My arms are on fire. My hand is spasming so much that holding a fork to feed myself is sometimes painful.

Baby skulls are fucking heavy.

I love my massage therapist and chiropractor. Losing them will be some of the hardest part of leaving the bay. Not only are they very effective, but we have excellent rapport. We are friendly enough to exchange spontaneous gifts. The conversations are fun bright spots in my week. I have a great community.

The baby is waking up from the larval state. It’s a lot of fun. She’s more purposeful by the day. She still mostly only complains when something is wrong. She’s a very chill person. I am not sure where she came from, surely not from me. I’ve never been so relaxed in my life.

I’m obsessively thinking about sex and bdsm and how to negotiate differently and what is it I actually want as opposed to feeling like I must do it? How do I learn to take out the compulsive self harming behavior? How do I learn how to actually know what I want instead of what I can take?

How do I learn how to advocate for myself in a useful way? I’m still trying to find out.

I can advocate for myself. Poorly. In useless ways much of the time.

It’s funny how watching my children teaches me so much about myself. I get what my therapists mean about I bring too much of myself to every situation. But I also see a big chunk of ableism in the commentary. Part of the reason I am so paranoid and controlling of my environments is because I do have a bunch of issues that need accommodation. I have disabilities. If I don’t advocate early or forcefully enough my disability issues are totally ignored and I suffer.

But there’s a balancing act.

I see this so very clearly when my children walk into every room and feel free to demand that everything in the world must conform to them. *cough*

Oh. Yeah. Ok. I see what y’all have been complaining about. *cough* Ok. I think I understand a bit more about how and why to reign that in. Ok. That makes sense now.

I learn so much from getting to sit near my children all the time. I like them so much and I am so enthralled with their development.

YC is glorious and grunting more forcefully and waving with more intention and she very nearly has head control. This is exactly where she ought to be.

MC is fierce and intense and so loving even as they struggle to master their inner impulses towards treating everyone like a mean attacking figure. They feel victimized a lot of the time… even when good things are happening. We are trying to figure out how to work on this, but it’s complicated. Perception is… hard to change.

EC is trying so hard to be a dependable peace maker and her ADHD means that she’s always going to struggle to be the person she wants to be in her head. Her follow through sucks. She has a tremendous amount of desire to follow through… ooh shiny squirrel! It’s a process. When I watch her behavior I understand with great intensity that she would need to be medicated in order to handle school. She can barely handle home schooling. Mostly… she doesn’t and I handle it for her and walk her through the process and that shit’s gotta stop soon. I tried to transition this responsibility with the points system and that failed abjectly. I need to find something else to try and I am not sure what.

I honestly want the moving to fill some of these roles for me. My kids rise to the challenge of change really well. Like me… they aren’t people who sit around and do the same thing well. My follow through isn’t exactly stellar. If I really wanted to live in one house for fifty years and work the same job for thirty years… I would need a lot more medication than I am currently on. I am not wired to do that.

I’m wired to learn something new. So is my daughter. How are we going to learn how to stay the course more together?

I feel like Noah could do more keep-on-keeping-on than I can. He doesn’t have the restlessness.

I feel so restless it is like I itch. But I have to stay here and deal with all the crap in a responsible, kind way. I can’t dump the responsibility on Noah or the kids. I don’t want to just trash it all and walk away. I want thoughtful culling. Which takes a rather lot of focus and work because Jimminy Christmas we amassed a lot of shit here. Even though I purge all the damn time!

Sarah is coming today. Maybe part of our date will be hanging out at Half Price Books together as I take a big batch in. Maybe. Sigh.

I got to see a friend yesterday I haven’t seen in a while. I originally met her when I was 17 and going to junior college. We worked in the theatre together. I feel so grateful that these threads of my life continue. She’s grown up a lot in a variety of ways. Yes, she still has troubles because she is still alive. But she’s changed and deepened and not softened… but relaxed into herself? Her presence felt much more certain now than it used to. She used to feel-to-me like she was almost afraid of herself. Now she fully lives in herself. I love watching people grow up. This is such a glorious gift.

Hey K–before I move… can we get together? I don’t think I’ve seen you since middle school. My last concrete memory of you is when you signed my 6th grade year book. Santa Cruz isn’t that far away. Maybe I could be silly and take a room in a hotel down in Santa Cruz for a weekend in the next few months so I could have a proper visit with all the Santa Cruz folk before we leave. I will miss you all so much. K is there. R is there. I wouldn’t mind going to Kiva and walking the main drag for a while and going to the Boardwalk with my kids….

That should happen.

ack bye

Eldest Child and I had a nice chat and cuddle this morning. She doesn’t consider the weeding experience a punishment. She talked about all the steps that happened, all the ways I tried to avoid having this crash down on their heads… “But we just refused to help until the job got so big that it was a mess. Then we got to clean up the mess. That happens.”

She is so… level headed and tolerant.

She also said that the fact that they came in from weeding and got to use the screen then have their dessert like normal really helped it not feel like a punishment and instead feel like just hard work that needed to be done.

*pat self on back*

I also woke up and did their chore for them (emptied the dishwasher) because I was antsy and awake and I wanted to clear the counter of dirty dishes. She appreciated that too.

I swear I wasn’t trying to punish you. Err, not this time. I did use weeding as a punishment a few months ago. They didn’t mind that time either because our friend M was here and that time it ended up feeling more like a party for them.

It’s hard to punish children who experience most things as fun adventures.

And my back yard is clear of weeds and ready for the next stage. I mean, there’s a bit more clean up for me to do… but they dealt with the grass such that what is left can be mowed and it’s fine. They cleaned it up enough that we can actually clear up the toys and the garbage and that was the point.

I’m not sure weeding/gardening is ever done.

But we are ready to put the veggies in for the season. I should probably go to the nursery today. I think the yard will photograph better for sale if the boxes are full of pretty vegetables. I’m going for an aesthetic this year. I’m showing my kids manicured yards and gardens and explaining the difference between what I have been aiming for over the past 10 years and what other people want. They find it fascinating that anyone would anything other than the meadow effect.

We agreed that we will enjoy a break from gardening but we will want another garden some day. This girl is so lovely to live with.

The baby has her first best friend. I can’t tell if it is the towel bar or the butterfly decal on the wall but she smiles and laughs and has a gay ol’ time on the changing table looking that way.

Noah was a glorious, kind, lovely husband last night. He walked the baby when she wouldn’t settle at bedtime. So when the baby needed a diaper change this morning at our normal wake up time I told him to just stay asleep.

These moments of help feel so tender and loving.

EC has spent the last few days creating an enormous bird army out of construction paper. These birds have clans and histories much like the Warrior Cats book series she is currently obsessed with. I love her imagination. She’s better than tv.

MC is enjoying the lovely lie-in. They are the longest sleeper in the house. I should probably get up and start making breakfast soon. I’m hungry.

I had one of those experiences yesterday where someone uses a describing word in a way that feels neutral to them but it’s loaded with trauma for me because of my family. She really didn’t mean anything. If only my family didn’t live in my head ruining perfectly good words.

Tonight sleep is hard. I feel like it isn’t helping that Her Cuteness is nursing every hour because she had multiple epic naps of not eating yesterday and she needs to make up for lost time. I feel like as long as these nights are occasional they are kind of special and wonderful. I love listening to her breathe.

I forgot about the field trip happening today. Oh that’ll be rad after testing this week. Lots of car time and being out all day. And not sleeping much. I got what–5 hours?

Follow through is hard. I’m great at making plans. Following them is tough.

We are now down four bookcases. A fifth was almost picked up then not so much. I’m ready for my second trip to Half-Price Books. I’m going when I have six cubes worth of books to unload. I think I have one, maybe two more to fill.

I’m so grateful that a huge chunk of my library was free. I take cast-off books from everywhere.

Tired. Want to talk. Oh hey! I get to chat with Jenny today! Oh that’ll be lovely. She has such lovely stories about the kids.

I keep finding myself randomly crying about my friend who died. His death feels like such a big loss to the world. And it’s tied up in my feelings about parenting. He would have been such a good father. But since he was going to die young from cancer… uhhh maybe it is better that there aren’t kids in the world missing their great dad. But these things can’t be known in advance. So it’s just a waste that no one got to benefit from his kindness.

And I’m so grateful that Jenny found her lovely husband and she got to have the kids she wanted to so much. And L got to have her baby. And R and L get to bring home their baby today!

There is a lot of joyous parenting in my extended community and I’m so grateful to witness it and get to learn from it.

And there is heartache and pain too. People with years of painful losses. People who have tried and failed to become joyful parents. It is so sad. There is no justice or fair or deserve. Life hurts so much. Some folks never find the right partner and they don’t even get to try and fail.

There is no. fucking. fair.

My Sweetness is sleeping on my arm as I type. It hurts. I don’t care. I don’t want to put her down and risk waking her up. She needs her sleep so she can grow up big and strong. So she can be feisty and challenging like her Sissy and Sibby. So she can backtalk and sass.

Just like all of us.

I feel like the internet was my first relationship and now I’m deep in NRE with my new side chick and I’m just flaking all over the place.

This is why I do not get jobs that depend upon my math acumen. I FREAKING KNOW THAT 400/20 SHOULD NOT BE 100. WHAT IN THE HELL AM I THINKING.

But the hilarious part is I bet a dozen or more women walked past my two math mistakes. (Meaning I bet chicks noticed.)  My guy buddies can’t do the same thing. That amuses me to no end. I love you both. Thanks for the corrections.

EC is doing state testing this week. (Maybe her math will be better than mine. Maybe not. We’ll see!) Her feeling about this experience is that she is very glad she doesn’t go to school because this is horrible. Seems legit.

I just sucked ass at scheduling this week. I thought ECs test was a one day thing on Monday. Nope. It’s a two day test going from Tuesday to Wednesday. Well that fucks up all my planning. Damnit. I am just… not on the ball right now. Fudge.

My Sunday plans have changed and I am so very happy for the reason. Some dear ladies have been trying to adopt a baby for a few years now (it’s a complicated process) and their baby is with them now! YAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYY I am so happy for them both. What a lucky baby to get such fantastic mothers. I hope I get to know this kid at least a little bit. It will be complicated with moving away, but technology is wonderful. And I already know I love the baby’s mothers. So that makes the effort easier.

I will get to go visit them during their fourth trimester. That’s glorious, joyous news.

I’m trying to figure out how to dig a few more spoons out of the back of my drawer. Sigh. A buddy had her oldest child die this week. She is in the process of collapsing from grief. She has five children still in the home and she needs help. I’m not sure what all I will be able to do between time and energy constraints but I need to do something,

Sobonfu taught me a lot about grief. The best way I can honor her memory is to step up and use that knowledge when it is relevant. I can’t fix everyone. But I can be part of a community and help carry grief. This lovely mama has been really good to me for years. She’s one of the people who kept me when we left the home school group. She’s worked hard to stay my friend when I was actively pulling away. Those bonds mean something.

I can help her make lists and organize how to delegate work. She does not have to carry this tragedy alone.

Joy and tragedy. Minor irritations. That’s life in a nut shell.

But any minute here my beautiful baby will wake up and need me. It’s worth getting up every day to see these glorious faces.

I wish I could set systems in place and just execute on them forever. I read that when it comes to activism personalities there are three basic types: the dreamers who can come up with an idea, systematizing people who can set up a whole path to execution, and maintainers who can sit on top of someone else’s system and keep it running forever.

I’m somewhere between a dreamer and a systematizer. I am shit for maintenance.

For a year or so we’ve been doing a point system for chores. Why? I could explain the goals around dependability and tracking and self-awareness but fuck it. The kids never got better about tracking their own shit. It was just one more job for me. And if I have to make you do every step of your job I am not going to also stand over you and force you to have “autonomy in tracking” because if I am standing over you it isn’t autonomous. It’s more fucking work for me.

So yeah. I bailed on points. I told the kids that if they are going to act like impulsive little kids who refuse to be responsible then I can’t go through the charade of them having responsibility right now. If they want to be immature then we need to go back to me micromanaging control for a few months so that I can say “No” to everything all the time when you are pissing me off and being rude.

Instead of saying, “Have you done all of your chores? Have you written down your points? I will now wander around the house and check your work and go over to the point sheet and tap my toes as you actually write down the stuff you claim you already did.” Notice how many steps of work there are in that exchange for me?

Fuck it. I don’t care right now.

When they ask me for screen time for a few weeks my response will be, “You were not polite this morning. No.”

If I have to ask you more than once to do your chores the answer to whatever it is you want is going to be no. I can’t keep rewarding you for half ass work. It is resulting in me having to chase you harder and harder for each scrap of productive work. Fuck this.

I’m too tired and I’m feeling too mean. I can’t give you what you would want in the system we have been trying for. I’m tapped out. I need a break from doing that much tracking for you.

I have tracked their chores and allowance for years. I have extensive records. Because I feel like what I am doing “doesn’t count” if I can’t go back and produce paperwork documenting what I have been doing with my time and energy.

I am so tired of begging for people to do what they have agreed to do. I understand that the kids do a lot of “forced agreement” which is to say they don’t really want any household chores and they agree to a certain number because of coercion. But fine. If I have to be a dictator I’m just going to go all the way on that for a few months. So that hopefully next time I ask my children if they want to be more responsible in trade for more autonomy… they will appreciate it more.

I hope.

Oh god. Parenting is so hard.

It’s not that the number of chores the kids do is going to change. We just won’t be tracking them in the same way. Because it was too dang much work for me.

What will we do next? I don’t even know.

The math mistake I made is bugging me all day long. I’m going to hand wave the math a bit and see if I can get closer. ~4,000 miles (because there will be day trips on the way). I get ~20 mpg. So that means about 100 gallons of gas. (4000/20= 100) If I say $3/gallon (even though that is high, just to make the math easier) that’s only like $300 for gas. Not more like $10,000. Sometimes… I make silly errors.

Oh my god Krissy.

In good news: my baby is a rolly polly tub of lard. When she lays on her side the fat and skin pool on the surface she is laying on because there is so much of it that it doesn’t stay tight on her body. I love this stage. I also love the way she squeaks. She’s trying so hard to communicate already. I also love that this baby will take naps not on me. Thank you sweetie. I do have stuff to do.

Two bookshelves are gone. Three others are listed on the internet. I’m making progress on getting rid of stuff and packing. It’s visible. We can’t do any structural work until I get all the shit out of the way. I am shocked by how much stuff we have and I’m thrilled by the fact that I purge regularly so this isn’t anywhere near as bad as it could be.

We are reading the Ramona books and watching Anne with an “E”. The level of conversations we are having are so cool. I’m thrilled by how MC in particular is articulating a lot of interesting layers of analysis. “So and so did x because of y. But I think z was part of it too. I think I would do a because of b and c.” I am being talked to full stream right now (MC woke up early) so I can’t give an example.

Oh man. Spectacles. Not testicles. Oh man. That’s a hilarious mishearing on MC’s part. (In Ramona she draws spectacles on her owl. Not testicles. hahahahahaha)

“Nobody likes a copycat” we are going to be processing this from the book for quite a while now.

Well my time alone is up. See you later, internet.

I am tired of repeating myself with my children. I went on a walk alone this morning because the idea of trying to herd the squirrels in my house was too much. I was going to explode. So I went by myself. I ran into a bunch of my retired buddies. I expressed my frustration with repeating myself. They both laughed their asses off at me and told me it’s totally normal.

Fine. It’s normal. It’s also normal for me to be fucking irritated.

Am I being “fair” in my frustration? Uhm… how many times a day do I have to repeat the same chore list that was established years ago in order to be “fair”? I’m going to fucking explode soon. I don’t know what that will mean. Mostly it is meaning that I am sneaking fucking ice cream at bed time because it is eat some ice cream, shatter my teeth from clenching (my dentist is so irritated with me), or scream at my kids.

I’m eating the fucking ice cream.

I’m so tired and sad. They expect so much cheerfulness and joy and work from me. On no sleep. While I’m begging them to do their share of the work from when I wake up till when I pass out.

I don’t have it to give right now. I feel like shit.

It’s still the fourth trimester and I’m completely exhausted because I have been doing more like a normal work schedule on top of nursing all night and day. Noah and the kids all promised me that they would help me have an easy fourth trimester. Instead we got to week 8 and everyone got done and now I’m kind of expected to be back to normal and I’m flipping out.

I’m tired. I’m angry. I hurt. And now I am going to take advantage of the only baby-free hour I am going to have today to go work on the yard. Because no one else is going to do it but everyone wants the money from selling the house.

I’m sad.

+ My wonderful family helped me with half an hour of yard work yesterday and that made visible progress towards my goals.

+ Even though the baby is tiny and larval and so needy it is hurting me I love her so much that I am mostly maintaining good cheer through her demands.

+ I am better at asking for help with the baby than I have ever been. When I am feeling frazzled I ask Noah or one of the big kids to help me and everyone jumps at the chance. I am feeling productive and like my body gets to rest from the physical strain of carrying a bowling ball around 24/7.

+ Noah’s cooking lately has been awesome.

+ The Educational Specialist told us she has been lying to us and telling us we need to turn in more than we need to because most clients don’t turn in how much she asks for. We are basically done with the school year in terms of quantity of produced materials and we have five weeks to go. This feels weird. I will keep having the kids move forward, we will just be moving into 3rd/5th grade a few weeks early. We finished all of the current stuff already except for two more science experiments. And we have five weeks.

+ Noah and I discussed a timeline yesterday for making the website/clearing out the house enough to have staged pictures taken for the website. We are shooting for October. I will schedule a fancy-ass photographer to come in and do the family portraits/fun house pictures and it’ll be worth the money.

+ We got the dirt moved that I needed moved and now I can get plants for the beds this week. I am doing starts this year because holy toast I don’t have the time/energy for seeds. But I want the yard to look spectacular for staged photos trying to get someone to buy it. Those beds need lush growth in them.

+ The van is full for a trip to Goodwill and Half Price Books today. I’m aiming for a trip a week for a while.

+ I can already get rid of two book cases with what I have packed/gotten rid of. I haven’t yet. But I will soon.

+ Ze bebé is getting huge. Her 3-6 month sleepers are getting tight and I’m about to start putting her in 9 month sleepers just so that diaper changes are easier. She hasn’t moved out of the 6 month onesies or dresses yet. Just in sleepers because she’s so dang tall. She will be 9 weeks tomorrow.

+ Our sweetness is smiling more and more. I think it is funny that a lot of her smiles happen on the changing table after she has a clean butt. I think she likes the wall in spring because she spends a lot of time smiling at the butterflies.

+ On the parenting forum I’m participating in a “stop yelling at your kids” challenge and whereas I’m not perfect or on a long streak or anything I’m doing pretty well. When I take into consideration that I am: a)barely sleeping b)in contact with a needy baby for 20+ hours of the day c) in a really lot of pain d)limiting pain meds like whoa e)limiting sugar f)and trying to go through allll the shit in our house…. I’m doing pretty well! Go me.

+ We are having a fucking fabulous time researching where we are going to move. We are looking at countries all over the world. This is going to be the adventure of a lifetime. My life is so fucking insanely good I can barely wrap my head around how fucking cool this is. I get to be an international nomad. That’s going to happen. In the next year.

+ I feel intense gratitude that I am still in the bay and still receiving wonderful body work from my excellent providers. That’s serious luck. I will miss them.

+ This is a little weird, but I’m grateful that since I appear to be allergic to alcohol… Noah is having some stuff go on that means he shouldn’t drink either. It means I get to look forward to a time of solidarity in enjoying silly juices together because we can’t have grown up drinks. We have to enjoy one another without inebriation. I like that.

-I dislike how much I am nagging everyone in my house. I feel like a mega bitch all the time. But gosh my kids would like to still have their entire “job” be playing and that’s not an option any more. It was appropriate when you were 5. Neither of you are 5 now.

-I am super bummed that I threw up so I needed to cancel a social visit with a friend I haven’t seen in months. That sucks. I was looking forward to talking to her.

-I would like to sleep through a night without waking up to side lie nurse. My shoulders hurt so bad. 10 months till I can night ween. *sob*

-I’m a little mad at the Educational Specialist because she has been pushing my kids for most of the year and in the last two visits she admitted that we are the only family in compliance and she feels a little bad that she shoved *us* as hard as she did because we were fully in lock-step-demand compliance. We only needed one item per subject per grading period and my kids have turned in two or three samples per subject every meeting all year. Oh. I’m not mad because we did the work, I’m mad because we had to fight over formatting so much work for turning in. We could have fought over 1/3 of the fucking formatting and that would have made my life better.

-I hurt. I’m minimally typing so most of the pain is coming from being a baby toting device. She’s heavy. And side lying nursing is the god damn pits.

People from the High Desert get it when I talk about running from heat and poverty in a way other people don’t. It’s a kind of being seen.

I need to only listen to country music I carefully curate. The radio isn’t ok for me anymore because the constant drumbeat of “alcohol, alcohol, alcohol” is bothering me.

I don’t actually think I need to run from all heat. But I can’t do dry heat. It makes me want to die.

The trip to SF with the baby and MC was really fun. I had a moment of being a butthead on the train because MC told me they lost their bag of toys and I was a little snippy. Then we figured out it was in the backpack and I apologized profusely. The visit with Sarah was one of the better ones I’ve had in a while. I had less anxiety and I think it was partially that I didn’t ask her to come to Fremont.

I’ve been seriously flipping out internally over how terrible I am for wanting people to come so far to see me.

Today we did a ritual with the family therapist about trying to move on from difficult feelings. I think that was a good thing.

I’m bouncing between feeling really happy and positive and certain that things are so good and are going to keep being good…. and then I’m like ONLY I’M PART OF THIS FAMILY SO OF COURSE I WILL WRECK IT ALL.

I cleaned the refrigerator finally. It’s been on my to do list since before I got pregnant. Whoops.

I have reduced my sugar but I’m not finding it possible to eliminate it. When the baby screams I go for sugar because it keeps me from crying or flipping out. I’m using sugar like an anti-anxiety drug. Basically I am eating my feelings. But I’m still having less than the previous month. Not as much less as I wish I was having.

It’s fucking hard being nice when my nerves feel like a cheese grater is going over them. Just the screaming is that hard and she really doesn’t scream much. But the sugar helps.

I am making small but noticeable progress towards culling the house. Hey! If you get a lot of mail shipments of small boxes (maybe from Amazon…) I would be SO GRATEFUL if you would collect them and give them to me. I am deliberately putting the books in small meticulously labeled boxes so that when they are in storage someone else can go through them.

It occurred to me that before we go through and do stuff to remodel the house… we should go ahead and put it up on a website. So that someone could potentially say, “Wait! I want to buy it and do that part of the remodeling!” To make that possible earlier (and to make every part of remodeling easier) I’m in hard-core cull mode and that’s working for me. If you have seen stuff in my house and coveted it in the past… now is the time to come shopping.

I’m not kidding. If you saw something you like ask fast. I’ve already taken like 10 bags and 5 boxes to get rid of and I’m moving along quickly. But at the rate I’m culling it will take six months. Who knows how quickly the thing you like will go….

Oh!!! I’m so thrilled! I asked the school across the street if they want me to donate stuff I’ve gotten for home schooling and they were thrilled. I’m excited about it being useful and easy to donate.

Ok, enough typing