In the morning we chuck our stuff into the van and drive home. We did it.

I was shaking my head watching the kids play at Legoland. A mom started up a conversation. She asked which kids were mine. We both dodged careening bodies. I pointed. My kids were currently fighting. She laughed and said, “Girls do that too? I thought that only happened when a boy was involved.”

I said, “Oh no. Fighting happens between siblings regardless of gender. We’ve had bloody lips and bruises.”

She looked shocked.

She asked why they fight. I am pretty sure she meant it in a rhetorical manner based on how it was phrased but I never let that stop me.

I said, “They fight because your family is your practice for having big feelings. It is the safest place you’ll ever have in your life if your parents do their job right. Kids need to have a safe place to learn how to have big feelings. That’s what siblings give them.”

She looked positively shocked.

Then she said, “I really needed to hear that. Your family is your safe place for having big feelings. Thank you for saying that to me.”

I said, “No problem! I’d say I’m here all the week but it’s a lie. We push out tomorrow. Good thing you caught me.” Then I grinned a Noah-worthy cocky grin.

She laughed.

Like, my kids today have alternated fighting, playing, (currently) giving one another massages, and vowing that they will never play with you again.

Right. Did I mention the massage going on now?

They crack me up.

They also frequently tell me that they are really glad they get have the life we have. They talk to school kids a lot. They don’t want to go to school. They want to learn. Eldest Child keeps saying, “I’ll go to school some day. Like college or something.” Youngest Child started out the trip pissed off about missing kindergarden. We had seriously negotiations about the possibility of a mid-year start.

I don’t see it as likely now. Yeah, they need some space away from one another… but this is working. We need to tweak some things. They need separate damn bedrooms. That’ll happen. In six days.

We split them up before leaving. That way I don’t have that task waiting for me. Yay!

Thank you past me. Your future self says good fucking work. Smart thinking and all that.

I’m having serious thoughts about my pantry. It is probably going away. I don’t know what I’m going to do for food storage. I need the room for books.

I’m going to have to get creative and interesting in how I store books. I’m really looking forward to this. This is my happy face. This is my happy place.

I haz all the booooooooooooooooks. I’ll write reviews and such. 😀

I want to go home and read books and have tea parties. I like my bubble. It is quite wonderful. Soon. Two more nights here. Four nights at Disneyland with Sarah (which will be rad).

I’m looking forward to the adult conversation.

Despite my early difficulty in adjusting to the plug in fridge it has been a lifesaver. I had to learn a few ways to adapt to it, but at this point I would never go on a long car trip without it again. I *love* the freedom it has afforded me in carrying food around. I’m glad I didn’t dump it.

An ice chest would be way more work and money. Yay mini-fridges that plug into the car!

I have to have a long extension cord (30′ I think) and an adapter so it can be used with regular electricity. I need a power strip so I can keep the fridge and my computer plugged in.

Priorities.

Southern California is a trip. Being here is weird. The trees look right. I know where things are. I know how things go. It feels like home and not home at the same time. I don’t ever want to live here again, but it feels weirdly like my soul thinks this is home.

My grandparents lived a few miles from where I am right now for decades. I never met them, but they were here. My extended bio-family is not that far. I’ll be driving past even more of them in 11 days.

I see shadows of my past everywhere. The hospital where Tommy recovered after his car accident is 17 miles away. 17 miles. I can run that far. (Ok, probably not given the shape I’m in… but I could with just a bit of training.)

It feels weird to be here with my kids this time. I feel like a lot of this journey has been about giving myself the chance to start again. I get a blank slate. I don’t have to be what I was.

But then I think about what I have ahead of me when I go home. I’m nervous about a bunch of stuff. I’m feeling paranoid and scared. I’ll deal with it. But I’m having big feelings. I want to work on scripts but I’m afraid of drama. I may attempt to write them off-line. Or maybe I’ll be an immature baby and put it on livejournal behind a filter.

I feel scared of being public about my feelings and processing. I don’t like it when I feel this way.

I don’t like when I feel like unless I hide I will be punished. I’m not saying that anyone else has said that. I’m saying I feel like that.

I’m looking forward to going home to my garage. And my candles. I can hide in my garage and burn candles and not talk to anyone. Life will be lovely. Folks will come visit if they feel like and not if they feel like.

Frankly, there is a part of me that isn’t sure how much effort I ought to devote to trying to fix problems. There is no fixing. I just don’t want to be hated. Sometimes it don’t matter what you want. You are going to be hated.

And sometimes you just won’t be thought of at all because you aren’t important anyway.

I’m ready to go home. I’m ready to hide from the world in my safe little bubble. My bubble is so god damn awesome.

I need to go to sleep but my mind is racing. I’m so tired. Today was quite an adventure. I had us packed up and ready to roll out at 8am. That’s pretty good from a camp site. But my van wouldn’t go into gear. Cue panic.

I call lots of people (including AAA–Thanks Pam!!!) to ask for advice. Is it the transmission? Is it an electrical problem? AHHHH!

By noon the car was fixed. It was a fuse. The dude who fixed it wouldn’t even let me pay him. He got the part from pick a part. Ok then.

We didn’t get out of Phoenix till 2pm with various other errands and sundries. I got into my hotel room at 10:30. (There was a time change too.)

I think I’m partially having trouble sleeping because in the past week or two we’ve hopped time zones and seen daylight savings change. So I feel weird. But it keeps getting earlier so I should feel tired. I don’t get it.

Ack. We are in San Diego. Tomorrow we are going to Legoland. Squee.

I would like to point out that I am recording the lowest points in my journal because I don’t want to gloss over them later and pretend they didn’t happen. Mostly we are getting along very well. Mostly we are having fun wonderful days full of playing and laughing. We are getting along pretty well.

And then the stress gets to me and I lose some piece of my control. I don’t want to deny later that the worst parts happened so I’ll write them down. I feel comfortable coming back later and filling in the gaps on the good parts. (Yes, this experience will probably turn into a book.)

I’m scared of not being honest about the worst of the worst. I don’t want to ever be in denial about that.

The kids and I had another intense conversation about boundaries, limits, abuse, and standing up for themselves. We talked about how it is better to hurt my feelings now by telling me to BACK OFF rather than hurt my feelings later when you have to stop having a relationship with me because I have a pattern of hurting you. I’d rather not hurt you. Sometimes I am a giant asshole and I will hurt you. I require feedback. I’m sorry that I do. I do.

This trip has been a wonderful experience and I’m so glad we did this. I will remember this forever as a positive time when we learned how to depend on one another to get stuff done. We take our sense of home with us. We haven’t gotten really impatient and pissy to go home till this last month. That’s pretty incredible. And the kids have never gotten mad and told me they are angry we came on the trip. They might get halfway through a similar sentence and I say, “Oh really. You are sorry we did ____ and ______ and _____ and” then they say, “Ok I’m glad we came. This has been incredible.”

I don’t want to bully them. I don’t want to “get away” with doing it because I’m not being watched. So I watch myself.

It’s the only way I know to try and be better.

Eldest Child had a fascinating question the other day about why is it hard to deal with a lot of these parenting issues. We had a conversation about how we are at a fascinating place in history where parenting ideals are radically changing and adapting is hard. There are always hard crunch points as populations change and grow. We talked about the evolution of beliefs from “You must hit your children to prove you love them” to “You must not hit your children to prove you love them” and why that is hard in terms of managing bodily impulses and frustration.

God I love talking to this kid. She blows my mind every day.

Youngest Child continues to alternate between being a ray of sunshine and having excessive temper. Goodness the intensity of that kid.

I’m told that as often as possible I should just be using “kid” as gender instead of boy or girl. It’s kind of clunky in language. But I’m trying.

I’m trying every day. Only 15 days till we go home. I won’t start frequent blogging right away. I seriously need to let my arms heal.

I am at the point where if my children refuse to eat, fine. We will sit still all day. Because if I do anything other than just sitting still I have to hear screaming, whining, and begging for sugar. They are pretty unwilling to eat anything other than sugar at this point and I feel like I’m about to lose my mind.

I guess I won’t see New Orleans.

Today we leave Vero Beach and drive to Marianna Florida. It’s just too far to get to Alabama in one day from here. This means we will drive through Alabama and not really stop. We are going to stay in New Orleans for 8 nights because that is less exhausting than drive/camp. I planned to drive/camp and… I’m so worn out. I just can’t. I feel guilty.

I sat still for almost three days in a row here. I’m so tired.

40 days until we get home.

On our last day in New Orleans we pick Noah up. Then we get to spend 13 days with him. That will be lovely.

Of course those 13 days will mostly be spent in Texas with his family. I’m feeling kind of numb to that right now. I’m nervous because I don’t have a lot of patience left. I’m kinda worried I will blow up at Noah’s family.

Depends on what they fucking say to me.

8 days in New Orleans, 12 days in Texas (in multiple cities seeing his whole family), 5 days in Disneyland (with Sarah!).

We are otherwise driving then staying put for a day until we get home. That’s the plan. I might change our destinations slightly so that we can have slightly longer drive days and camp for 3 nights in a row to rest in between driving.

My back is so pissed off at me. My arms hurt. I’m spending lots of time on Twitter because it doesn’t cause as much pain. I think it is funny that I thought I would be off Twitter for six months. Instead I’m not posting much here because my arms hurt so much and I don’t want to be recording all of my emotional ups and downs here.

It gets annoying to me.

Lots of big feelings. Mostly we are having a really good time. The down moments still don’t last that long but we are having harder and harder days. The kids are out of fucking patience. So much screaming lately over anything.

Mostly younger child. I think that kid is always going to have big, explosive feelings. Let’s go home and work on managing them in a lower stakes environment, ok? We can figure this out together.

The gender ambiguity is… different than it was months ago. Most days are she/her/girl. I honestly think that the wedding in New York with lots of women in suits was the big thing. There was all of a sudden the perception, “I don’t have to change genders to change how I look. Oh.”

I’m trying to still be tentative about my assumptions that I “know” what this kiddo will decide long-term. It’s not my body and it isn’t my life. I’m trying to just be accepting.

I’m being too hard on Eldest Child and I know it. I’ve been told that she isn’t going to tolerate me being this bossy once we get home. Heh. “Mom I know that you are being so controlling because we keep changing environments and they all have different expectations… but I’m done with this. It stops when we go home, ok?”

I don’t know how I ended up with a kid like this. I mean, yes she reflects the parenting she’s received but I honestly believe most kids just couldn’t be as sure as she is even with me as a parent. Youngest Child sure isn’t the same.

Sometimes I feel like I’m dealing with a very short 60 year old. She’s not 30 or 40. She’s… just… I don’t know… aware and resigned to the idosyncracies in life? She is accepting and yet completely sure of her limits and needs. I rarely see that in folks who are more in the middle of life. She’s just… I don’t even know. She’s seen it all. She rolls her eyes like a grandmother who is tired of your lip. She doesn’t put up with guff.

It cracks me up.

I was told that when we get back kids will not be doing chores for a full week. They are just done with being helpful. But they both say, “After that week you get a week off. That’s only fair.”

Holy crap y’all are so fucking nice.

It’s funny how they teach me how to teach every day. We’ve had dozens of philosophical conversations about doing dishes. “It’s not like taking a shower. You don’t just run the water over the dishes for a long time and call it good. Really, haven’t you noticed how in the shower we use soap and rub it on our bodies? Yeah. You have to *rub* the dishes with a soapy sponge/cloth or they don’t get clean. No, running enough water to flood the carpet doesn’t get the dishes clean. Bummer.”

I am… liking Disney resorts less as time goes by. Disneyland is different. The thing that is bothering me the most is how this is a closed community of upper middle class/rich people. Everyone here feels 100% confident that their politics are universal.

I am liking human beings less with every passing day.

Fuck your assumptions with a pogo stick.

I think it is really ridiculous that people feel they have the right to yell at me because I am “bailing on the system” by home schooling but when you mention private schools, “Well that’s different.”

You piece of shit hypocrite. So the very wealthy putting their kids in private school is fine. Poor people or lower middle class people providing an education on their own is destroying the moral fabric of our country? Shove your idiocy where the sun doesn’t shine.

The home schooling demographic is all over the place but usually not that common at the top-most rungs. Most very wealthy people would rather put their kids in private school than home school. Most very wealthy people don’t want to spend that kind of time with their kids because they have to work to maintain that lifestyle.

Did you know that ~25% of the schools in this country are private but they only serve 10% of the population of children? How in the hell can that kind of subsidizing not be more of a problem to the public system?!

Especially since many ostensibly home schooled kids are enrolled in charters and are still part of the funding cycle.

I don’t think it is going to be possible to convince me that caring about the larger system is more important than caring about the individual needs of my children. I brought these people into the world. I owe them. I don’t owe everyone else.

Also, I actually was a public school teacher. I don’t think you get to say I have never contributed in a positive way towards other peoples children.

I’m just not going to throw my kids under the bus. What does that mean? My kids would not be doing hours of homework. I would be organizing mass protests through the PTA. I’d be a problem. My kids would be punished for that.

That’s not fair either. And I sure as fuck am not going to teach them that they should waste years of their life not progressing because other people need to catch up. I’m not going to teach them to do busywork to appease a system that doesn’t care about them and doesn’t have their best interests at heart.

The current public school system is a mess. The push towards testing is really harmful. It creates all kinds of stupid anxiety and self-dislike. Children are convinced by their teachers that they can’t possibly be smart if they don’t follow along like good peons.

I don’t really want to raise people who believe that they are required to just follow bullshit orders. I want my children to think about what they should do and why rules exist.

The convenience of a teacher, principal, or political system should not be their highest priority.

Shit like this. My kids are not going to go to school to be subjected to the casual views of my broken culture. No fucking thanks.

Do you know what my kid says? “Well, I used to think I would marry ___ but now I think that is not a good idea. I want a partner who won’t hurt people. You know… he actually used to push me around too. I didn’t like it but I liked him. Maybe I shouldn’t let someone do that to me. I want a partner who is nice to me. I’ll keep looking.”

My children will not be raised in toxicity. They will not be enculturated to believe that abuse is the same thing as love even though that idea is absolutely pervasive in American culture.

No.

If people don’t treat you right, get the fuck away from them. There are too many fish in the sea.

Ok, kids are waking up. Time to push on.

I need to write down some good stuff so that in the future when I reread my archives (ha ha ha I’ll never do it) I can see that I wasn’t a whiny bitch full time.

Right this minute I’m sitting on my balcony overlooking a false as hell savanna. For all that it isn’t even vaguely a savanna, it’s pretty and the animals seem ok. I have mixed feelings about zoos because I’ve read too much about animals going crazy from lack of stimulation. I’m glad this is fairly large. 26 acres isn’t a horrifying box.

Good things: thank goodness that every aspect of checking into Disney is streamlined and assisted. Do you know why I shop inside the parks and pay way too much money for gifts for everyone I know? Because I know that paying $25 for a t-shirt helps Disney keep this many employees standing around ready to help. If they tried to charge less for food and merchandise they would not be able to float an army of employees.

The kids and I had a chat about my behavior today. I told them that I feel like I’m not being very nice lately. Eldest child said, “Mom it’s obvious you need a break and you are louder than we like you to be but you aren’t being mean. You just… aren’t being as nice as usual. It’s ok.”

Youngest child said, “It is hurting my feelings that you don’t want to snuggle. I wish that would change.”

On one hand that doesn’t sound happy or good so why am I recording it here? On the other hand… I always see me as being mean and evil. My children tell me that is not their experience of me. That’s good.

Oh my goodness. A herd of longhorn cattle (a specific breed I can’t remember the name of right this second–they are indigenous to Africa and we don’t see them much in the US) are playing and running around right under me! Ok, that’s ridiculously cool. They are frisking and nudging each other.

The kids and I have been having really interesting conversations lately. We talk about the patriarchy and feminism and biospheres and sustainability and conservation and responsibility.

My kids perceive themselves as people who have the power to influence the world around them in positive AND negative ways and they pay a lot of attention to their behavior because of this. I feel floored that they care.

I mean…. I’ve told them they must care. But I’ve said that to thousands of kids over the years. Do you know how many have believed me? I could count them on my fingers.

We have 53 days until we get home. That’s a good thing. We are almost 3/4 of the way through the trip. I just went and counted (because people keep asking me) and we will see 30 states on this trip. (Including our home state.) Given how far we are through it I know that for sure now.

That’s awesome.

In order they are: Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Utah, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, DC, Virginia,North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico & Arizona.

I originally had hopes for seeing a few more. I’m going to call it good though because we are crispy fried.

That’s a good thing. I’m respecting our limits.

Oh, good thing. I scheduled childcare for four nights this week. I’m already ecstatic. Want to know something better? I booked two massages for this week. I hurt so much.

Lucky bitch. Lucky bitch. Lucky bitch!

Right this second I feel like a spoiled, pampered, selfish princess. It’s kinda awesome. I’ll feel better after two massages this week. Hell yeah.

Good thing! I weighed myself this morning. Right at 160 lbs. Yup, that’s where I want to be.

Also good thing: Uhm, my pooping is doing better than average with fewer incidents of diarrhea. I’m happy about that. It isn’t expected. I can’t really figure out what is triggering what at this point. My eating is all over the place. But I have solid poop at least half the time right now. Well, “solid” is relative. It’s formed and banana-like. I don’t get hard poop. That’s just not part of my life. That’s ok though. I hear constipation sucks. My kids sometimes get too hard of poop and we have to consciously eat fruit for a bit. It doesn’t seem more pleasant than my diarrhea.

I haven’t been reading. It’s just not the year for it. I read a few books before we left home but I have only finished two Ramona books on the trip. Otherwise I’m reading the internet and that’s it. I just don’t have the attention span for more right now. It’s hard. I hate it when my brain is full like this. But, on the good side: I’ve watched several good shows on Netflix on this trip. Strange Empire, Call the Midwife, Grace and Frankie. They have more or less replaced West Wing as I’m traveling.

Good thing: my libido has returned. I miss Noah. I’m going to kill my Hitachi before I get home.

To build on that last one, I’ve occasionally looked at Craigslist Casual Encounters on this trip. That’s something I do for shits and giggles. It’s not like I can follow up. I have my kids. But it’s fun to look. You know what? I’m so grateful I am not still hunting.