burned a lot with people not showing up. I get it. I’m not cranky with her. I’m sad that we don’t live closer to one another but I’m not angry and I don’t feel betrayed and she sure as shit doesn’t owe me anything. She comes to stuff at my house when it fits into her schedule.

Hoops are funny things. I use that word to mean a wide variety of things. It has been my experience that people in SF/Oakland act like the freeway only goes in one direction. I have to drive to them. (Not universally–there are some people who drive here from those places and I rarely go to them so I get that I’m a hypocrite here.)

With home schoolers, we all mean very different things when we say we home school our kids. Some use prepackaged curriculum and sit down to do school every day. Some people are Unschoolers Out In The World and they are almost never in their home. Most people are some kind of hybrid and things shift from year to year. I’m selfish and self absorbed so I want other home schoolers to live near me and mostly do things how I do them. When I want to socialize with other people I have to accommodate to their preferences (cause inviting people to just come hang out with me and the kids isn’t working very well lately).

I’d be thrilled if people would just come visit me more often. But, many of the home schoolers seem very uninterested in that and I’ve mostly stopped asking. I’ll try again at some point. Maybe. We’ll see.

Some days I think I would be better off if I actually lived more rurally so I would let myself stay home and not feel the constant anxiety that I am somehow “not doing what I should do” by not going to museums and zoos and and and and every fucking day.

I am not real big on entertaining my kids. I seriously expect them to learn how to entertain themselves. I really expect them to learn from any environment and I have stuffed my house full of good learning opportunities. I don’t need to take them to a museum every day for “stimulation”. They haven’t read every book in the house yet. We’re stimulated.

There are tons of science stuff I want to do with the kids, but most of it takes a lot of set up and clean up and I’m not willing to do it when I have only an hour or two in between other things I have to do. They would love to do bigger art projects. (Although man we already do big art projects.) There are hundreds of things we could do in our house. But I can’t do them in an hour or two. I really need whole days home and I just… don’t seem to be getting them. Even the days we are “home” we are invited to the park and I don’t want to say no because I’m scared shitless that I am going to isolate my kids. So instead we drift through socializing and don’t do a lot of the really interesting things I think of. We just don’t make the time.

My shrink told me to stop putting energy towards people who aren’t acting like my friends. Given that I’ve had to pause this typing multiple times because one of my former students is negotiating to come for a visit because she loves me a lot and she misses me… it is kind of a fascinating dichotomy.

Why do I chase people so hard when they don’t seem to like me that much when there are plenty of people who like me just fine? Because I feel more comfortable with people who will speak to me with contempt. Because that is how I feel about myself.

I need to stop feeling like I’m “doing everything wrong” when I don’t want to do the same thing as someone else. I’ve been pretty sure about the home schooling path I wanted to take for more than 16 years. Why do I let myself spend so much time feeling bad because I don’t do the exact same thing as other people? There isn’t a rule book. There isn’t a One Twue Way to homeschool. I don’t feel guilty when I stand next to traditional schoolers. I’m absolutely sure that isn’t the path for me. Why do I feel so bad about home schoolers who make different choices?

Because ours is a species of conformity. That shame feeling is biological.

I love my friends very much. Even when they aren’t very good at caring for themselves. I have similar issues and I don’t feel like I belong on a holier-than-thou-high-horse. I’m just a broken girl trying to put myself back together. Trying to make a coherent whole out of the broken pieces of my psyche.

If other people don’t love me enough, that just means I need to love myself more. I need to try harder to take care of me. Self-care is a radical act. It may mean I step back from situations because I need to care for myself. That’s ok. I’m permitted. Caring for me is hard. Sometimes I feel very overwhelmed by how hard it is. Asking for help isn’t the most effective way of dealing with my issues. Not really. Staying home and taking care of me is much more effective.

And in the process, maybe I will teach my kids how to take care of themselves and they won’t have to learn it in their 30’s. I was not mothered appropriately. I can’t change that now. But I can change what I pass on. That is the only part I have control over. I can’t fix other adults just like they can’t fix me. It is self-hating to try.

I shouldn’t take them pulling back as a signal of my lack-of-worth. Instead maybe it is a sign that they are making healthier choices and I should be supportive. We aren’t teenagers any more. We can’t live in one another’s back pockets. We have very busy lives. Very full lives.

Friends show up when they can. They give what they have to spare. Family is on tap to give until it hurts… not friends. It is sad that I don’t have an adult family to depend on, but life works that way. Instead I have some of the best friends anyone has ever had. I should not take their best and bludgeon them with it. That’s not exactly gracious. That’s not a way to get more love from them in the future. I do want more love. Even if they have none to spare today.

That isn’t about me.

My worth is separate and distinct from the behavior of everyone in the world. That is hard to remember sometimes.

And then I come home from therapy and my wonderful daughters cuddle me and “read” me stories and tell me “funny” jokes. (I made a video today of Calli’s knock-knock jokes. They are “funny” and wonderful.)

I am financially stable. I have at least three people who love me intensely. I have a lot more people who love me at least a little. That’s more love than many people get. I haven’t been raped in eight years. I haven’t moved in over eight years. I exercise more than I ever have. I hate this elimination diet, but I’m making real progress on something that has been painful and exhausting my whole life.

Today’s run was nice. I like coming down the big hill and seeing the sun rising over the valley. I like where I live. I like my life. I’m whiny and I have trouble seeing the good parts on many days, but I don’t want to be any where else. I don’t want to do anything else. How many people can say that with a straight face?

Ok sure, I do want a vacation. Hawaii will be awesome. But I will come back. I will come back to Wonderland and the best family I’ve ever had.

How many people get to be so lucky?

This week is crazy.

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Monday was one of my slowest days. 9:30 doctor appointment. Babysitting from 8-12. Went to grocery store and bank on the way home from doctor. Came home and did chores and chores and chores.

Tuesday (today): must run 6 miles, 9:30 therapy session which means a three hour trip out of the house. No park. The kids want to stay home with Noah and play Minecraft. Shanna has just finally started playing instead of watching endless tutorials so I’m not actually cranky. I feel kind of weird about being happy that she is finally learning to *do* something with the game.

Wednesday is insane. Run 5 miles. Babysitting from 8-12. Doctor appointment at 9:30. I have to pick food up from the co-op right after 12. 12:30-3 I plan to sit on the couch and read to the kids. At 3 Pam shows up. I run out the door immediately for a 4pm dentist appointment. Noah won’t be home until after bedtime because he’s teaching.

Thursday I plan to hide in my room. Also: the kids and I need to go on a bike ride.

Friday at 5:30 in the morning I leave the house to head towards the airport and Hawaii.

It is a very full week.

I wonder if I can stay busy enough to not feel lonely. I doubt it. I wish I felt emotionally more stable. I really don’t. I feel like I should hide and not talk to anyone because I am such a raging asshole and I hurt everyone. I feel sad. I feel like I am disgusting and bad. If only I didn’t take everything so seriously, so personally maybe I would deserve friends. Maybe if I were less self absorbed.

Thing is, if I become less self absorbed I will probably die. I’m not very good at taking care of myself. I put off my needs as long as possible until picking up the pieces is a frantic, almost unattainable goal. I monitor this process so I can get as close as possible to the edge. If I didn’t monitor it… I’d just not be able to recover. I wouldn’t leave myself that extra inch I NEED.

I’m scared. I feel like the things I need are too much trouble for people so I should just die. I should stop being such a god damned inconvenience.

It really sucks that seeking treatment for suicidal ideation results in all kinds of bad shit happening. We are not a country that wants people to feel better.

My heart hurts. I slept 7 hours (my sleep schedule is getting wacky again–7:30pm through 2:30am) so I’m not underslept but I feel like shit. I feel flattened and unimportant.

A while back Pam observed that I expect too much from my BFFs. She would know as she’s watched my behavior for a long time. I expect my BFFs to fill a lot of the hole in my heart left from my mother and my sister. But that isn’t fair. No one can do that. So I flail and my BFFs flail and then we pull back. Then I notice that months or years have gone by and we aren’t really close friends any more. I was drowning them in my need and that means we just aren’t really friends now.

I’m sorry.

I’m in this hard place where asking for anything feels so completely unreasonable I just can’t do it. I’d rather sit here and cry. Everything I need feels so complicated and I can’t explain it and I feel so much frustration that I put people off by expressing that frustration where they can hear me and then I don’t have friends any more.

I have nothing to give. It’s going to be hard with the kids for a few days. They are a bottomless pit of need too. And they need me to give and give. I feel so empty. Probably good that it is a therapy day.

Whatever. It’s another day. Get the fuck up and do your work, bitch. No one is going to do it for you.

Day 20

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Pills: birth control (last day), Ibuprofen, fish oil, multi (last day because apparently allergy), B-complex (same deal), probiotic (last day for now but “after treatment” I should restart).

Breakfast: gf pancakes, peanut butter, banana, maple syrup, grape juice, toast with raspberry jam (yes, I reacted).

Lunch: rice, turkey, cabbage, carrots, blueberries, potatoes

Dinner: venison, bell pepper, rice, soy sauce, cabbage, carrot

 

4am: completely solid brown poop. The canonical “log”.

9:15am: long, thin, very smooth and green.

Bad moment

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This minute is really bad. I’m very sad. I’m confusing a lot of grief over my mother and not being cared for with grief about friendships not working how I want them to work. There is nothing I can do about either situation.

Right now I am completely empty.

It is hard going up and down like this so many times in a day. I feel wrung out like a towel. I feel like everything is all my fault and people should try very hard to get away from me because I am so terrible. I want to die so I don’t hurt anyone else.

I’m sorry. I’m sorry for everything.

Cycles

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A long time ago I asked a friend to stop saying something to me. She refused to honor my request. We didn’t speak much for many years. Many years later she apologized because she hadn’t understood what that request was really about.

I feel like I’m in a similar situation again. And I don’t know what to do about it. I feel like maybe what will happen is I just won’t speak to this person for a long time. How long? I don’t know. I never know that kind of thing in advance. With some people I think it will be a short time then I never hear from them again.

Like J. She’s gone. I miss her so much. But her life is overly full. And I don’t want a life like hers so I haven’t talked to her in about a decade. Will I ever see her again? I don’t know. Probably only if I hunt really hard to find her.

The strange thing is, I have multiple people from middle school who keep up with me and track me down every so often. Even though they moved out of state. They want to still know me. It’s weird.

But I don’t know how to guess which relationships will last or why. Long, long ago I thought Jenny was done with me and she would never come back. I was wrong. She’s never really left. She’s just on a long rotation sometimes.

I don’t know how to trust people. A few weeks of silence often feels like years. Time distortion for the win. I think it is funny that multiple people today asked how the voting discussion went yesterday. It didn’t happen. Lots of enthusiasm, no desire to show up.

My feelings are so all over the place. I’m up and down and up and down and up and down. I’m getting vaguely threatening emails from Kaiser. I turned down going to see their psychiatry department and they don’t like that. I wouldn’t be completely shocked to have a police officer knock on my door to “check on me”. Which… on one hand is good… on the other hand… fuck you.

So many feelings. I will find out on Wednesday if I am supposedly “clear” to eat wheat and dairy. I so hope this works. I’m willing to drink a little snake oil if it firms up my poop so I can eat wheat. That’s fine with me.

I would do the poop transplant in a minute if it were available as a solution for me.

I found it weird that I *should not* have regular olive oil but cold pressed is dandy. Apparently the “regular” is treated with a chemical to make alllllllll the oil come out and that chemical isn’t actually great for people. Awesome!

I’m going to jump topic to describing what the doctor does a little. He puts this little strap around one arm, a little like a blood pressure cuff but worn below the elbow. That arm receives “the electrical impulse that matches the food”. The other arm you stick straight out and he tries to push it down.

It sounds so fucking crazy. But on some of them I could hold my arm up and some of them I couldn’t no matter what. He starts with arsenic because no one can hold their arm up and you don’t feel bad about the idea of being allergic to arsenic.

He moved on to a forking long list of things to try. And did you know how many little subchemicals exist in most of these things? I’m apparently “allergic” to like 6 different parts of milk. Most of those would be mostly helped by just drinking raw milk. $16 a gallon, here we come.

But he can break down the wheat problem too. Yes gluten, but apparently I have problems with multiple different proteins and binders other than gluten. And supposedly he can treat them all. He does them in layers checking for where your allergic reaction is in your body. Then he tap-tap-taps your back. It’s wacky and I feel kind of doubting… but I’ll try it.

It’s funny having a good doctor experience and a bad doctor experience in the same day.

I am in such a bad mood. I want to cry. I can stop taking birth control pills since they obviously aren’t helping me. I can stop taking almost all of the vitamins since I seem to have an issue with b vitamins. That’s kind of sunny.

Sadly, no problems with the fucking fish oil. Deep sigh.

I’D BE OK IF I WERE ALLERGIC TO FISH!!!

Alas. We don’t get to write our own allergy list.

I should go do something else. But all I want to do is cry.

All the woo.

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Apparently this wacky shit is “next generation NAET” which isn’t all that encouraging. But Placebo is one of the most effective drugs! So I’ll try it at this point.

The doctor found 23 reactions (some to families of things and we didn’t divide it up yet), which could be an allergy could be an intolerance could be… who the fuck knows. These things make my body react.

Foods: Eggs (found that one by myself!), dairy, sugars, wheat, oats, yeast, chocolate, corn, fruits, herbs/spices, msg, nuts, and oils/fats.

Me: Apparently I’m allergic to my digestive enzymes and stomach acids as well as some of my blood components, my hormones, and my neurotransmitters.

I’m also allergic to pollen, grasses, weeds, vitamins (particularly B vitamins… which I’ve been taking religiously “for my health”), and probiotics.

Cheers, motherfucker.

Supposedly many of these can be treated (with this wacky ass combination of acupressure and electromagnetic stimulus) to the point where they don’t bother me any more. If that is true, I’ll fucking try it. Kaiser just tells me to eat more Fiber 1 cereal so at least this sounds like a fucking plan.

When I got home I discovered that the groino from Kaiser I’ve been working with on the PMDD decided that she didn’t want to keep trying options and she referred me to psychiatry. I called psychiatry and said, “I use pot. Will I be treated or told that no one will treat me?” “Well, you will have to stop before we can treat you.” “Then let us not waste my time with an appointment. Have a nice day.”

I emailed the groino and told her I will not be troubling her with my problems again in the future.

So today we did “treatment” for wheat, oils, sugars, and dairy. I go back on Wednesday to see how well it took. Hopefully I will be able to eat in Hawaii. *cross fingers*

Also: he says I would be way better off if I permanently switched to raw dairy. I see his point. Even after treatment, raw milk is easier to digest–period.

Well, I’m trying to be hopeful but not stupid. It’s not a miracle. Nothing is. But it is a little hope.

Day 19: still a roller coaster

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Breakfast: GF pancakes made with rice milk, peanut butter, banana, maple syrup, grape juice, peppermint tea.

Lunch: fried rice with bell peppers, carrots, and venison, (I think cabbage too)

Dinner: carrots and cabbage stir fried with turkey and rice.

 

Apparently the cut tag thing isn’t working? Oh well.

3:30am–brown, mostly formed, not one “main” piece but several small firm-ish chunks.

7pm: little brown pellets. Like the rabbit poop! I’ve seen that on the chart! It is on the way to constipation but isn’t there.

(My experience of the next day’s results are this food is a-ok. I think the potato flour isn’t a problem. *phew*)

Today… I may eat a piece of regular bread. See how it goes, yo. I know I am not doing this as slow as some recommend. I need to test a few things before going to Hawaii, alright? Only four more sleeps!

Packing for Hawaii

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I hardly ever post pictures, so here is what I’m taking to Hawaii.

Including what I will wear on the plane.

Including what I will wear on the plane.

On the left, we have a blue shirt, hippy dress, and purple pants I will wear on the plane. Next to them is a skirt and tank top. I will probably wear the purple pants under the skirt. I’m like that. Above and to the right of the purple tank top is the black semi-sweater I like to wear. It isn’t a real sweater. It doesn’t cover your belly or your arms but it keeps your shoulders covered. Then the BRIGHT ORANGE shirt of delight, which I’ll be running in. I will lean down and borrow my bathing suit pants for running. (Between the pants and the skirt lie two lonely pairs of chonies.) Then landing all the right you see my sexy bathing suit top and my swimming hat.

I take *all the sexy* to Hawaii, baby.

First aid kit. I am so a mom. And an accident prone runner.

First aid kit. I am so a mom. And an accident prone runner.

Bandaids, latex gloves, trash bag, period supplies (I bleed by surprise these days), caffeinated mints, and medicated head ache rub. Works pretty well.

This is basically the bathroom section.

This is basically the bathroom section.

You get to see the other side of the period supplies. I have enough Q-tips to clean out… I really don’t want to think about it. Moving on. Tooth care (I don’t do well at shoving my hand in my mouth with dental floss so I use pick things–multiple kinds). Sun block. Anti-chafe stick (I don’t use it much but I will be hot.). Nail file! Don’t leave home without it!, The little makeup I own. Hair tie stuff. And an emergency rain poncho. Oh, and my hankie. Always need a hankie. All the liquid-ish stuff goes in a quart bag (with room to spare) and everything else fits in the little black bag.

Ted wants everyone to know that he is excited about his next adventure.

Ted wants everyone to know that he is excited about his next adventure.

Ted travels with me everywhere. In fact, he has already been to Oahu. We’ve been talking about how not to be a snob about it. Humility, Ted. He’s holding my eating utensils, extra bag, running belt, charging cord (and adapter), headset, and the only wallet I will be bringing. My phone isn’t in the picture, but it is the only screen I’m bringing. Yay for music and books in one place.

And of course, the most important stuff.

And of course, the most important stuff.

I hate swallowing pills. But I’m told they will help me be “healthier”. Fuck health.

And it all fits nicely together like so.

And it all fits nicely together like so.

I will probably actually also wear the shawl from Jenny’s wedding because going from airports to our house will be chilly. It packs down small when I don’t need it but it is wonderfully warm. I wear it a lot.

I’ll try to ask Noah to take a picture of me all dressed and ready to set off. It’s been a while since I’ve really gone off on an adventure like this. Going to Guerneville wasn’t very adventurous.

Now I only need to go to sleep five more times.

I’m so excited.

Oh, I tripped and twisted my ankle today while out on a walk. And the festivity continues.

Day 18

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This is a really emotionally hard process. If I wake up and have a normal poop, I feel like I am allowed to eat. I’m allowed to try something. If I don’t wake up to normal poop it feels like I am bad and I must be punished with terrible food I really don’t want to eat all day. I don’t get to have anything with flavor or texture I want.

Yesterday I woke up with normal poop. So I tried a few things. Today I didn’t wake up with normal poop. So I have to punish myself more.

When does an elimination diet become disordered eating and self harm?

Yesterday I swallowed all the usual pills minus pot. I was tired before I started and I knew I wouldn’t be able to do 9 miles if I had pot in my system.

Breakfast: rice cereal, rice milk, grape juice

lunch: leftover fried rice

snack: raspberries and banana (the kids are eating their Halloween candy and this is the closest I can get to sugar and watching them eat is making me feel so bad. As usual I am not good enough to deserve what other, better people get.)

dinner: bell pepper stuffed with venison, cabbage, rice, carrot.

Yesterday I pooped at 9:30 in the morning. It was solid, formed and what poop should be. So I got cocky. I have already paid for my luxuries yesterday. This morning is not so easy.

Don’t know if it is the banana, raspberries, or venison. I god damn needed more protein. I am working so hard physically that I simply must have protein and I’m being told that most vegetable proteins aren’t a good idea yet. I have to have something other than just turkey. Have to.

But maybe I don’t get fruit any more. That makes me really sad. I’m hungry and I want sweet so fucking bad. It hurts. It physically hurts with how much I want to have something sweet. A banana isn’t really what I want but I get a few hours of reprieve from the grinding desire for sugar.

Yesterday I felt much more hopeful and happy. Today I’m crying. Today I wake up to, “Well should I revert back to rice and turkey and the three vegetables and I get nothing else today so that hopefully tomorrow I can have normal poop and then maybe I can try something?

Partially I’m freaking out because I leave for Hawaii in five days. Am I bringing a large cooler full of steamed rice and turkey? Is that the only way I will eat on the trip or will I just have wicked diarrhea the whole time?

I don’t know what the right answer is. I’m hungry. I want food. I want a variety of foods. I want meat and vegetables and fruit and I WANT FUCKING WHEAT.

Egg is the only for-sure no. The fruit might be too. That makes me very sad.

If I get to the point of only being able to eat 10 things, is my life going to be worth living? If I can essentially never eat out again or never go to someones house… is that a life?

Today I feel scared and sad. My body doesn’t feel good. And I’ll I’m supposed to eat is fucking rice cereal with fucking rice milk. I’d rather not eat at all. I’d rather spend the time in the bathroom cutting. All of this food is starting to feel like self-hate.

Noah continues to make our normal, varied, fucking tasty food for him and the kids. Eating with them makes me cry. If only I weren’t so bad I wouldn’t have to be punished. If I was capable of being good, I would be allowed food.

I’m glad we don’t have anything scheduled today. I don’t really need to talk to anyone. I’m going to sit here and cry and feel sorry for myself.

This right here is why I have never made it so far on an elimination diet.

Good list, bad list

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Given my bathroom experiences of today (I have yet more REAL HONEST TO GOODNESS POOP!!!!!) I would say that this experiment *is* yielding results.

Good list:

rice, turkey, carrots, cabbage, bell peppers, venison, banana, maple syrup, grapes

Know for certain that these things are totally ok.

Maybe list:

raspberry

Bad list:

eggs, carbonation

 

It’s a start. Better than I knew three weeks ago.

Day 17

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Breakfast: this unsweetened rice cereal shit is shitty. I’m just saying. And eating it with fucking rice milk is just gross. Oh man. I’m having it with grape juice so I can swallow ALL THE PILLS. I can’t swallow pills with water. I throw them up. Souvenir of overdosing.

For the record I’m taking: birth control pills (supposedly as a mood stabilizer–Noah and I don’t think it is helping), SAM-E (some other mood stabilizer kinda supplement my shrink wants me on), fish oil (mood management), B-Complex (filling in the gaps on my shitty diet and mood management), probiotic (gut health), Ibuprofen (I’ve been taking one a day for a while because I hurt so fucking much), and some days I take my pot pills. Not every day.

I tried swallowing the pills with water. I puked.

lunch and dinner came out of the same pot: I made fried rice with the last of the rice I made using the onion powder containing broth. So that contaminant will be out again soon. I had this totally weird moment where I looked in the fridge wondering what I would use for the fried rice and I saw the bell pepper and thought, “I’m having fucking bell pepper. They can’t take everything away from me. I’M EATING MY GOD DAMN BELL PEPPER.” And that was really weird for me. I didn’t eat vegetables until I was in my late teens because my fiance forced me to eat that shit. I didn’t start eating bell peppers by choice till my late 20’s. This was a weird moment. I also included carrot (less enthusiasm but still important) and cabbage with the turkey. I stir fry in olive oil (cold pressed or I’m not supposed to eat it) and use salt and pepper. It tasted better than you would think after the deprivation of the last few weeks.

Lots of peppermint tea. Supposedly it is cooling to the intestines.

Today gets a cut tag for all the poop. Oh man. Continue reading →

Just can’t.

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I feel guilty, but I can’t sit at the table and watch them eat this morning. They are eating pancakes and muffin and eggs. I’m eating shitty rice cereal with shitty rice milk. I’m having grape juice so I can handle swallowing pills. I literally can’t do it with water. I throw the pills back up.

I feel bad physically. This morning started with several bouts of violent diarrhea. I feel sad and yet hopeful. I hope it was the egg. I hope. I pray. I hope I have one indicator god fucking damnit.

I’m trying to not take my extreme grumpiness out on every one around me but I am not sure how successful I am being. I’m apologizing a lot. I don’t really think it makes anything better. But I don’t have the pause before I emote asshole-ness and there isn’t anything else I can do but apologize.

I’m feeling like I should stay home pretty indefinitely and not talk to anyone. I’m not a nice person. It is hard to be polite enough when I feel like this. I mostly managed to stay civil with the moms at the park yesterday (I think) but it is really hard to monitor my tone when my body hurts like this.

I feel like I should stop reading about diarrhea on the internet. So. Much. Conflicting. Information. These lists of foods directly contradict one another. As in: from one dietician to another one will say asparagus is a no-no and the next says eat lots of it. Some say I shouldn’t be eating *any* rice and some say I should be eating *only* rice.

I’ve gotta say, I attained poop *with* the nuts and nightshades in my diet. Then I went one day without, had some egg, and there is an instant return to violent diarrhea. That makes me wonder if I should bother with taking the nightshades and nuts out. But egg is staying out for a bit.

I don’t think I am going to be physically capable of taking out all the vegetables. I fucking need some bulk in my stomach. And I can’t stay on just turkey for weeks. Unfortunately I have a “delicate system” and if I try to eat too repetitively of foods I don’t like that much I will vomit and vomit and vomit. My body is more contrary than my personality. Which is a stretch. I find it annoying how self-defeating I am.

For all my fuss and whine the kids and I had a decent day together yesterday. They are being ridiculously understanding of my moodiness. “Mom, it sucks that you can’t eat anything tasty. I’d be grumpy too.”

We also had a detailed, hilarious, conversation about buying clothing for the children. I told them that when they don’t care about the stuff five minutes after I buy it I feel less impetus to buy anything else in the future. They can have the basics and not a lot more. Ingratitude is a real hot button for me. Shanna asked me how she could show more gratitude so that I would be happier about buying her stuff. So we talked about sucking up and the difference between that and begging. They practiced a bit and I gave them feedback on, “That’s not sucking up that is begging–and closer to pestering than begging.” Demanding that you get something is *not* sucking up.

I found it pretty funny. I’m ok with talking about these things bluntly. If you want me to do things for you, I need something back. I don’t need groveling. But if you start bitching loudly about how something isn’t that great right after I spend money on it… I’m taking it back to the store and forget you. Especially when it isn’t something you need. You are not entitled to luxuries, buddy.

(Specifically: she asked me to get her a Merida dress for Halloween. I did. Her grandmother sent an Elsa dress the week of Halloween and all of a sudden she spent a lot of time shit talking the Merida dress and how it isn’t as nice. I was not a happy camper. Other than the fact that the sewing on the Merida dress wasn’t amazing (split seams all over the fucking place) it was a really cool costume. Luckily Pam can sew better than me and she was here when we noticed all the seams and she fixed the dress. I am so grateful for my friends.)

I talked about how I feel sad that I put effort into negotiating with her over what she wanted, getting the supplementary accessories, and I spent a bunch of money. If you start shit talking less than a week after I get you something I won’t want to do it next time. This feels really bad. I feel like I wasted time and money and I don’t like that feeling. I have other uses for my time and money.

If you are actually happy about what I do and nice to me… I’m happy to do lots for you. Lots. LOTS. But I need something back.

I don’t need 24/7 groveling. That’s annoying. I don’t need you to only agree with me and I don’t need to have you parrot my opinions. I just want you to express appreciation for my effort. If you don’t I will stop putting effort into you.

I god damn need those words of affirmation. Or I feel like I should die because I am stupid and I try really hard for people who don’t care anyway. If I don’t get that acknowledgment I feel like an unworthy piece of shit. Is it fair? No. But it is.

I figure the best thing I can do is be as clear as possible about how important it is to me. I need acknowledgment.

I feel like I’m not doing enough for my family lately. But I also feel entirely out of spoons. I could use a full week of hiding under my bed. I used to do that. Just take a week off of school and hide.

I feel so yucky. My body hurts so much. I want to cry.

Day 16: two steps forward, three steps back

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Breakfast: puffed rice cereal with rice milk and some turkey lunch meat.

Lunch: stir fry made with leftover rice, green beans, carrots, salt, pepper, leftover blueberry chicken, and olive oil. Remarkably tasty.

2nd lunch: rice cooked with vegetable broth (so technically tainted with onion powder) and turkey lunch meat.

dinner: rice cooked with vegetable broth (I read the fucking label after I dumped two cups in the rice cooker), turkey, grapes, and a little bit of egg.

 

5am-long, thing mostly formed. Pencil thin and brown.

5:50pm- REAL POOP. I POOPED. I POOPED!!! Ahem. Brown and formed and everything.

I spent this day feeling like shit. My whole body hurts. Massive headache. Joint pain. Stomach/abdominal pain. I suspect a lot of the pain is weight lifting but oh holy hell it is intense.

I’m going to give you a preview. I had one more “real poop” after midnight. Then for day 17 I woke up with truly wicked diarrhea. The kind that is entirely liquid and yuck and burning. I don’t think the egg agreed with me.

I POOPED!!!!!

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I POOPED!!!!! I POOPED!!!!!I POOPED!!!!!I POOPED!!!!!I POOPED!!!!!I POOPED!!!!!I POOPED!!!!!I POOPED!!!!!I POOPED!!!!!I POOPED!!!!!I POOPED!!!!!I POOPED!!!!!I POOPED!!!!!I POOPED!!!!!I POOPED!!!!!I POOPED!!!!!I POOPED!!!!!I POOPED!!!!!I POOPED!!!!!I POOPED!!!!!I POOPED!!!!!I POOPED!!!!!I POOPED!!!!!I POOPED!!!!!I POOPED!!!!!I POOPED!!!!!I POOPED!!!!!I POOPED!!!!!I POOPED!!!!!I POOPED!!!!!I POOPED!!!!!I POOPED!!!!!I POOPED!!!!!I POOPED!!!!!I POOPED!!!!!I POOPED!!!!!I POOPED!!!!!I POOPED!!!!!I POOPED!!!!!I POOPED!!!!!I POOPED!!!!!I POOPED!!!!!I POOPED!!!!!I POOPED!!!!!I POOPED!!!!!I POOPED!!!!!I POOPED!!!!!I POOPED!!!!!I POOPED!!!!!I POOPED!!!!!

 

I’m scared that this means I *will* have to eliminate some of the things currently out of my diet.

Also: I am not going to be able to do turkey and rice. I just fucking can’t. I’m going to try some egg tonight. It is normally fine for folks with IBS and I don’t think I have an allergy to it.

Day 15

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My last hurrah day. After this my diet narrows even more. To that I say: fuck my life. I will be cutting nightshades and nuts.

Breakfast: gf pancakes (made with almond milk), banana, peanut butter, pecans, maple syrup

Lunch: the last of the soup with nightshades

Dinner: rice, fried potatoes, chicken with blueberry and maple syrup, green beans

Dessert: grape juice and a banana

 

Two visits to the bathroom. One at 3:30 am and one at 12:15pm. The first time was lots and lots of quantity and very dark brown grainy and totally unformed. The second time I had a few discrete pieces, which is awesome, but they were really thin and pencil like (in that way that indicates gall bladder problems).

Worth mentioning that I did 4.5 miles of running and over an hour of weight lifting with Noah.

My whole body hurts. Every part of me. I have a headache so bad I would cheerfully beat my head on concrete just for the distraction. I feel worse and worse with every passing day. It isn’t even just that I’m hungry (though I am).

Also: now I have a fucking cold.

DO ALL THE THINGS!

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I now have two doctor appointments. One with an allergist/alternative medicine person a friend highly recommends (he is closer than Santa Rosa, K–your person is next in line) and one with the gastroenterology office for Kaiser. Those appointments are on the 3rd and 24th of November neatly overlapping with babysitting.

I ran 4.6 miles in 55 minutes. I’m pretty happy about how fast I’ve been running lately.

I did weight lifting with Noah at the gym. My form sucks and I’m not lifting much weight (little more than the bar) but I’m making progress. I feel like the squats in particular are helping with my running speed already.

I went through a pile of mail and sorted it into keeping or paying bills or recycling.

I emailed the person who might be interested in home school trades of kids. *Cross fingers*

I caught up on my “school” tracking. I try to write down what we are doing and I got a little behind. (Not a lot–I’ve been doing well with ALL THE TRACKING I’m doing.)

I put together a couple of cards to send out in the mail. I will have to go to the post office. Stupid international postage. Good thing my niece is way the heck too young to notice how fucking late my holiday cards are.

I found the box and receipt for something I need to return to Target. Whoo.

I finished Noah’s Christmas shopping. All I need to still get for the kids are a couple of gift cards and pajamas. (The gift cards are so they can have the experience of buying their own damn tv show from the iTunes store–Shanna will pick She-Ra.)

And it isn’t even noon yet.

The hilarious thing is… I feel like I “haven’t done much”.

 

Slightly less fucked up than yesterday

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Well I’m not waking up crying. That’s good. I feel less jittery and scared. I feel less like I need to die because I am a piece of shit. That’s probably good too.

Somehow I feel more ashamed of myself talking about the abatement of suicidality than I do about reporting it when it is happening. I don’t talk about wanting to kill myself for attention–if I did it would be a big fat fail. I don’t get extra attention when I’m suicidal and I’m pretty nasty to people who want to pop up then. I am kind of like a wounded cat. I want to crawl under the house and be left alone until I feel better.

When I feel shitty already I am going to lash out at every person who walks by whether they are trying to help me or not. Sometimes trying to help me is a big red flag. “What do you want? Why are you doing this? Clearly I need to drive you away.”

I’m very scared of being 5150’d and part of the reason I talk about being suicidal as much as I do is so I have a long track record to defend *not* going into the hospital. I am more likely to survive if I am left in the nest I carefully created for myself.

Yes, my behavior and my words can seem scary to other people. I am doing better than I did. I have improved. I *am* more healthy. No, I’m not where other non-traumatized people are… I never will be. I can never undo the past.

I feel both very bad and good about the fact that my kids understand “down” days. Today is a day when mom is going to cry a lot and not be good at answering questions–it isn’t personal and it isn’t a reflection of how much I love you. I’m trying my best and sometimes I can’t be chipper and entertaining.

I tell my kids, “People are shaped by the experiences they have. It is part of the reason I am so protective of you both. You will not have to remember back to horrible events that shape your whole life. You will be whole and able to make what you will of the future.”

Yesterday they played at the park for three hours. Mostly I could see their clothes in the pack running around at a great distance and that was all the “supervision” they had.

Well, I heard one kid yelling at Shanna for her foul mouth. He did so because his mother told him to. Shanna was bragging about how “bad ass” she is and he didn’t like that language. I didn’t hear Shanna’s response but I doubt she is going to drop the phrase because this kid yelled at her.

And it begins.

Also, the daycare lady at the gym told me she had to scold Shanna for her “attitude”. I kind of said, “Hmm” and nodded. Shanna is going to get scolded sometimes. That’s life. I sincerely doubt some random woman telling her that she must respect Miss Foxy is going to change her personality much.

My girls are not going to be quiet and demure in the ways people expect girls to be. I’m ok with that. I have never seen boys get “scolded” for “attitude” the same way I see girls get reprimanded. I’m sure it does happen. My vision is not omnipresent or anything. But I’ve seen it happen to an awful lot of girls. You aren’t being respectful (meaning quiet) enough.

What-fucking-ever.

Well, if Shanna is so rude that she gets banned from daycare then she will learn a lesson. Otherwise I don’t feel a need to get involved or care.

I love you. I think it is ok that you have lots of attitude. Noah has been having trouble with Shanna’s attitude lately too. Mostly because of a specific phrase that she picked up from me. So I don’t give her shit for it. She likes to respond to questions/orders with “Seriously?” just like her mama. I respond in exactly the same tone without any rancor. I don’t mind or find it problematic.

My kids respect me. I’m not worried about them using a tone of voice that “doesn’t sound respectful enough”. I have always thought that was a petty need to control.

Which is to say… I don’t flip out when they are disrespectful in the ways I model and I have other disrespect triggers. *cough* Like a proper hypocrite.

I want forceful, aggressive children who can assert themselves in just about any situation. I want bossy girls.

I tell them all the time, “Who is my wonderful bossy little plan-having girl?” They beam.

My girls believe that “being bossy” is synonymous with “having a plan” and that is fucking awesome. Have a plan. Tell people how to do things. That’s a positive trait. It will serve you well throughout your life.

And it is time to go.

Day 14

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Breakfast: gf pancakes (With almond milk), peanut butter, pecans, banana, maple syrup

Lunch: (raw veggies because it was a picnic and fuss and oh man) carrots, cucumber, turkey, potato chips, grapes, banana

Dinner: green beans, rice, chicken cooked with blueberries and maple syrup (Noah loves me)

I drank a scant cup of grape juice and peppermint tea.

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Permeability

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The fellow who runs the myPTSD website has come up with some good analogies for stress. Simple, visual reminders that once you have the disorder you permanently (or until you do massive amount of work to retrain) just operate at a “higher” stress level than average. He uses cups to illustrate how with PTSD your cup is always somewhat full even when nothing has happened to you today. You have less ability to absorb stress. Stress is such a stupid word. What does it even mean?

I’m having a hard time feeling like a self-contained unit. I feel permeable. I feel… thin. I feel scared. I feel like other peoples opinions just fucking matter too much.

So this year I set the date I wanted for a Christmas cookie exchange. There may only be two other women there doing it with me because my desired planning conflicts with the desires of most of the other folks I invited because they are all off doing a group thing together. That I’m not involved with.

Sometimes I’m good at feeling like people living their lives has nothing to do with me. Sometimes I’m good at knowing that a snippy comment from a friend is about *their* stress cup and not me and sometimes… not so much.

Sometimes I feel torn down and stomped on and spit on. Even though… no one did any such thing. The feeling is coming from me and it is really hard to have this feeling around people and keep it clear in my head that it isn’t about them. They aren’t the reason I feel this way.

I’m not sad because my friend made a bad joke about not loving me. I’m sad because my mother and father didn’t love me. My brothers and sister do not love me. If they do love me, they “don’t love me enough” to not hurt me.

Life is very complicated.

I get very enmeshed with my BFFs and I’m bossy and controlling in ways I shouldn’t be. Because it is one of the longest-ago-examples and because she will probably never speak to me again it is easiest to use Anna as an example. She isn’t the only one. I’m not going to give all the details (I have a small amount of tact) but I’ll say that she came from a problematic family. Not like mine–fucked up in their own special little way. Every single thing that I judged (then and now, really) as “wrong” or “fucked up” can be explained as a difference in what we have been socialized to accept.

With the 20/20 of hindsight… I’m very certain I was openly contemptuous of things I should not have been judging. I would yell at Anna about some of the interactions I witnessed. I swore at her that she needed to stand up for herself or she was pathetic. I was probably as abusive as her parents. I love Anna. Very much. I understand why she ended contact with me. I was not capable of hearing about the problems in her life without becoming so distressed that I reacted as if *I* was trapped in that horrible situation. I was never able to step back and objectively feel like it “wasn’t my problem”. It felt like my problem. Her family engaged in a wide variety of behaviors that…. Ok I can’t say more. She and her parents are semi-functional people.

What does “functional” mean? It is one of the things I focus on in raising my kids. How do I turn them into functional people. One of my relatives worked at a movie theatre for a few years starting at 18. He quit at 20 because he didn’t feel “respected” enough and he hadn’t been moved into management. He somehow destroyed one of the super expensive pop corn machines by fucking around. No shit they haven’t promoted you yet. But he was completely indignant. And proceeded to not work for years and mooch money off his much younger sister who worked at In-n-Out.

I want my kids to be able to support themselves without effectively stealing from people who don’t have enough for themselves. I think that being poor is something that happens. I think that being a house wife when you are poor is not the same thing as taking money from a sibling with an after-school fast food job. If one or both of my daughters married someone who worked with his hands and didn’t earn a lot of money I would try to encourage my daughters to figure out how to supplement their income even if they wanted to be housewives. But I’m going to encourage my daughters to prepare for a future of working no matter what.

I have written two books in the last few years on top of many other large projects. (I have entirely fallen into a spiral of self hate and I have not submitted books for publication.) My children think of me as “working”. They don’t think “stay at home” is the same as “does nothing”. That is not part of their world. They do not live in an environment where the work I do is devalued–it is seen as important and something that someone  has to do and you can’t pay someone to really care about the same exact things as you. Even if I put my kids in the best hippy dippy unschooling-not-formal-curriculum private school in the world I couldn’t pay their teachers enough to care about them as much as I do.

Yes, some of those teachers would be better educated on a variety of topics about which I’m entire ignorant. That gap has been more obvious to me lately.

I don’t know everything. I don’t know what is right for everyone. I know that Noah and I both have family backgrounds that are very devoid of love. If you hear the stories about our parents’ childhoods and our grandparents’ childhoods…. no wonder they were miserable assholes. They were miserable. And they were totally assholes. We’ve got a long line of bullies and violent people behind us.

My kids are going to need an inordinate amount of love. Generational trauma leaves effects that are detectable on brain studies. DNA is altered from severe trauma. Tendencies towards problematic parts of your DNA are switched on. Just about the only thing that any science can find that really solves this problem is a ridiculous, over-whelming amount of love. More love than “normal” people need.

I can’t pay someone else to love my kids as much as me. It just isn’t possible. I am deeply grateful for the privilege that allows me to be with them day after day, even as I crave more time away from them like a heroin addict wants a needle.

But I can carefully find people who come close. I can make specific, careful choices about how and when and where I make the decision to leave them with someone else even though they won’t be loved for a while. Because I am privileged.

It has occurred to me more than once that when I travel I should consciously prefer states with my gym membership. 2 hours a day of workout time with a baby-sitting system I feel comfortable with. Oh man that just sounds fucking awesome to balance all the sitting in the car. I’m having thoughts.

But appearing at least moderately stable is important for the kids. When I’m having bad periods (like I am) I talk to the kids about it. They feel free to ask me questions.

“Why are you crying?”

“Because I am sad.”

“Why are you sad?”

“I’m thinking about things that happened long before you when my life wasn’t wonderful like it is now. Sometimes it is hard because I feel like I am 2 and 12 and 22 and 32 and 33 and 42 and 52 and 62 and 72 all at once and all of the things I want to have done crowd in my head with all of the things I have done and they mix up with things that have been done to me and sometimes I feel sad. When you feel sad, it is a good idea to cry. That lets the emotion out of your body so you don’t have to hold on to it for a long time.”

“Oh. Should I hug you?”

“You don’t have to hug me just because I am feeling sad. But if you want a hug it is ok to ask me for a hug even when I’m sad.”

“May I have a hug?”

“Yes.”

Calli is the one I worry about. Calli is the one who is going to need to have practice with boundaries 1,000 times with someone who is willing to call the plays standing there. Her emotions are so big and it is so hard for her not to hurt other people when she is angry. She wants to hit. She hasn’t hit in a while. I’m very proud of her. Someday I will think back and laugh at myself for worrying so much about a transient behavior problem when she was three that she outgrew by four. But I think she’s going to need more direct work on managing social interactions. She is less naturally inclined in that direction.

I’m more or less a one on one therapist she has to live with. Man that has to suck. But they are allowed to tell me, “I did not ask for feedback on this topic” and I usually back off. Usually with a quick “Yes, ma’am.”

That’s why my kids say “Yes ma’am” to me. I say it to them when they ask for just about anything. Modeling works.

Wendy, I want to not yell because if I don’t think it is ok for someones boss to yell at them… why is it more ok to yell at my kids? There doesn’t always have to be punishment. Sometimes a punishment doesn’t have to be manufactured in the form of a headache from being screamed at. Me being an asshole won’t convince them that I am right.

I need to stop yelling. I’m thinking about painting it on the wall. I found a pinterest quote I like. “There should be no yelling in the home, unless there is a fire.” David McKay, apparently.

Yes Wendy, I’m already working on a lot of things. Maybe I should work on fewer things for a few weeks and instead stay home and work on not yelling.

I don’t want to destroy any relationships this year. I don’t think anyone has done anything worthy of punishment. I just am out of spoons. I don’t have much on the calendar for November or December other than running and home school events. I consider those something I have to do to check my attendance card for “socializing” the children. It is funny feeling collegial with them. It is lower pressure than “friends” socializing. (Which isn’t to say that no one there is a friend. But the people who are friends are people I have spent one on one time with talking in a non-group setting. You know, like friends.)

I’m sad. And it isn’t anyone’s fault. I scheduled the open house to coincide with my birth mother’s birthday and my leather mother’s birthday. Complicated. I didn’t do it because of that coincidence. I mostly did it because it is my lowest mileage weekend in a seven week block and I would prefer to be all peppy and such. But coincidence.

I am not done with Noah’s stuff for Christmas. I need to do that. I want November and December to be mostly no shopping. Just the basics of staples. If I’m having trouble with food… I just don’t have the spoons to do much more eating out plus running plus paying attention to the kids…

And now they say I’m done.