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Just a fabulous experience

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I was really scared before the trip. I was sure I would wreck everything and no one would have fun. I would be too bitchy and by the end I wouldn’t have friends any more. I like it when my paranoia is proven wrong. Still friends.

My best moment came on the third day in the park. Miss 2 Year Old was pretty darn worn out. When we sat down to eat lunch her mommy gave her a water cup to share with Mr 5 Year Old. Miss 2 Y.O. thought that was the worst thing evar. Lots of crying and screaming. The parents of Miss 2 Y.O. were both kind of frustrated and fried at that point. It had been a long week already.

I scooped Miss 2 Y.O. up and walked outside with her. We had a lovely chat. We talked about how much sharing sucks sometimes. It doesn’t feel fair. We talked about how sometimes when you have big feelings you just have to use a big voice and when we have to use a big voice… ask a grown up to take you outside until you are done using your big voice. It’s ok to have big feelings and a big voice…. but we don’t do that inside the restaurant. We talked about how it wasn’t brother’s fault they have to share–that was Mommy’s decision. It isn’t very nice to scream at brother because you don’t like something Mommy decided. I told her that she probably made her brother sad and she had this dawning horror facial expression.

I fucking love two year olds. They wear their hearts on their sleeves.

When we went back inside she apologized to her brother for screaming and the rest of lunch went pretty well. She was ready for a nap after lunch, but that happens when you are two.

Helping people negotiate their big feelings feels so rewarding for me. I love it. That right there was my favorite moment of the trip. I felt proud of her, I felt proud of me, I felt grateful that I learned the words to help the process go more smoothly. When I get a moment like that right I feel like I should jump up and down and scream from joy. I did it! I did it! I did it! I DID IT!!!!!

Ahem. Which is to say–I get such moments wrong pretty often. Sometimes there isn’t a thing I can say to help it work out. Sometimes I don’t have the patience to walk a kid through the steps. When I do it right I feel waves of relief. Oh thank goodness I didn’t do everything wrong.

Overall I feel that Miss 2 Y.O. and Mr 5 Y.O. were better behaved in Disneyland than many older children and adults I have brought to the park. I was ridiculously impressed with their stamina given that they are not used to so much walking and physical stress. I can’t walk out of there saying, “We did _____ wrong.” Which is pretty perfect. Usually I spend trips being upset with myself for something I did wrong. I think we collectively nailed it. Even the grown ups did well. We got tired and kind of cranky by the end but we did well.

Yay all of us! I’m so excited when a group event goes well. I’m having more of those experiences and I feel so grateful. Frankly, this went about as well as the group camping trips have gone and those were my previous positive most-successful stories of group trips. I’m so excited. We had a trip together and we are still friends and they still want to do things with me in the future. I’m not in trouble. I’m not bad.

Oh thank goodness.

Part of what made it so awesome was, no one acted like they are too good to work. Not everyone had the ability to contribute in the same ways every day–people vary and all that–but everyone worked. The kids did stuff when they were asked to help. All four of the grown ups cheerfully took driving/cooking/cleaning shifts without acting like there are any genital configurations that indicate abnormal abilities in any of these areas. No one acted entitled. Everyone acted like they were grateful to be there.

I feel like I am having great success with teaching my family culture “We do not shirk”. If there is work to be done no one sits on their fucking ass to watch me fucking work I don’t fucking think so. As a result we were unpacked from the trip by 10am the next day. Then we can have a day to sit around on our screens being idle and resting. No resting until the work is done, yo.

I had such issues around everyone watching my aunt work when I was a kid. We will not be reenacting the Auntie-As-Martyr role. Nope. Auntie thought it was easier to just do things herself than to teach other people how to do things. As a result she got into her 70’s and she was still waiting hand and foot on her three disabled almost totally incompetent-at-caring-for-themselves adult children. Their various disabilities aren’t why they can’t care for themselves. They couldn’t care for themselves when they were healthy, either. The disabilities came long after the incompetence.

To this day I consider one of the greatest compliments I have ever received to be when a friend saw me at an event and told people to get out of my way because there is work to be done, “If there is work to be done Lenora/Krissy won’t be sitting down until it is done.” Now that’s the kind of recognition a service slave lives for. Made my heart beat faster. I’m viewed as a worker! That’s not really a high status occupation or anything. Shouldn’t be such an honor, but I’ve worked damn hard to be perceived as a worker. Heh. Everything is relative.

It will be a few years before I have the points to take these friends to Disneyland again. I can’t wait. It will be fun and wonderful. I’m super thrilled that I am going to get to see these kids age in the park. Lots of pictures were taken. Many will be taken next time too as a comparison.

Sometimes I feel weird about the fact that I’m getting more mercenary as I age. If someone won’t allow me to feel competent and ok when we hang out together… I need to spend time with people who will allow me to feel like I’m ok. I’m not perfect, I’m not ideal, I’m not a goddess or anything like that. But I need to have my friends think I’m ok and not bad. I still set people off so often. It feels very important for me to self-select into the company of people who think I am doing ok.

Which is probably why the vast majority of my relationships are with other traumatized people–they have more patience with me. People who don’t understand “why I’m freaking out” don’t have patience for the fact that I’m actually doing well these days. Really well.

I feel a little cocky. See! I can make it work such that no one leaves feeling annoyed with me! I just have to pick the audience really well.

I feel like in the past there were always some people in groups who were ok with me and I have a bad habit of only focusing on the people who I have issues with. If I have issues with one person out of eight I might remember the trip as a failure because I’m an idiot. I’m not saying that everyone else is a problem, I’m saying I have issues with having one emotion break out and completely dominate all of my other emotions. I’m saying it is hard for me to feel good about things that are a mixed bag. Not because it is anyone else’s fault.

I’m frankly shocked that I kept my emotions in line for a whole week such that my friends got a halo-effect from me being happy and thinking they were awesome. It’s as much about my emotional/chemical soup as it is about other peoples behavior. Which feels kind of awful. I know that when I’m having bad days I perceive other people negatively in ways they don’t earn. I feel pretty bad about that.

But right now, this last week I had a victory. It’s ok to celebrate victories. I wasn’t a horrible person. I wasn’t an asshole. I didn’t alienate people. They still want to be friends with me. We left talking about the next time we will do this together. (It’ll take a few years to save up points after the cross country trip.)

That’s a win.

I feel kind of twitchy about dropping as much money on the bi-costal pass as we did. I spent more than $3,000 on Disney passes. I feel like I’m about to choke. But that is all-access to both Disneyland parks and all five amusement parks at Disney World and the two water parks at Disney World. We will be in Florida for three weeks. We will have eight days in Disneyland over the year. That’s enough days that passes are paid for in terms of days in the park. Kind of insane. Not kind of–completely and totally overwhelmingly insane. Being rich is crazy.

I’m really enjoying my life. I feel so lucky.

This is so rad

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I spend a lot of time feeling like I do everything wrong and I am “bad”. When I was a kid I was told I was bad a lot–so that made sense then. I haven’t been told I was bad in a long time. It’s just not a current issue in my life, but the feeling still continues.

This trip to Disneyland is going phenomenally well. I’m having fun, looks like most everyone else is having fun too. I’m getting to have a lot of the kinds of interactions that specifically make me feel better about myself as a person. Even more specifically: I feel useful.

JFK said, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” I have spent most of my life feeling like I have very little to offer that is of any value at all. This feels tied in with the general devaluation of women, but on steroids. I’ve always noticed that the men in my life expected me to cook and clean for them like magic so I had skills they just weren’t valued.

Yesterday was our first day in the park. It was the very first day ever for the dad and two kids I’m with. The mom has been here before, but she hasn’t been in decades and she has fuzzy memories. This means that I’m getting to play tour guide. I feel like my sense of direction is paying for its keep.

Not only do I feel useful because I know where the physical locations of things are: I get to interpret the park. I get to teach this family about the Disneyland that I am obsessed with visiting. I get to talk about waiting in line. I get to talk about having patience and preferences and no we don’t have to do it all to have fun.

I got to talk about things like, “Yes eating protein is important… but today don’t get upset at your kids for carbo loading. Let’s talk about the physical strain we will be under for the next few days and why it is unusual for our bodies. Carbs are appropriate.”

I have worked so hard for this knowledge that seeing it be useful for not just me feels really wonderful.

Like waiting in lines. One of the things that I like most about myself is that I take the party with me wherever I go. “The whole point of Disneyland is you hurry up and wait. But while you wait, they play music because they want you to dance!” I play games with the kids in lines. I give kids snacks every 15-20 minutes (not a lot at a time… but I ensure that they will be in a good mood) and I insist on frequent sips of water even though I normally don’t micromanage that kind of thing. But like I tell my kids (and I told the other family today) “We will be walking several miles on concrete in the sun in a huge crowd–we need to adapt how we treat our bodies.”

I didn’t learn that till I was an adult and my friends had problems with me not taking care of myself very well. I learned from my friends what I should have been doing all along.

Shit dude, even I wear sun block in Disneyland. And a hat. Don’t bitch about your hat buddy, you want to have a nose when you are 70.

All of these stupid little things were so hard for me to learn. I feel really good about myself when I can turn around and verbally instruct someone into having a better/easier time than me.

My friend’s husband is not going to experience the miserable trip I’ve had several times. I don’t want to go through it again and he’s going to get dragged along on the benefit of my experience. Yes, I know you are feeling no pain at four hours in on the first day.

Trust me.

After the multi-hour nap in the afternoon he decided I was probably right about pacing. It wears you out more than you think at first.

The other couple got to have a date night last night, so I got to put their kids to bed. It was lovely. It gets more lovely with every visit we have. Bonus Boy asked to not sleep with my kids tonight (four in the bed was a bit crowded the other night) and he was sad that his sister didn’t want to sleep with just him so I offered to stay with him. He was really excited. He chattered my ear off for over half an hour. We talked about the visit to Disneyland and having preferences (he did not like the rides that were dark) and how to phrase those preferences so you get to have the most fun.

Things like: “I have learned that I don’t have fun on rides that are really dark. I want to ride things that are outside in the sunshine because those are fun for me.” We talked about what kinds of questions he should ask about rides before getting on them so he can decide what he wants to do. I told him, “You are not required to go on every ride here. You only have to go on the things that interest you. But you will have to figure out what interests you and you will have to say no in a polite way to things that do not interest you.” He practiced a few different ways of doing that. I told him about different rides in the park and asked him which sound interesting. It was a great conversation. It may be the most intense conversation we’ve ever had about something other than going to space.

I’m enjoying this trip so much. A big part of what I’m enjoying about it is introducing the kids and making it good for them. I have weird, mixed feelings about that. It feels a bit creepy.

In particular, I have known these kids for a long time. I pay a lot of attention to them and I try very hard to really see what kinds of accommodations they need. The IEP/504 training that was part of my teacher credentialing was my favorite part. How do you look at a child and decide what kind of scaffolding this child needs to learn best?

It feels creepy because it makes me think about my Owner, who only really enjoys introducing people to new things. He doesn’t enjoy doing things with people who already know what they are doing. It’s boring. He doesn’t want to follow other peoples preferences, he wants to inculcate people in his preferences.

It’s a lifestyle choice.

I want to like people at all stages of life, not just a stage where I get to control them. That’s pretty wacky. I think I do. I certainly didn’t go into preschool teaching or anything.

Good golly do I enjoy helping other people get the support they need to be successful. I live for that feeling. No, I don’t. That’s a lie. But I feel rejuvenated by that experience. Validated. All the years of reading and study and practice and failure have paid off.

Is Disneyland the real world? No. But the skills you learn in this safe environment are directly applicable to the real world. Making mistakes is safe here. It is like what school should be if it were done right. Mistakes are part of learning and you should be forgiven instead of shamed.

This environment is dripping with privilege. Only privileged people are allowed to fuck up. That is so sad. Poor people can’t afford to make a mistake in the process of learning. It isn’t fair.

Yesterday when I was feeling cranky Noah spent time with the kids while I got to be alone. This entire situation is dripping in privilege. It is smoothing over the rough spots and making everything easier and more fun.

Sometimes I am confronted with how wrong I am about people when I assume they are like me. I forget that anger is a privilege too. One afforded to women in different ways than men. Women and men are taught different appeasement strategies. I am sometimes so wrong in my assumptions about men. This trip is going well on a variety of levels. Because sometimes it is a very good thing to find out you are wrong. Then you can work on changing your beliefs.

For a little while I was afraid I should cancel this trip. I was convinced everything would blow up and it would be all screaming and fighting and awful. Of course my assumption is that I would be an irrational crazy bitch who exploded at something that is no big deal–I’m not saying stuff about other peoples behavior.

Instead I am asking for support and getting it. I am napping when I need to. I am saying, “I need to sit here and read and not have a conversation for a little while” instead of being mean. I am eating regularly and staying well hydrated. When I started feeling tired I didn’t keep my mouth shut. I husbanded my strength really well. We had a really great day from start to finish.

I anticipate napping again today given my sleeping schedule. Apparently I needed to wake up in the middle of the night and talk to Noah. Sorry, Noah. If you weren’t such a conversational studmuffin… I wouldn’t bug you so much. (Now that’s victim blaming.) (Noah will probably provide a link to the comic where I get the conversational studmuffin reference in comments. He’s like that.)

I write so much about my bad days, I like to make sure I record good ones too.

Disneyland Day 1

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I am so tired. Resting all last week (by ‘resting’ I mean ‘being sick’) actually probably means I’m less energetic/tough than I otherwise would be. I’m depleted.

It’s been a really fun day. I had moments of grump, but mostly I think that has been just fabulous. My moments of grump were always because of things that aren’t anyone’s fault. I’ll get over it.

It’s going really well.

Optimism may be foolish.

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Calli slept through today. She hasn’t really eaten. That’s what Shanna did on Sunday. Calli doesn’t have a fever, but she has the sniffles and she coughs once or twice an hour. (Which impacted her sleep last night, which I suspect is related to sleeping all day.) Yet I spent the day packing for Disneyland. I may be an idiot. I should probably cancel. Only Shanna is back to 100% and she’s bouncing off the walls with energy and has been for days.

The internet tells me that sniffles aren’t a reason for quarantine. Not after that many days of being mostly up and ok. Fever is a continued quarantine. I think I’m going to bring hand sanitizer even though normally I don’t use it at all. I feel guilty already.

No, I don’t think we have the measles. I think we had some kind of flu/cold and it has been festive. I’m feeling very guilty about bringing more germs into the petri dish.

If they still had fevers I would call it now. With just a runny nose and coughing and tired… no. She’ll be well before Monday and we aren’t going into the park till Tuesday. She will be fine and fucking pissed if we are at home.

Other than worrying a lot about the ethics of bringing a cold to Disneyland I’m having a good day. I’ve done a lot of puttering/cleaning and I’m happy about the improved status of my dresser. A week of staying home for illness does a lot to reset my spoon quota. Even though I’m down 12 hours of baby sitting this week. The kids have been very self-contained during illness.

I arranged cat sitting/plant care with our dear baby sitter. She’s happy to not go two weeks without getting paid at all. What a crappy sentence.

I have put in calls to the city trying to figure out why we need a decorative addition to the outside of our house if we remodel. The call back told me to call a different number. I left more messages. If we need to do that then we should talk to the contracting company about things to take off their to-do list. We’ll just have to wait on some pieces of it. We can’t just let the price climb higher and higher. Time to negotiate.

Ugh. Just thinking about it makes my stomach hurt.

Ok. I won’t think about that until I hear back from the city and I’m back from Disneyland. Distraction. Maybe I’ll go read. I’m mostly packed. I’ve even mostly loaded the van. I put a bunch in the skybox before the rain started because I’m a Californian and I melt in the rain. Have to get work done before it starts.

I’m having a good day. And Pam is on her way over after more than a month off. I think she’s a bit nutty for coming to our sick house.

Crossing fingers.

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I think the kids will be ok for Disneyland. They are acting ok. They have completely dismantled the normal state of furniture in the living room to build a fort by 7am. They don’t do that when they are sick.

Yesterday I found out that one of my good friends is going to be gone as long as I will this year. And our trips only somewhat overlap. So we will be in different places for the majority of the year. Feels. It’ll be ok–but I’ll miss her. It was hard enough thinking I got 5 months off. Now that I know I get 8 months off… Bummer. Happens though.

I feel like the house remodel will be a strange gift. I’m going to have a very different social load. Most everyone I know wants to be entirely *out* of the house for months while a remodel is happening. I want to be home. I want to answer questions and micromanage shit and drive the poor contractors crazy. We will probably spend more time than usual hiding in the back yard while they work in the house/in the front yard.

I’m pretty sure I know where I’m going to move the flowering maple and the reading circle. I’ll do that when I get back from Disneyland. Maybe I’ll start digging the hole today. It’s going to be a lot of work.

I really love my back yard now. No, I don’t want to cover it in concrete to make it “safer”. (I really don’t understand how pouring concrete under my swing set would make it “safer” but people have weird views. The contractor asked us if we wanted him to fix up the back yard. I all but screeched “NOOOO”.)

I appreciate my life. I’m glad to be here. Right this minute I feel very little anxiety, just pressure about how much work is coming up. I can live with “pressure” instead of anxiety.

Two days of plans gone.

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Shanna seems to be mostly better. Her fever is over, she’s eating, and she’s drinking a lot more without complaining. Yay! Calli is still a little warm, but she never got as sick. She’s eating and drinking well. *phew*

If they are basically healthy by Thursday I won’t feel guilty about going to Disneyland. So today we are once again spending the day sitting on our butts and resting. Seems prudent.

I’m told yesterday’s post is hard to follow. Fair enough. I am self-referential and stream of conscious. I think you have to be on the train a while before it makes sense. I’ve read other writers like that. The first few pieces are confusing and hard to follow until you really understand the rhythm.

I think it is funny that I no longer take such feedback as criticism or as evidence that I suck as a writer. Nope. Some of my pieces are genuinely hard to understand, yesterday just took serious thinking. No, I’m not someone you can skim half-heartedly and get the gist. Nope nope nope.

My goal in life is not to appeal to the lowest common reading level. Lots of other people write there, I don’t have to. (I’m glad other people do! It’s important.) My goal is to represent what I think. That means it isn’t always going to be simple or linear. I don’t think that way.

It is kind of funny how my goals as a writer are not for money or fame. It is to make people like me more comprehensible to people who are not much like me. I’m told regularly that I’m pretty good at doing that. Yes, I am confusing and hard to follow sometimes. I have a habit of directly addressing one person in one paragraph and then directly addressing someone completely different in the next paragraph and that is totally confusing.

Yup, that’s how I think. I’m trying to represent my thinking. Frankly, I’m amazed I have as many faithful readers as I have.

Having three days in a row of sitting around and resting has been lovely. Really it was four days of sitting around plus a 5k on the first day. But I sat the whole rest of the day.

(Jumping topics to Disneyland trip.) I’m trying to get my anxiety down low enough that I won’t freak out when someone else’s kids scream and I can’t get away from them for a few days. I love and adore these children with all my heart. I don’t begrudge them the screaming. I think they are behaving in a way that is unfortunately appropriate for them giving all of the factors in their little bodies. I’m not upset with them. But I have to be calm and accepting and the fucking grown up. I’m really shitty at being the grown up sometimes. I’m kind of an immature brat.

I understand the impulse that leads to shaken baby syndrome. I understand why parents beat their children. I understand why foster children are abused so much by their non-birth parents. It is much fucking harder to be patient with children I did not give birth to and I am not that patient with the kids I did give birth to.

But I’ve babysat these kids before for weekends and had a lovely time. We can get through. We will manage. It will even be fun. I just need to focus on managing my anxiety so I can be support in the ways they need me to be.

Yes, they will have their parents there and their parents will mostly handle things… frankly that makes it harder for me to manage my anxiety. When I’m the one who has to handle it and suck it up about my feelings… that’s easier. When I have to mask my feelings and remain inactive… I suck. I suck. I suck. I have such a hard time not flipping out.

But I’m going to do it! I will! Damnit. They will have a lovely introduction to Disneyland and I won’t be a raging bitch and it will be great. God damnit. If I have to fucking force this to happen through sheer force of personality.

I will not interfere with how other people parent. I will not lose my temper because other people are having feelings at a volume that is hard for me. I will medicate on a schedule so that I can be calm and accepting of other people having ups and downs. I have to be placid. I’m so shitty at placid. But! I have apathy enhancement medication! Apathy can be had for a price. Oh yes, it can.

Some day these kids will be fully verbal and the screaming will be less frequent. At least that is how it is working with my kids, I cross my fingers. Until then, I want to demonstrate that I can be safe when other people are having big, overwhelming feelings. When I am the adult in charge of them I can hug them and walk with them until they calm down and we do ok. I will find a way to be an ok presence in the room without being the adult in charge. God fucking damnit I will find a way.

A few years back the four of us went up to visit a friend I don’t see very often. I’ve only seen her in person half a dozen times. She has an autistic son–at that point I think he was around 13. When I walked into the room I was feeling cranky about something and her son started visibly flinching away from me. In a light, upbeat voice my friend told me that her son is really sensitive to people being angry and it would be nice if I could kind of reign it in.

I really struggled that day. Being told that me being angry and silent wasn’t ok… that I was still a problem… that was hard. Frankly it may be part of why I just don’t go to her house any more.

It’s true. I’m a problem even when I’m silent and angry. People notice and get upset and feel threatened and scared. I’m so sorry.

This feels unfair all the way around. Other people have the right to not feel threatened by me and I have the right to get angry about things.

It’s a lot easier to take all my anger and shove it in a box to keep it away from a 2 year old who is having a bad day than it is to keep it away from just about anyone else. I can (and have) successfully adapted for these particular kids in the past. I don’t know how I will manage to continue to put them in the “safe zone” as they get older. I’m so bad about partitioning only a few classes of people. I’m only willing to be protective of people who I perceive as deserving my protection in ANY case. I’m not very willing to shield people from my anger if they are otherwise not someone I would take care of.

I was thinking the other day about a friend of mine. She’s kind of sensitive after a life of people treating her pretty badly. Other people taking out their bad day on her is a serious problem for her. She needs to be treated how SHE needs to be treated regardless of how other people are doing. I totally get that. I think I have an interesting time thinking about her because I am projecting onto her. I certainly am the same way. I need people to learn what things are and are not ok to say to ME.

I’m a complete asshole about wanting to treat people however I’m in the mood to treat people today while simultaneously expecting other people to be rigid and predictable and perfect in how they treat me.

Once in a while someone tells me I’m “so brave” because I am “such an individual”. I always feel very confused by those statements. I am who and what I am. I did not become this on purpose. I didn’t start out with a goal of being a weird asshole. It just… happened. I’m not much like most other people I know.

That is not a negative statement about the people I know. We are all shaped by our experiences. I’ve had an unusual array of experiences.

I believe these children deserve to have me be nice to them as much as my children do. I think they deserve this because they have never done a thing in the world to try to hurt people. They are as innocent as the day is long. I am helping to shape their experience of the world. If I am loving and gentle and patient… they will learn how to be too. If I am impatient or a jerk just because they have feelings… they learn that they are an inconvenience and that they aren’t loved enough to deserve space for their feelings.

Really, I think all kids deserve me being nice to them. The trouble is coming up with the juice to be that nice. I’m really not that nice of a person. I think pretty much most adults deserve me being nice to them. Holy crap the sponge is dry. No more niceness soaked in to squeeze out and share. Sorry! No one filled me up.

I feel like I pass along the niceness I received from Miss Leslie. She was the yard-duty lady at one of the elementary schools I went to. She is the one who brought me to church and taught me a gentle, kind love for Jesus. She showed me how children should be treated. If I think back to the people who interacted with me during my childhood she stands out head and shoulders above everyone else in kindness.

It may be why I am so nasty when atheists attack Christians. Miss Leslie loved me and was so nice to me.

For later inspiration for older kids I go with Jenny’s mom. Jenny’s mom was a middle school teacher and she had an ability to deal with mouthy adolescents that really worked well with me. Ok, I have since learned she can be very wrong about some things. She doesn’t have accurate information on breastfeeding for starters. I feel like she was a very positive influence on my ability to be a teacher, though.

This is what I mean when I say I pick models and I try to be like them.

I feel like I should go meet a whole bunch of parents of autistic kids. There are a lot of autistic kids in my life. Several dozen if you look around widely enough. My friends are the parents of the very young ones. I need to talk to the parents of the teenagers. I’m not the parent of an autistic kid, but the parents of autistic teenagers can probably give me good advice about how to be an appropriate supportive person without overstepping boundaries.

Those boundaries are super important. And I suck at finding them on my own.

Work in progress. That is what I am. A work in progress. I’m trying. I am improving. Ironically it will be 8 weeks in between therapy sessions this time. I’m feeling more “ok” than I usually do with more frequent therapy visits. Hm. That’s funny.

Sick house

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Shanna slept through yesterday. Calli woke up with a fever. I feel hot. We leave for Disneyland in 7 days, which means I am semi-amusedly looking for spots. 4 days till we would be able to tell. Whee? Sore throats, minor coughing. Shanna is just not eating and that bothers me. I’m forcing liquids into her though. I’m bribing with sugar-water. (Juice, ginger ale, Sprite, Izze sodas–I bought one of everything that had no hfcs. Hfcs triggers diarrhea so it doesn’t come into my house.) Sugar water just doesn’t come into our house that much so the kids are more willing than usual to drink.

I’ve spent a lot of the morning reading vaccine stuff. Because there is a big outbreak and life is like that.

It is weird to me to read this stuff. I don’t like the pro-vaccine lobby and I have barely less respect for the anti-vaccine lobby. I think they are both hysterical.

I’d like to stop thinking about this topic but I probably won’t until it is out of the news.

I feel very very very very angry when people say that a choice that is not theirs is a “no brainer”. Not your call. You don’t get to decide that for other people. You have no idea how many factors go into this decision and your response is dismissive, elitist, and obnoxious.

I go back and forth between feeling a lot of sympathy for people who have immune compromised children and thinking, “You expect the whole world to accommodate your kid. Good luck with that.”

Should unvaccinated infants *be* in places like Disneyland where there are routinely international travelers who may or may not be vaccinated? Is it really a smart choice? (I took my kid when she was 6 weeks old and completely unvaccinated so this is a question that isn’t just abstract.)

We can’t make the world safe and I feel like that is what the pro-vaccine lobby wants.

We freak the fuck out about controlling everyone near us so we can reduce “risk” but we get in our cars every day and don’t think about the fact that the car is the fifth most likely way we will die.

But man listening to anti-vaxxers talk about how “healthy diet” is the panacea to stop all illness… turns my stomach. If that were true, we wouldn’t have had disease pre-junk food, and pre-vaccines. And we did. So I don’t believe that eating healthy is the whole solution. Yes, it helps. It isn’t the whole story.

It is kind of funny to me that I put a lot of time, effort, and energy into promoting the idea that people get to make their own choices. I’m not sure why I care so much.

My kids have a pediatrician appointment coming up. Time for a check up. Time for more vaccines. Calli will get her last MMR (kind of ironic that it will happen after the trip to Disneyland given the current hysteria in the news) and Shanna says she wants chicken pox. I haven’t asked Calli very carefully how she feels about CP but she may or may not decide to get it the same day as her sister.

It is their body and their choice. I made the choices when they were too small and they aren’t so small any more. They have opinions. They don’t want to get sick. They want to take steps to prevent suffering.

Ok. Yes, ma’am. It is your body. I will treat it how you tell me to treat it. I did my best before I had your directions. I’m trying. I’m going to make decisions you don’t like. I’m trying to err on the side of not doing something if you can do it later. Kinda like you can never take back a circumcision. You can never unvaccinate someone. I’m not going to rush into doing things to your body unless I have a very good reason. Hell, I won’t pierce my kids’ ears until they are old enough to be responsible for the holes.

Your body. Your decision.

Which means that I could let my selfish, ignorant children make decisions that expose lots of other people to bad things.

Yeah.

I have really mixed feelings about Make A Wish sending sick kids to places like Disneyland and Disney World. Non-vaxxers go. Who should get banned for the good of the other side? The vaccination is a choice or not. No one has the choice about whether or not you have cancer. Should schools be allowed to ban kids? They are sending home non-vaccinated kids right now. I can’t say they are in the wrong.

People are going to die. I spend almost much time and energy worrying about how evil I am for giving my kids peanut butter as I spend worrying about whether we are vaccinated enough to protect other people.

I still won’t get the flu vaccine. The news reports about how, “Well… we picked the wrong strains and people are getting sick like crazy… but you should vaccinate anyway!” No. No. No. No. No. No.

Ok, it might decrease how many days I’m sick. I’d rather stay home an extra day. Yes, that’s a privileged position. I also feel incredibly uncomfortable with the fact that everyone is admonished to start anti-virals the minute they know they have the flu. HAVE ANTIBIOTICS TAUGHT US NOTHING?!?!?!?!

Also: I’m incredibly frustrated that almost every news report conflates “people who were one month late on one vaccine one time” with “non-vaccinated”. Because under-vaccination is just as big of a deal as not vaccinating at all.

I have a bone to pick with most of my atheist/science leaning friends. Scientific studies about vaccines tell us about what has already happened. They are not directions for the future. Many of my friends read scientific studies and say, “Now we know what to do!” No. Now you know what *is*. Science does not tell people what to do. That’s ethics. That’s philosophy. That’s… all kinds of other shit. That is fucking religion.

Science is about the process. Science is not about telling people what to do. That’s policy.

I can understand why you want to have your science influence policy… but science is not policy. There is not a direct, “Well if you look at the numbers it is a no-brainer.”

Actually… people are more complicated than that. There are always factors you aren’t considering because real life is not science. It is more complicated than a clinical trial.

Do I think that people who deny scientific results are making good choices? Sometimes. I’ve thought the salt hysteria was stupid for most of my life. I eat a lot of salt. Now scientists are abashedly telling me that it is ok even though for most of my life AVOID SALT was the mantra. Science changes its opinions pretty dramatically over time.

Before you say vaccines are “proven safe” I will say that formulas are taken off the market every few years because of problems. My children were NOT given the same vaccines I was given. They are rather different. To me, that means that the people who were worried about the vaccines… probably had some points. Are their points important enough to not vaccinate in comparison to the benefits of herd immunity?

We are *totally* talking religion and not science.

I’m ok with people believing in vaccines as their religion. That is completely ok with me. I’ll pat you on the head and say “Yay!” the same way I do with my Christians and my Buddhists and my Hindus and my Muslims. I’m super-thrilled you have a rule book for how to be a good person. Let me tell you that is great.

Don’t fucking tell me I have to follow your religion.

I vaccinate. But I am not a Pro-Vaxxer. It is not my religion. Just like I don’t identify as being a dancer. I just love to dance. I will dance all day long if I’m not tied up (and I can still dance while tied up–I’ve proven that lots and lots) but I’m not a dancer.

I’m not a Pro-Vaxxer.

I do not believe that my way is the One Twue Way and I do not get to force other people to be like me. People make decisions for very complicated reasons. Maybe other people think fear plays too big of a part in not vaccinating and I think fear plays too big of a part in vaccinating. We are all fearful. We are just different in how much I think I should get to control millions of other people over my fear.

I have a lot of fears. I’m aware that many of them aren’t rational. I think that many of them are perfectly rational and appropriate. Neither the rational nor the irrational fears are ones I should use as justifications for controlling millions of people.

But what about the poor children who are suffering from terrible diseases who can’t be vaccinated?

Life really sucks. It is sometimes way more unfair for some people than others. That is true. I weep for you. (I’m not being sarcastic. I spend time in my garage crying over the pain of people I’ll never meet. I’m kind of weird.) I will not force millions of people to make a choice they don’t want to make for you.

Wait… isn’t that what most social justice issues are framed as? I’m trying to think of how to frame it and I can’t come up with a good parallel.

Mostly though… no I don’t think vaccination is a social justice issue. Vaccination for other peoples benefit isn’t like anti-racist work. It isn’t like eliminating rape jokes from your vocabulary. I think it is a personal and a moral issue. I don’t think the government has the right to force people to be injected many dozens of times in their lives for the good of other people the same way I don’t believe in eugenics. Nope. This is not like gay marriage or inter-racial marriage or even immigration rights because those things are about not interfering in other people getting to have their lives. Vaccination is forcing someone to DO something.

Someone compared it to check ups for cars in Germany. I would say that driving a car is not a right. If you want to participate in the society of drivers, the society itself has a right to gate keeping. Society telling me I have to vaccinate or… what… exactly… is different. Right now there is no punishment. Let’s see when that changes.

We are want millions of people to go pay a doctor to inject them for the good of other people.

Doesn’t that sound like more something that should come from religion? You have a moral duty as a citizen to care about the health of your neighbors. It isn’t just about YOUR health–the good nutrition does nothing to help your poor neighbors. Your individual health isn’t the only health that matters, what about the people who will die in the next nasty epidemic unless they are shielded?

Does the whole fucking community really get dragged into protecting the most vulnerable whether they like it or not? That’s NOT SCIENCE. Not science. Not science. Not science.

I’m ok with people saying loudly and unequivocally that vaccination is the ONLY moral choice for all people who are healthy enough to vaccinate. I don’t have one ounce of complaint with that statement. Not ONE. THAT IS COMPLETELY OK. You can be a judgmental prick all day long and I will applaud your efforts towards a cause you truly care about. Knock yourself out.

But there are vaccine reactions. I know real live people who have had them. Fuck you if you don’t believe me. I knew a kid who got fucking polio from the vaccine. So don’t act like nothing ever happens. (Yes, I understand we no longer use live virus, yada yada–stuff happens and people try to say it “never” happens and yes it does.) I’ve known lots of other people with other reactions. I go hunting for fringe cases. That’s kind of the basis of most of my friendships. “Hey! You have this super weird experience in you background that other people will deny even happened because it threatens their view of reality. Tribe!!!”

But I know people who have had family members die from various vaccine preventable diseases too. Some of them are rabidly pro-vaccine and others still feel it should be a personal choice.

People get to pick how they die. And whether we like it or not… parents have a say in how safe their kids are kept for 18 years. That is how our country works right now. We would not like the alternative of kids being kept safe from their parents. It would be bad. I know a lot of really good women who are terrified CPS is going to come if they ever yell at their kids. This is not good for families either.

I should have been kept safe from my family. I went through absurdly extreme abuse. But… I have no idea what safeguards should exist to protect kids like me. Kids should have an easier time asking for help in their communities. People need to believe the kids who do come forward. We need to not ignore the kids we see who are struggling with abuse.

Kids should be allowed to ignore their anti-vax parents and get vaccinated if they want to long before they are 18. It should be a medically appropriate decision for a kid to make at 12.

Really, it is more like smoking. Only it isn’t. We don’t have the legal right to force people to never smoke. We just have the right to keep smoking out of most public buildings. With vaccines, you don’t have the choice to protect other people sometimes while still choosing for yourself other times. It is all or nothing.

I don’t think we should force. I really don’t. That’s bad juju. I think shaming people who make choices we don’t agree with will close the door to future conversations.

Isn’t this what people complain about with feminism? That feminists are too shrill and slam the door? The pro-vaccine lobby is too shrill. Instead of shaming and belittling people who make fringe choices we need to figure out how to get them to feel like they are part of an in-group with people who are vulnerable and need to be protected.

We don’t need to tell them how stupid and awful and selfish and bad they are. That has never improved a damn thing.

Do I really believe that everyone should vaccinate?

No. I don’t. I think that if you choose not to vaccinate then you need to voluntarily quarantine yourself at the slightest chance of illness though. If you want to go back to the old days, go back to the old days. People didn’t used to go to fucking Disneyland with the fucking measles. (Yes, I know you are infectious before you can see spots. Usually you have a fever.)

What am I going to do if we aren’t better by Monday? Am I going to go if we are still running fevers? Am I going to be one more selfish asshole going to Disney this year?

No. Probably not. I will probably tell my friend to start looking for possible people to go with them if we are sick on Thursday. I care about ethics. I do think about the Make A Wish kids getting to go to Disneyland.

I couldn’t live with myself if I hurt someone just because I wanted to go on “It’s a Small World”. What a selfish piece of shit.

And so, we all get to make our own choices. I do believe people get to be selfish. Not everyone has my options. Not everyone has the privilege to say, “Meh, if I miss this trip I’m still spending 3.5 weeks at Disney this year.”

Would I be so magnanimous if this was my only chance in a five year period? Man. I might wear a face mask and gloves. I wouldn’t go bare faced and cough on people. But probably… I would stay home. I’m like that. I’ve missed other big trips. I miss adventures because I get sick. I don’t do the walking wounded thing. I probably could but I see it as a problem. It ignores your impact on the people around you.

So. That’s my more than 140 character feelings about vaccines. Since I was asked.

 

Modeling

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I had a thought about things being easier with former-students than friends. People tell me that I sound like I think I am better than people–because I’m such a bossy know it all. Mostly I have massive inferiority complex issues. I think that other people are “better” than me: smarter, more deserving of love, kinder… etc. There aren’t that many people I feel “superior” to and I tend not to be friends with them. Mostly I maintain relationships with people because I look up to them. If I keep coming back to your house year after year… it’s not because I think I’m better than you.

This idiotic feeling that everyone is better than me makes me brittle and pissy. I get defensive. I get bitchy. I get offensive.

Former students usually feel like they are more deserving of love than me, but we have an established dynamic where me defaulting to sounding like a bossy know it all as a coping mechanism is acceptable. With my friends… I’m constantly anxious that I am going to say something that sounds like, “You should do _____” when I don’t have the right to do so. I do not have the right to boss my friends even if I have ideas about what I would do in their position. My advice should not come unsolicited.

I’m such a raging asshole about receiving unsolicited advice that I’m trying to be better about giving it. But holy fucking shit it increases my anxiety.

In the past seven days we have spent time around more than a dozen different families. As I watch my friends interact with their children, I often have intense “I could not handle ____” feelings. Sometimes I think in detail about how I would handle things differently. Not because I think that parent is wrong for doing what they are doing. Every parent has different tools in their tool box and every kid needs different kinds of parenting.

I sound like my way is the One Twue Way but it really isn’t. There are as many paths as there are people walking.

I’m just finding that I’m having problems because for most of my life I have tried to alter my behavior through picking people who do something in a way I admire and trying to copy them. This is working increasingly poorly as I get older. There aren’t models for who I want to be. That’s not a slam on anyone I know–y’all are lovely people. But I can’t do what you are doing. Not because it is bad or doesn’t deserve to be done… I can’t do it.

That whole “Be Yourself” thing. It’s shitty.

Some days I have a hard time standing next to people as they parent their kids because I am a buttinski. (That is a word that has no real meaning so-far-as-I-know but my mother said it a lot. Someone who likes to butt in to other peoples business.) Not because they are doing it “wrong” but because I have a hard time standing idly by when there seems to be A Problem. I think that is part of why other peoples kids screaming is harder for me to hear than my kids screaming. When my kids scream I generally have things I am allowed to do to try and fix the situation. Even if I will fail at fixing the situation… I am allowed to do something and that soothes my anxiety. With someone else’s kid… there is nothing I can do and my internal system gets hysterical. Can’t Fix Problem. GAAAAAAAH

I have to live with this discomfort. Other people are behaving totally appropriately. But it’s hard.

I feel like this is tied in with the food stuff somehow. Not sure if I’m saying that right now because I want to look for a theme or because there is a link.

Interference means love. Loving people means inserting yourself into their lives and helping them with their needs. Codependence. Feeding people is love. Sugar is love.

I want a mother figure to come in and boss me and tell me how to fix what is going wrong with my body because the person is able to observe me from the outside and make judgments about what is and isn’t good for me. Even though I react like you have thrown gasoline on me when people offer up their guidance. I’m such a fucking asshole.

I want to be part of an extended “chosen family” network and I want to be part of the lives of a lot of the children I know right now over a long period of time. I want to see them grow up. I want to know them for 20 years and that means not pissing off their parents too much. Cue anxiety explosion.

I piss people off. The more afraid I am of pissing people off and pushing them away the more anxious I am around them and the more likely I am to push them away. Self-fulfilling prophesies.

It also occurs to me that I probably had an easier time at dinner with my students because I a)had finally taken some medication right before picking Noah up (takes a while to hit my system so I don’t feel guilty about driving in the 30 minutes or so after popping pills–don’t feel them for 2+ hours) and b) had some rum with dinner. Both did a lot to level out my anxiety. That probably actually accounted for most of the euphoric difference from earlier in the day. Ahem.

Yeah, I’ve been drinking a little more. I haven’t recorded every drink. I’m still not averaging more than one or two in a week, but I haven’t written every single one down and that makes me feel like I’m hiding something.

Shame. Guilt. Bad. So very bad.

This round of middle-of-the-night-blather brought to you by, “I sure wish my kid turned the bathroom light off in the middle of the night after peeing because it wakes me the fuck up.” Although I do not complain loudly or fervently because I am SO HAPPY that she isn’t having accidents. But my sleep cycle is fucked. Good thing tomorrow has nothing planned.

Oh! The kids completed their first 5k. By which I mean Calli was carried for at least 1k and Shanna was probably carried for .5k. The race was kind of a logistical nightmare. They started us more than 40 minutes late so it was just about completely dark before the “day” wave started running. They didn’t light the course and it was super uneven and would change from gravel to dirt to huge random pits that you had to carefully skirt to avoid injury… it seemed like a liability waiting to happen. I wonder if there were injuries.

Despite some bickering with kids mid-race I had fun. It felt like a nice little bit of exercise to me. We did it with friends who were wearing rather heavy children on their backs. That takes an impressive amount of strength. Yay everyone!

In the past week I’ve been told about five pregnancies and two miscarriages. It must be that time of life. My heart aches for the losses my friends are suffering. It is hard living with joy and sorrow at the same time… but that seems to be the essence of life.

Almost out of battery and I’m too wussy to sit in the garage right now while my computer charges. Hopefully I can fall asleep again soon.

I’m kinda dumb.

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Today was just… not well planned. I did too much. That was stupid of me. Let’s start with the premise that I’m down 8 hours of babysitting over the last week–sitter has been sick. That means I’m way higher anxiety/stress than most weeks.

Today started at 4:30am. When Shanna woke up. I kept her from waking up Noah and Calli but it was a near thing. (We actually had a lovely chat.)

We left the house at 8 to drive to Mountain View. Then we drove to Burlingame. Then we went back to Mountain View. Then we drove to Campbell. Then we went back to fucking Mountain View. Then we drove to south San Jose, like where 85/87 hook up. (So about 145 miles. Most of it in bumper to bumper traffic.)

We spent a while scouting the hotel for the My Little Pony conference Easter egg hunt we are working on. (I’ve never been there and it seemed like a good idea to look around. I’m glad we went–we had a great time playing in the hotel.)

Then we went to a craft store to get stuff for Valentines. In the store Calli spent a lot of time crying and yelling at me that I am so mean because I never buy her anything. The irony of a full cart completely escaped her.

Then we went to a comic book store because we had time to kill before we picked up Noah for work and the kids love spending their allowance that way. Calli spent a fair bit of time crying and yelling at me because I am so mean because I helped her pay with exact change so she wasn’t handed change back from the cashier. Clearly I should be shot. (She didn’t tell me that she wanted change till we were outside.)

Then we went to lunch with Noah. That actually went fine.

Then we drove first to one Sports Basement (where I have gone before to register for races) and I discovered…. wrong fucking store. I was kind of far from where I needed to be. I feel ok about not knowing that the Barnes and Noble in the Pruneyard is now a fucking sports store. IT WASN’T WHEN I LIVED THERE. But we registered for the race tomorrow. (For 8 damn people. I kept that registrar busy for a while.)

Then we rushed back to Mountain View for a play date with a friend. On the drive I talked to a good friend who is on the far side of the country. The play date was fine. The little guy had kind of a loud day (I am not allowed to complain about loud children. ahem.) and I was kind of freaking out before we arrived (LOTS of Calli screaming at me sets me off) so I spent a lot of the play date twitching. I pray I wasn’t too rude.

Then we picked up Noah from work and he played with the kids in the park for 40 minutes while I read my book and tried to stop shaking.

Then we drove south for dinner with former students. That was a lovely experience. Hanging out with them makes me feel like I might actually know shit and I might have some value as a person. I’m not sure why they give me so much of a bump compared to most of the people in my life. Realistically, all of my former students give me a big bump of self esteem. (Holy shit—it’s no longer mandated that you know me and you choose to continue knowing me?! That’s shit is solid gold for my self esteem.)

Why do the students build me up more than my other friends? If I fucking knew that maybe I could solve some of my problems.

Today has been long. And I’m completely wired for sound. Anxious. Fuss. It’s 9:15 and I should be asleep.

My friend on the phone explained the origin of the allies wanting “cookies” thing. Apparently Chris Rock had a standup routine in which he mocked fathers wanting approval for doing basic parent things. I had no idea. She said it generalized from there into other allies. Good to know.

Tomorrow I am sitting on my ass until the 5k race. Oh yes, I will.

Food, connection, triggers, projecting, all the good stuff

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It is very rare that I ask someone for permission before I write about something. Mostly I think, “If you didn’t want me to write about it you shouldn’t have done it.” Sometimes I try to recognize that my writing causes other people to have feelings and that’s a complicated thing. I don’t think I “make” people feel things. But I think that if you are going to put a whole series of bombs along the bottom of a building you can’t get upset when the building explodes.

I asked before writing this one. Because I’m going to touch on someone very dear to my heart whom I have hurt quite a lot around this topic. She’s not the reason or the center but people have feelings when they are mentioned in connection to big feelings. I need to process some layers though and she’s touched on in the layers. I’m trying to be gentle.

The other day I was sitting in the kitchen watching Noah, my husband, make breakfast for the family and I felt these waves of emotion. Gratitude. Relief. Appreciation. Surprise. Confusion. Sadness.

Why didn’t my mama want to feed me? That’s such a huge and pervasive thing for me. I can’t not think about the effect this has on my life.

It isn’t that my mom didn’t want to feed me. That’s not what happened at all. My mom ran out of spoons and money. My mom spent much of my childhood very depressed and very poor. She didn’t know how to deal with all the things that were happening to her (I don’t blame her for that) and she did not grow up learning how to cope with such problems.

My mom was thrown into the deep end of the pool without one swimming lesson. She went from being a sheltered, Mennonite hick to being married to a city boy who was a drug addicted, alcoholic pedophile. She really didn’t know how to cope. She didn’t know how to deal with her husband raping her. She didn’t think she had choices. She didn’t know how to deal with her husband beating her children. When she did try to get away, things got worse–not better.

I’m trying to tease out some of my food stuff. I had diarrhea this morning. I haven’t been eating off plan so I assume that it is at least partially because I’ve been thinking about how to talk about this stuff for a few days. But who fucking knows.

I don’t have an official diagnosis but I suspect I qualify as being a “highly sensitive person”. I’ve desensitized myself in many ways over the years–I’m way less sensitive than I was as a kid. When I was a child I had huge food issues. I couldn’t handle unfamiliar foods. I would completely freak out. The wrong texture in my mouth could set me off for hours. I couldn’t “get over” the wrongness of some things in my mouth.

As an adult I have tried really hard to expand my food palate–partially for my own sake and partially to model for my children. But trying new things is complicated for me. I have to be in the right emotional state or I will freak out or get physically sick. Just about anything can make me gag if I’m in the wrong emotional state. It makes me challenging to feed.

Noah surprises me all the time as I reflect on the enormity of the task he has taken on with regards to feeding me. He is mellow, flexible, and very happy to be experimental. He doesn’t take it personally when I have an issue. And he shows up the vast majority of the time to just make food. Even through the elimination diet when I was a moving target of problems. He responded with cheer and good humor and just asked for new directions. He likes them written down, please.

I don’t have to beg. I don’t have to coax. I don’t have to behave “good enough”. I don’t have to do a bunch of things I don’t want to do in order to try and talk him into it.

He just makes food. Because he wants me to eat. He wants me to live for a long time so I can be here with him hanging out.

Trusting someone around food is a process. I don’t like making food very much, but I would much rather have people come to my house where I control the food so I don’t have to wonder if I will be ok or if I will act like an ungrateful asshole at their house. This means I do a lot of inviting people over. I usually cook for those events instead of expecting Noah to cook for all of my friends. He has long days. I don’t need to be mean about him doing a lot of cooking. I probably make dinner 30%-40% of the time. Ok, usually more like 30%. But once in a while I’m nice and I do an extra breakfast shift. (Like, not even weekly. My husband is so nice to me.)

I feel a lot of shame a lot of the time around being ungrateful. I don’t deserve the effort people put into me. Shame is poison. When I feel ashamed, I tend to also feel anger. Shame isn’t guilt. Shame is believing that people are going to be upset with you for breaking unspoken societal guidelines… not breaking a Law or a Rule… just… people won’t like you for doing the wrong thing. Shame is poison. Shame is believing you aren’t good enough because you don’t conform enough to being just like other people. When I believe that other people think I’m not good enough… I get mad at them. Even when this whole cycle is just in my head. It’s part of the reason I’m so difficult to deal with.

A few years ago we tried to have a friend live with us. Part of the deal was: she would handle food. It would be off my plate. Then I could turn my attention elsewhere and do other things. It didn’t work out due to a lot of complicated things revolving partially around her being disabled and unable to just show up seven days a week like clockwork. Because I thought I had her at home to make sure the kids got fed, I started burning spoons I didn’t have to spare if I have to feed the kids. Then sometimes I had to feed the kids.

Oh I have the feelings. I still do. We are still trying to figure out how to mend our relationship. It happens in drips and drabs. Rebuilding trust is so hard.

Rebuilding trust is hard because I am unfair in how I ask people to be rigid in what they offer as my friend. I tend to require people to practically sign blood contracts that they will be present in my life x days per month/year and I need to be able to Trust That. That’s really a problem for people who have unpredictable illnesses like oh roughly half of my peer group. Right. Shit.

I was a monster. I exploded and kicked the cabinet door off. I’m not saying it is someone else’s fault–I lost control and that isn’t ok. It isn’t excusable. How do I move forward and not do that again? Moreover, beyond just never demonstrating that level of rage in front of my kids again, how do I learn to separate my feelings from other peoples actions?

I think about this and I feel scared. What am I going to do if Noah decides he is kind of done cooking for a few years? Am I going to explode at him? Am I going to expect him to just provide for me in that way?

At this point I’m pretty sure I exploded at my friend as harshly as I did because I have an enmeshed thing going on where she is both mother and sister and I have a lot of big, explosive feelings towards both of those roles. My friend wasn’t able to be the perfect Platonic Ideal… and I couldn’t cope. That isn’t her fault and I feel a lot of guilt around putting her in that position. I think that the enormity of what I did to that friend came into a kind of intense relief when I started doing a similar thing with someone else. (I mean the first noun definition of relief: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/relief “prominence, distinctness, or vividness due to contrast.)

I want other people to mend the wounds I have. But it takes a kind of consistency that literally isn’t possible for most people. It isn’t fair or appropriate to ask it of them. This is something I do over and over and I have to change how I handle this. No one can fix me and it is wrong of me to get so mad at people for failing to do so.

How do you heal and learn to trust people while knowing that you can’t trust them to be reliable? Not because anyone is doing anything wrong. Not because they are actually letting me down (I’m not their kid nor their boss so they don’t owe me a fucking thing) but because I have this crushing feeling of being let down.

I’m worried about this being the kind of thing I pass down to my kids. Entitlement about having other people feed them. Entitlement to explode when you don’t get what you want. The feeling that if people take care of themselves they are betraying you.

That’s pretty fucked up.

I’m too hard on my BFFs. Pam told me so. She has a lot of authority to speak about such matters because she has been standing close enough to be in the role for years only she doesn’t have room in her life. She has great boundaries. There is no enmeshing with Pam. She’s on her path. But she comes and looks at me over long periods of time and tells me when I’m doing stupid shit. That’s useful.

I enmesh unless other people have strong boundaries. That’s a lot of why I like people with strong boundaries as much as I do. But really, what I like are women who like making food who need me to clean their house. (Ok, they never need me to clean their house… but I pick people who don’t especially like cleaning so I can feel useful.) I look for people who have challenging relationships with their families–people who are also looking for substitutes to heal some wounds and I try to offer trades. Only I’m not direct or blunt or explicit… I just kinda move in. Until I’m scared that I’ve overstayed my welcome and I evaporate like I was never there.

I project onto people that filling my needs will fill a need for them, like it works in reverse for me. I like doing things for people. I like feeling useful. I like feeling like I have useful skills and abilities.

The ability to feed people is a thing. It’s a big deal. It’s a comfort thing, it’s a way of supporting life. I get why people feel good about being feeders. But I can’t assume that just because someone is a feeder they will reliably and predictably want to feed me. I can’t assume that they will always be able to. And it isn’t ok to punish people when they stop being able to.

I really struggle with how much of this feels like, “You just aren’t allowed to get angry when your needs aren’t met.” But that’s black and white thinking. That’s not very useful.

I’m writing this because I need to figure out a better way of handling my feelings before they get so big I explode. Lots of communal “eat together” stuff happens in my life. I have big, explosive feelings on a regular basis. People say they will feed me then cancel at the last minute. Plans change. I have to manage my feelings better.

Just because people enjoy making food doesn’t mean I can expect them to make food for me.

I’m not sure how to change my set of reactions. Food is primal. Food is necessary every day for life. But it isn’t necessary that other people provide food for me.

I am a little worried about how I will adjust to the road trip. I’ve gotten very used to Noah cooking breakfast and dinner. When I am responsible for providing three meals a day… am I going to expect the kids to do an inappropriate amount of work because I feel like I can’t cope? I’m worried. How much work is inappropriate?

Do I need to develop habits around snacking every x minutes so I don’t get hungry enough to react badly at people. (That actually first happened to me as an adult when I went back packing with a dear friend. He started insisting I eat every 45 minutes while hiking or I got bitchy and he was tired of me ranting at him. It worked really well.) I can’t expect other people to manage my food issues. They are mine. I get into so much trouble because I expect other people to handle me. I spend too much time acting like I am a child and everyone and anyone is responsible for me. Like I’m still wandering from house to house as an unwanted charity case.

I feel like it is vitally important for me to stop feeling like I am a charity case. I don’t know how. Having money isn’t doing it.

I feel like a ridiculous whiny baby when I write about these things. Just get over it already. But it’s hard to shame someone into being better. I have a lot of intense triggers around food. I have a low ability to discern my bodies signals around hunger. I have a lot of resistance to making food. I have a lot of anxiety around most parts of eating from the mechanics of chewing (I’m still worried that I might suddenly run into some awful texture by surprise–it’s part of why I can’t eat seafood.) to digesting to pooping. I don’t have a body that works how I think bodies “should” work and I feel like I’m still looking around for a mom who will help me fix it.

When oh when will I stop looking for substitute parents?

At this point I’m picking candidates who have as much or less life experience than me and that’s not really working and I have to stop. I get really upset with them and that’s wrong of me. I have to change this habit.

I feel scared. I want to say I don’t know how. I know what I want to stop and that doesn’t give me a roadmap of where to go and that feels really scary right now.

I don’t know how far back on the chain of my behaviors/emotions I have to go to start changing things. I feel very overwhelmed wondering how much of my basic personality is actually toxic and I need to change it.

The funny thing is: the shame around wanting people to take care of me by feeding me is wrapped up in the shame around being a loud person.

I have a voice designed for gathering up crowds in a large out door location. It’s a gift. It’s a wonderful gift when it comes to getting peoples attention when they are outside and spread out.

I’m not good at toning down. Then I married someone who has a habit of getting really loud and emphatic. Then we had two kids who think that what they are talking about can be the only important thing in the house so sometimes we kind of have four people shouting at one another. At that point Noah or I get overwhelmed and make everyone stop. It’s kind of funny. We all have to take some deep breaths.

I want my girls to be able to shout people down with their position. I mean, it would be better if they could communicate their position without shouting but I know too many women who are just flat incapable of strongly advocating for themselves. I want my girls to be able to shout people down. I want it to be a tool in their tool box. Boys are given that tool. It’s not a tool that makes you well liked, but sometimes it is a necessary tool. Folks who can’t do it say it isn’t useful but I’ve watched a lot of things get solved by who can shout loudest. I want my kids to be able to win.

I am torn between thinking that being a somewhat scary person is a good thing because it means my kids get acclimated so that maybe other people will be less intimidating in the future. Then I think, “Oh that’s an absurd justification you disgusting monster.”

When food is tied up with a loud voice it probably isn’t going to go well. Shame is a monster. Shame tells me that if I had the audacity to be too loud (for whom?!) I should be punished. I’m not really allowed to punish myself in most ways any more (I don’t have privacy). I used to be punished with food denial. I go through periods of intense anxiety where my stomach hurts really badly and I drop weight really quickly. It’s like I’m trying to punish myself–but I genuinely can’t eat more at those times or I vomit.

I probably eat more sugar than is “good” for me but I get the impression I’m still relatively low compared to the “average” American. (At least I see spreads of food in pictures representing what people eat and I eat WAY less sugar than those pictures ever represent. Whoa.) But frankly even though people want to think of eating as bad… if it gets calories into me sometimes I have to accept that as good enough. No, it isn’t perfect. I’m doing my best. I eat far more fruit and vegetables than I used to–it has to be ok that I snack on buns too.

I went to bed absurdly early last night. I think that partially happened because I wanted to work on this and I won’t get any other chance. I woke up at 2am. By 3 I feel like I am getting pretty hungry. My instinct is to just sit here and whimper as my body hurts. I had to think about it for thirty minutes before I got up to get a cheese stick. My impulse is to wait 5 hours for food. No wonder I’m so damn cranky all the time. I sleep weird. I eat irregularly and expect my body to just keep going regardless of how many calories I have in me.

I could have been a primitive hunter gatherer. “Didn’t find food yet. Keep walking.”

(I’m kidding.)

Maybe the road trip will be kind of like the fast. (The fast didn’t make it so I have solid poop every day forever, but I have a fair bit of it and I’m pretty happy with my current functioning.) I will have a huge break from how food normally looks in my life. I won’t have any of my normal crutches. I won’t have any of my normal support.

Ok, now how do I get it done?

Without living on packed foods plus restaurants. Ahem.

Ok, I feel a little guilty about this–it sorta feels like the first step to not having explosive reactions when people don’t meet my expectations is to just not have expectations of people but for me that results in treating people like interchangeable pieces. That’s not really cool either. “Who cares if you won’t come. Someone else with 2.5 kids will be invited in your place and no skin off my nose.”

I’m sorta ok thinking of people that way when it comes to hosting large group events with a maximum RSVP… it’s ok to just treat number of RSVPs as interchangeable and not act like there is an A and a B list.

But in general with personal relationships? That’s… kind of awful.

I’m going to flip to talking about road trip planning for a minute. I laid out the big map and showed the girls my proposed Plan A route. Shanna immediately had objections. “Why did you go this way? I’d rather go that way. What is this thing over here? I want to see that.” I took a deep sigh. Some of her proposals mean that I won’t be wandering through the cities of my random internet friends. This kind of bummed me out.

But the road trip isn’t about my personal tour through everyone I’ve chatted with on the internet. I don’t feel like I should be the One Who Decides. So if my kid says, “I don’t want to go that way I want to go up here and see the Grand Canyon” I can’t really say, “But then I won’t get to meet [screen name].” Suck it up, Buttercup.

Flexibility seems to be key to handling the food stuff. I don’t know how to become more flexible. I mean, I already have. I eat vegetables and maybe no one else is patting me on the back for that but I bloody well am. I can go over to a friend’s house and eat a whole spread of vegetables and not gag at all. I am quite impressed with my progress. Fifteen years ago I could not do that.

But it isn’t just flexibility. How do I stop trying to force my female friends into the role of mother/sister? How do I stop enmeshing and projecting and transferring and all those other fun psychiatric terms?

Part of it is that I want to feel part of something and I don’t usually feel part of anything. I barely feel like I am “part of” Noah and Shanna and Calli as a team. They are all related by blood to all those other Gibbs. I’m just an interloper. My mom was never accepted into my father’s family. She had it better than I do–but they made sure she knew she wasn’t truly family.

Strangely I have no trouble feeling “part of” just Shanna and Calli. They feel like mine in a way that changes when we are alone or when we are with Noah. When Noah is around I relinquish most of my hold. I don’t have to be as aware. I don’t have to be in control. I take my responsibilities as a parent pretty seriously. I notice a slump of relief when I’m not “on duty”. I drop hypervigilance when the babysitter is here, when other parents visit (they are generally more jumpy about what my kids do than I am so I can relax knowing that someone else will freak out for me), when Noah is here. It’s a nice relief but it is weird feeling these walls between my relative levels of attachment.

My relationship with Noah is so complicated. Recently I was talking to another woman about how she has to live at the whims of her husband. Him having a hard day kind of wipes the house out. I flinched because I was thinking, “That’s my role.” Noah and I have periodic discussions about how he isn’t allowed to be grumpy in an ongoing way… I can’t handle it. But he has to handle me being grumpy. He has to deal with me snapping and being difficult. I apologize constantly but sorry bakes no bread.

I’m thinking about how I want to handle food on the trip. How am I going to handle grocery shopping and cooking and food storage? That’s a long time to not have a system. But my system will have to adapt to the fact that I don’t have control over what kinds of things I will find where.

I will not be doing the Whole Paycheque tour of the US so I can stick with comfortable, over priced food. Yes, we will probably eat factory farmed meat. (Frankly I haven’t found a source of sausage for non-factory farmed meat so we always eat some. And restaurants. We’re going to hell; I know.)

You can’t make contact with local farmers to buy one steak at a time on the road. Doesn’t work. Or rather: I probably could but that would become the focus of the trip and then my kids would hate me.

Priorities.

Being a vegetarian doesn’t work for my body. Horrible digestion problems. Lots of doctors (including many who are vegetarians themselves) say I should not give up meat. That means accepting that I am part of the mass meat market. Ick.

Now I’m dithering. Am I dithering? Have I just reached the end of the processing for one entry? Am I dithering by thinking about logistics for food? Should I instead be bludgeoning myself in the head for my emotional problems? Are the logistics the point or aren’t they? I’m not sure.

Am I better off having a timer on my phone that goes off every x minutes and I need to eat something so I don’t run low on spoons and I can deal with more vagaries in other people supplying food or not? But people get upset if you start snacking because they are half an hour late on dinner. Saying, “I’m going to get psycho if I wait for you” doesn’t help.

I actually did that this week. A friend was bringing lunch and I was eating when she walked in. I felt like I was about to gnaw my arm off. It seemed stupid to wait so I could explode.

For the whole last week I’ve been starving. I’m eating larger than normal meals and snacking in between a few times. And I’m craving sugar like it is going out of style. I went to the store with the kids. “Can I have…” “Yes!” Bad news. Well, the kids thought it was great news. Ranch 99 has the best buns. You want to ask me for lots… I’ll say yes. Totally a sucker for the buns. And mochi. Say “YES!” to mochi. That’s my policy. I like mochi. I’m not sure why because it seems like it should be a weird texture for me only it is the best mouth feel ever.

Frankly I’m trying to build up familiarity with non-American foods so that when I travel it will be easier to find things that feel comfortable and “safe”. I don’t have that many more years until we want to leave for the year. If I don’t eat a fair bit of the stuff now I won’t build up that level of comfort-feel.

Watch me justify my awesome bun binge.

I could live on dim sum. I do order vegetables.

I’m getting the impression that food-wise I should stay out of Japan and Korea. I’ll have a hard time. And yet, Tokyo Disney calls my name. I can find a way to suck it up. They have chicken and beef. I’ll just have to patiently practice how to say, “no fish at all, please–not even broth”.

Now I’m dithering. But it’s after 4 and I’m tired. I’m ready to go back to bed.

I need something resembling a plan. I need to be more mindful of my expectations around people and food. I am already better about carrying snacks so I don’t get over-hungry as often as I used to (parenting helped me with that habit–specifically nursing).

How do I stop treating these women in my life like they have to be stand ins for other people? Why do I keep acting like they have the power to heal me?

Because I’ve watched too many movies and read too many books about the power of friendship. The reality is my life will never be the kind of life that is featured in a heart warming special about camaraderie. C’est la vie. (I’m pretty sure there should be an accent in there.)

I don’t think that means I should devalue what I get. I get friendship. I get shared adventures. I get journeys of self discovery walked side by side. I don’t get healed. I don’t get to have the feeling of connection I believe other people feel as represented by media. (If it happens on tv it MUST BE TRUE.)

Maybe the healing just has to come from always having such a plethora of snacks on hand that I don’t ever get to the point of low blood sugar. (Nuts are awesome.) Maybe the healing is about other people providing bonus food, not the mandatory-for-life kind. Maybe the healing comes from being safe?

I don’t know. I’m still a bitch.

I’m less scared than I used to be. I blow up less often. I am less destructive when I do blow up. I have fewer expectations of people.

Hey–I haven’t blown up at someone about tardiness in a very long time. That’s huge progress for me. It just isn’t a trigger in the same way. Having my kid have a sudden poopy diaper as we are about to walk out the door to be 1 minute late… teaches you that people are late. It’s ok. It has to be ok. All of a sudden you are 30 minutes late and there isn’t a thing you can do but slap a smile on and make the best of it.

I am not where I need to be. I need to work harder on treating my friends how they deserve to be treated. They are doing their best and I don’t have the right to explode when they don’t meet my demands. It isn’t their fault my mama wasn’t nice to me. I don’t have a fucking free pass.

Life is hard. 5010 words. Time to stop.

I have 5 minutes

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The kids are in swim class. Apparently the online system didn’t register them properly so I sent them out to the pool and the teachers were very confused. Whoops. Easy to fix. All the folks here know us now. They wanted to know how swimming outside went over the summer. They asked why we delayed coming back so long–we were missed.

It’s really weird living in this town year after year. I’m finding a place and that’s so odd. Folks expect me and tell me that they feel sad when I don’t show up. I mean, that’s happened with some hobby stuff over the years too–but this feels different.

This is about being rooted. I have a place in this community now. I’ve carved it out by myself by showing up over and over.

It’s fascinating to me how often my neighbors stop by to chat. I have friends who will not answer the door at all unless they are expecting a delivery or a visit. My neighbors drop by semi-regularly just to talk. I love it. If someone needs a tool they will come ask. I have the kind of neighbors who will ask to borrow a cup of sugar.

I love my neighborhood.

I’ve been ridiculously irritable and grouchy over the last few days. What day is it? Am I about to bleed? Well, I’m on day 21 of my cycle and my cycle is frequently right around 31 days long. 5-10 days before my period I’ve been having problems.

But this was barely before that window. This isn’t the PMDD.

I’m struggling with the kids. Struggling like whoa. I’m not doing ok with them being rough with me. It is triggering me like hell. People who will kick me in the face repeatedly don’t feel like my friend.

And my time is up.

Short, maybe–talking vaccines again.

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I’m alone in the house. I haven’t been waking up and immediately medicating. I think that is a lot of the reason I am feeling so on edge and irritated. I have so many mixed feelings about medicating. Taking pot makes me feel good and surely anything that lets a bad person like me feel good is bad. So I dither and snap at my family like a big jerk-face. I feel sad that my kids and my husband both occasionally say, “Mom have you had your medication?” (S–just like your mom!)

I needed a break. I haven’t been getting alone time when the babysitter has been here. I’ve been staying in the house and working and that… it doesn’t lower my stress level. Well, it shortens my to-do list, which lowers my stress, but I’m left with all the day to day stuff.

I’m not sure what I’m cranky about. People are just being people and I’m having big feelings about it. I know a lot of pro-vaccine people who turn my stomach with how they talk about non-vaccinating people. They will always claim, “Oh I’m not talking about the people who can’t vaccinate.” Well–who decides what is a good enough reason to forgo?

I have feelings.

I vaccinate my children. I have looked at the science and I decided it was a wise choice for my family given our habits. I did not fucking vaccinate because other assholes want my herd immunity. Fuck right off.

I really don’t know why I care about this topic as much as I do. I don’t want to tell people they must vaccinate. I don’t want to tell people they shouldn’t vaccinate. I think the science is pretty clear that mostly vaccines are a mostly good idea. (No, we don’t vaccinate for flu. Even though lots of people die of it. Unless I was going to West Africa soon I wouldn’t volunteer for Ebola vaccination either. The flu shot is not reliable. I’m not a guinea pig.)

But I recognize a much broader swath of “It’s ok if you don’t vaccinate” than most pro-vaccine people.

Mostly, I think this isn’t something we should legislate. I think people should be allowed to make bad choices. I think people should be allowed to ride a motorcycle without a helmet. I don’t think seat belts should be mandatory for adults.

If you want to kill yourself, well that is up to you.

I don’t believe in protecting people from themselves. I see it as highly problematic. Where does the nanny state end?

Most of my friends will not let their kids play in the front yard because they are afraid. Want to know what they are afraid of? It’s rarely cars or kidnappings. They are afraid someone will call CPS. I’m not the only paranoid one. I hear the same frightened conversation from lots of people.

I think this is a fucked up situation.

I understand that the government is finally starting to understand that they did not do a good enough job of protecting abused kids in the past (I’m a statistic on this since I pressed charges against my father) but the pendulum is swinging all crazy. We aren’t letting children learn responsibility gradually. This is bad.

I’m interested in comments on vaccine positions if you can state them without ever saying what you think people “should” do. I hate the word should. Try phrasing like: “In my ideal world people would….” “If I got to be the boss of everyone I would enforce….” I think an ideal schedule is…”

Should triggers the hell out of me and then I won’t have a conversation with you I’ll just be angry with you. And that’s kinda silly.

To me, there is a certain level at which this is a statistics argument and a much deeper argument beyond that. I remember questions on OkCupid like, “Would you kill yourself to save ten people? A hundred people? Ten thousand people?”

To me, most of the you gotta you gotta you gotta vaccinate argument usually sounds like, “YOU PERSONALLY WILL BE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE DEATH OF TEN THOUSAND PEOPLE IF YOU DON’T VACCINATE!!!! HOW CAN YOU LIVE WITH YOURSELF?!?!?!!?!?!?! YOU DISGUSTING PERSON, YOU!”

I’ve rarely read a more nuanced pro-vaccine position. Which is why I never ever tell my anti-vax friends that they should vaccinate.

When people say that anti-vaxxers can’t be convinced by science I say… I’ve never read an attempt that wasn’t dripping with scorn, derision, and the assumption that the target audience is stupid and inferior. Y’all fuckwads almost ensured *I* didn’t vaccinate.

But I know what kinds of wacky international travel I want to drag my kids through so I vaccinated. I’m not risking them. I want them too much. I have put so much time and effort into them that I am not risking lose them over something that science can help me with.

See: an entirely selfish reason to vaccinate. I think this would be an ideal tactic for pro-vaccine people to employ. Stop yelling that it will be all the anti-vaxxers fault if VPD (vaccine preventable diseases) happen. Each individual person bears equal spiritual and legal responsibility for EVERY PERSON WHO GETS SICK. That’s how this shit is phrased.

So much for your side being the side with calm, cool logic. Yes, lots of people have contracted Measles and they’ve had the horrible experience of being ill. None have died. I sound cavalier. I know I depend highly on the wonderful modern medicine we have.

I fucking vaccinate. Don’t give me shit.

I think we are a society who expects too much safety from life. That’s not how it works. People get sick. People die. The Pertussis vaccine lessens the severity of the disease but it doesn’t prevent it. (I have my damn Pertussis vaccine-I’ve even gotten the fucking available boosters.) I just…

I’m not going to get hysterical and say that the first person victimized by a virus (talk about the ultimate in victim blaming) is legally or financially responsible for the further illness of individuals.

That’s like saying it is all my fault my father did something (never knew for sure what) to the daughters of the woman he dated after my mom left him. I didn’t prosecute when I was 3 years old so it is all my fault he hurt other kids–right?

How much responsibility do I bear for not reporting my later rapists? Paul? Dan? Kevin? They were serial rapists. I’ve heard from other victims. I’m outside my window of opportunity for prosecution. I chose to let it go because I thought there was a lower than 2% chance that I would win in court. And I couldn’t go through another failed prosecution. That was devastating. (To be fair, the only reason my father’s prosecution failed is because he killed himself after confessing to everything. Still super hard.) He wasn’t declared guilty in a court of law. It sucked.

To me, the way pro-vaccine people yell at anti-vax people feels an awful lot like the people who have told me that I am to blame when my rapists rape other people.

Viruses do what viruses do. Rapists do what rapists do. People can only do the best they can to protect themselves. You don’t get to demand that other people jump through the same hoops to be protected from bad things. People get to pick their own risk profile.

But at what point do we (as a society) decide that, say, deciding to not vaccinate your children necessitates home schooling them or putting them in one of a few segregated private schools so that your children are not allowed to infect the general population? I think that’s different. I think that society is allowed to say, “Your choices have consequences.”

I think that is fair. Not nice… but fair.

Maybe. Not sure.

Should Disneyland have a sensor at the front that they run across everyones forehead before they come in? Temperature above 99.5 and you can’t come in unless you have a doctors note verifying that you have a higher than average basal temperature?

Not sure.

DO ALL THE THINGS!

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Today has been productive, but not active if that makes sense. Backed up my computer. (It had been 310 days. Whoops.) Moved lots of old pictures onto external back ups to free up space on main hard drive. Deleted most of Noah’s Dropbox account (it was using more than 50gb!) because I’m tired of my computer yelling at me about a full startup disk.

Used the itunes gift cards the kids got for Christmas. We have been waiting for hours for all the television episodes to download. Not done yet. Shanna picked She-Ra. Calli picked He-Man. Hilarious. 75 more fucking episodes to download and it’s been going for a long-ass-time.

Moved stuff around on the iPad. Yet more waiting for synching. Doing all of this computer shit is the kind of thing that many people get paid to do. I don’t think I could be paid enough to do this every day. Ugh and ew.

Signed up for swim class. I’ve been resisting classes of any kind for a while. My kids like to sign up for various lessons and then bitch about going. So I have been stalling on re-enrollment. To be fair, swimming is the class they have liked the most and resisted the least. We start up on Monday.

Four loads of laundry. Two loads through the dishwasher already. I need to print, sign, then scan and email a piece of paper. Ugh.

The kids are expressing great frustration that I won’t give them the screen right now. Hello… it’s synching. Not my fault you can’t have it. Get you some patience if you want these damn shows.

How come I can do a whole bunch of things and feel like I’m not doing much?

ETA: It took six forking hours to do all the computer crap. Oh man. So glad I don’t do this for a living. And I did grocery shopping.

I’m mostly trying to justify that sitting for a lot of today doesn’t make me “lazy”. I was sitting in front of work…

Fascinating.

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I just read a blog article from a white woman aimed at other white people. It was fascinating how many times she told white people to just stay home and not go to protests because it is none of our business.

Centering black stories, yes. Telling news reporters not to ask for white opinions at said protests, yes. Not acting like you as a white person are an equivalent target as black people, yes.

Just stay home?

Hm. Well, there’s one way to make it seem like white people don’t care about black issues.

Addiction

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What an interesting article.

My dad is part of the 5% that came home from Vietnam to a lifetime of drug addiction. What was broken there?

I’ve had people tell me that I’m addicted to drugs (the only one I’m still using is pot–the others aren’t appealing anymore), that I’m addicted to cutting (don’t do it now that I have good reason to pick other methods of coping), that I’m addicted to sex (I haven’t picked up promiscuous sex in years; if I need positive touch I can get it now without having to beg strangers), and that I’m addicted to various other things I don’t do any more.

Truly I should have stopped everything I was doing in my life to move into the 12 step approach to life. Clearly, without a 12 step program I will never do anything but drugs, promiscuous sex, and cutting.

Err… or something.

Responsibility

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If I think that everything is “someone’s fault” and I’m ok with people not vaccinating… do I believe that people damaged by a VPD (vaccine preventable disease) who are vaccinated have the right to sue a patient zero if that patient zero is unvaccinated.

I just had that thought.

Some folks on the internet wonder if everyone involved in the Disneyland measles outbreak should sue the woman who brought the disease. Especially because she exposed people on multiple plane flights and in multiple states. This woman put a lot of people in jeopardy. How should she be held accountable?

That’s a fucking good question. Have I mentioned how glad I am that I’m not a lawyer, judge, cop, nor politician?

I’m not sure what I think about that. I can come up with lots of points on both sides of the argument. I don’t think I have an opinion beyond I’m glad my opinion doesn’t matter.

Are non-vaccinated people required to act like ticking time bombs who treat every sniffle and fever like a reason for complete quarantine?

To be frank, when my children were unvaccinated… that’s how I treated it. If they seemed anything other than 100% healthy I just stayed home. But that’s a privileged decision. Well, maybe choosing to not vaccinate must be a privileged choice then? You only have the right to do it if you can keep yourself out of the general population at the slightest nose sniffle?

I don’t know.

Poor people get screwed in every fucking conversation. They aren’t allowed to make decisions based on *them*. They have to care about everyone else more than them.

Rich people get to say, “Well, my circumstances are special and I can accommodate all the ways I deviate from the norm so I’m allowed to have variation in my behavior.”

Poor people need assistance. They need it from the government, from friends, from churches, from schools… They have to cooperate. They have to jump the hoops put in front of them and they have to do it with a smile or they will be punished with the revocation of support.

Frankly, it would be a fascinating social experiment to segregate the non-vaccinating families into separate schools/public facilities. It is a choice to not vaccinate. Unless of course one of your kids had a nasty reaction then it isn’t safe to vaccinate the rest of your kids. Should you be punished if you physically can’t be vaccinated? Some people are too frail of health–the vaccine would probably kill them.

The arguments for vaccines include that “some people can’t be vaccinated thus it is MORE important for everyone who can to ensure that they are vaccinated”.

When folks are ranting and raving against non-vaccinators, they never actually qualify their arguments with, “I only mean people who don’t have a reason I believe in that supports their position.” Because I could come up with diseases a kid could have where people would say, “Of course that child should not be subjected to vaccines. It would be dangerous.” But where is the line? Who gets to decide?

If one child in a family has a reaction, do the parents have the right to withhold vaccines from their other children out of fear that it is a genetic issue that will also exist in the other kids? What if one child is specifically disabled and the others aren’t?

Who makes the rules?

I think that people need to do research for themselves. I am cheerful about explaining why I made the decisions I made, but I’m not going to bust out a long list of links to justify my decisions. I am not responsible to you. I do not owe you an explanation (Whoever you are) and coming up with that justification is work. You don’t have the right to demand that I stop what I’m doing and go do the work that is important to you.

I try very hard to qualify my statements with “My information may be out of date.” “This is what I remember.” “To the best of my recollection.” “I have read.”

I don’t know the One Twue Way and I don’t pretend I am representing The Twuth.

I have a hard time with the fact that if I write about my life in a public way periodically people expect to be able to walk by and assign me work to prove to them that my life is acceptable. (I’m not saying you did that Krish. You asked a polite question. I have conversations all over the internet. The non-polite people don’t last long in my sand box.) Err, I’m not going to prove to you that I’m allowed to do what I’m doing. You are not my boss. I already have a note in my wallet telling me I’m allowed to be here doing what I’m doing. I don’t need your permission too.

My arms hurt. But I’ve been having feelings. And vaccines are relatively safe to write about compared to all the other feelings I’m having. Ha.

It is funny how we deflect attention to keep going.

Both kids have been complaining about headaches and eye pain in the past couple of weeks. We talked about it and decided to limit screen time more. An hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon. Kind of funny that I have no interest in limiting their screen time and… they need me to do it. It makes my life easier for them to have days where they go from playing independently to the screen back to play to screen to play… they watch a show or two then get bored and go play. I think they are learning a lot about how to manage their time and resources. Only they’ve been on the screen too much and they are both hurting. That means it is time to change things.

Life involves a lot of testing things out to see how it works. Sometimes you try something and find out it didn’t work how you thought it was. Sometimes you have to change how you are doing something.

My life seems to be little other than change. I’m always adapting. I go through periods of using the screen for 10-15 hours a day for months and then I have months where I’m on the screen 0-1 hours a day.

Timer is about to go off.

No ones fault

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I process my emotions in an outward fashion. It helps me gain distance and perspective. It means that people share their processes with me. I’m struggling with the Godmama separation. I’m processing that in a variety of places and ways. In one arena a kind friend suggested that I explain it to the kids as, “Sometimes people just can’t get along.” I said that I have not reacted well when people have said that to me and I don’t think I could say it believably. I’m not saying it is a bad suggestion or a wrong suggestion–it’s one I can’t really deliver.

I want to emotionally react to the phrase. Not because I’m attacking the person who said it (reasonable to share how you would respond! You didn’t tell me I “should” do it–totally respectfully suggested) but because I want to parse why I’m feeling feelings this big.

I cannot count the situations in my life that have ended with people saying, “Sometimes people just can’t get along.” I get told that a lot. My needs and issues are too complicated and big and people don’t have the spoons to devote to adapting to me and that is phrased as “people can’t get along.” It hurts me a lot.

I don’t believe in no-fault divorce. I think there is enough fault to go around. I think it can be both peoples fault and that’s ok. I have never had a break up in my life where I was blameless, and I’ve gone through a really high number of break ups. Do I think that I am completely and totally to blame for the friendships or romantic relationships that go south? Of course not. But saying “it’s no ones fault” is saying I didn’t do the shitty things I did. I’m not going to pretend I did everything right and by some magic of the universe it didn’t work out.

Do you know what is no one’s fault? Hurricanes. Earthquakes. Break ups are because of people.

I don’t want to tell my kids that sometimes things just don’t work out and people evaporate from your life. That has made me incredibly paranoid. It is part of the reason I don’t god damn call people to ask for help (unless I am desperate or I don’t really NEED the help–when the help is optional asking is easy) even though a variety of people have told me I am allowed to ask for help.

When I’m desperate I tend to throw a rope out into the universe not knowing who will catch it. I don’t pick a person and go to them. I don’t trust people enough. I don’t have the spoons to ask multiple people if I get told no. It hurts too much. So I don’t go to Person A and ask for help. I say, “Can anyone help?” and somehow magically Person P shows up. They say, “I was really bored today–I’m happy to get out of the house.” I may never see Person P again. That’s how a lot of the help I have received this lifetime shows up.

I’ve even gotten help grading papers that way when I was a teacher. Throwing a rope to the universe is the best approach I’ve used.

But my friends tend to be people who are barely sustaining their life and they don’t have spare spoons if you show up to ask for one. So I don’t walk up to specific people and ask. That results in people dumping me for over stepping.

I tell my children that sometimes people don’t want to be in a relationship with me because I am not an easy person and people have the right to make that choice. It doesn’t mean I’m wrong or bad or that no one can have a relationship with me–it’s just not something that is worth the effort for that person. Why? I don’t know. Life is complicated.

I can scare people. They have the right to opt-out of being scared. I do not “deserve” to make people feel that way. They have the right to opt-out of knowing me. I’m not going to pretend to my children that this isn’t true. I want them to know beyond the shadow of a doubt that they do not have to stay in relationships with people who are hard for them and they don’t need to feel bad about being too hard for some people.

There are seven billion people on the planet. You won’t be too hard for everyone.

I believe that we all bear some fault. There is enough to go around.

Noah regularly tries to get me to believe that I care too much about blame. He thinks it is irrelevant. I say, “Awwww, what a position for a privileged white boy to have. ‘No one is to blame for bad things happening. They just happen.'” Nope. In my little corner of the world I can god damn point at why things happen and it isn’t because nature made it so. It’s because people acted. They made choices. Some of those choices sucked and had negative consequences. Fuck this “no one is to blame” bullshit.

People do things. They hurt people. It happens. That’s not “no one’s fault”. White politicians enact laws that harm people of color and want to claim it is no one’s fault too. Bullshit.

I’m not angry with the Godmamas for splitting the blanket. I’m hurt and sad. M in particular has been one of the Wise Elders of my adulthood and I feel very sad that I managed to not show this person enough respect. I feel very sad that I did such a bad job of demonstrating my love and devotion that she now feels the only way out of this bad situation is to not know me any more.

I’m not going to say there is no blame here. Instead there is enough blame to go around. I clearly did not meet the needs of the people I was in a relationship with. I tried and I failed. That happens. I’m not going to say it is no one’s fault. It is the fault of both sides.

You need more than one person trying very hard to have a relationship. You need two people trying hard and communicating about what they need. If you lose the communication or if you don’t have people try hard… relationships can’t be carried by one person. That’s not how they work. Is that a blameless situation?

I don’t blame my Owner because he was less invested in our relationship than I was. He was invested to the degree he wanted to be invested. It wasn’t enough for me to stay permanently. I need to have a partner who is more enthusiastic and devoted and he didn’t have that to give. I’m not angry with either side of us for the break up. But I’m not going to say it was no one’s fault. It was his fault he didn’t want to get married and have kids and it was my fault that I consider those things deal breakers.

I don’t think we are bad for each bearing our side of the break up. I think we want what we want and that’s ok.

I see a lot of good reasons for the Godmamas to feel hurt. I’m not pretending they have no right to feelings of their own. I’m not going to blame the break up all on them. But I can’t say it is no one’s fault. I did things wrong. They didn’t communicate about their needs. Sometimes things fail even though people are trying. To me that is materially different than “Sometimes people can’t get along.” I don’t know why it feels so different. I have to feel the acknowledgment that you tried and failed. I don’t want it to feel like some magical intervention is the reason it didn’t work out.

Sometimes Things Don’t Work Out.

Meh. Sometimes people can’t make things work out. One person can’t carry a relationship.

Feelings.

Vaccine follow up

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I am not the most educated person in the world on the topic of vaccines. I am not staying current. I had a 6-12ish month period where I read everything I could get my hands on. That was 5-6 years ago. This is a field of science that is changing rapidly. My information is almost certainly out of date. This is why I do not try to tell other people what they should do. I don’t know. Your life circumstances are yours and you need to determine what is right for you.

I feel ok living with the decisions I made. I think that is the end result of where people need to get on the topic of vaccines. I don’t think I need to obsessively keep up with the research and be willing to argue every specific with every person who wants me to. This is Not My Field and I don’t have to know everything about it.

This means that some people are going to decide I am stupid, ignorant, and other mean words. Whatever. It is not possible for me to stay fully up to date on every field in the world. I can live with this. Vaccines (and whether to get them or not) is not my field. I’m not trying to convince people that they should or shouldn’t vaccinate. I think everyone has individual factors. I think people should do their own research and not fucking look to idiots like me to tell them what to do.

I don’t god damn know what you should do.

I suspect I have the opinions I have because of the anecdotes that have walked through my life. I got to play with a little girl who was a quadriplegic from the polio vaccine. Her father was the doctor who injected her. I know people who have to live with horrifying traumatic brain injuries because they wore a helmet. Many of them wish they were dead instead of living with the injury. So I’m not pro-helmet laws either.

I don’t think people should be forced to preserve their lives. I think that is a bizarre point of view. I don’t get the purpose in forcing people to stay alive as long as possible under any awful circumstances.

I don’t think people should be killed to put them out of the misery of the rest of society either–I’m not promoting eugenics.

But people should be allowed to hurt themselves and make stupid decisions. The trouble with vaccines is we have herd immunity questions (that frankly science hasn’t proven beyond the shadow of a doubt–this isn’t the “theory” of gravity here) that mean that some people opting out impacts the people around them.

But I’m still not happy about my government forcing people to do things. If the Jehovah’s Witnesses want to die of entirely treatable issues… that is their business.

I’m also not a big fan of locking people in mental hospitals to prevent them from hurting themselves. I have this body. I should be the only one who gets to decide how much pain I can inflict on it.

I’m not telling you that you should hurt yourself. I’m saying that my government should not be allowed to prevent me from hurting myself. I’m saying the government shouldn’t be allowed to decide that everyone has to be equally subjected to vaccines because vaccines kill and injure some people. Go spend some time on VAERS. Yes, the reactions are rare…. but no one has died of measles in this country in a long time. So we are balancing a rare death from measles on a rare death from vaccine reaction. The stats are very different on each vaccine. The efficacy is very very different from disease to disease.

My kids are mostly vaccinated. I’m mostly vaccinated. I travel to places where I don’t have the crutch of easy instant access to medical facilities. I take care of the risks I can take care of because it seems smart. I’m not going to god damn risk tetanus for some hoity-toity holistic ideal. The tetanus vaccine fucking works and I’m going to god damn stay current. I’m comfortable with that.

I don’t get to tell other people what their risk profile looks like because I don’t know.

It is fascinating to me how vaccine arguments seem to polarize so strongly. Folks on both side get very angry with me because I won’t pick a side. I can’t. I think there is more than one right answer. I know a lot of people who don’t vaccinate at all. I’m comfortable with going to their houses and taking the risk of exposure. I feel it is an acceptable risk.

I think Americans want to feel safe too much. We believe we can coat the world in bubble wrap and stop having to be afraid. We can give people enough injections/pills to GUARANTEE health!!!! WE CAN WE CAN WE CAN we say.

I think that studying the hypnosis during pregnancy and then having two labors from hell convinced me that not everyone is going to get to the same level of safe or health. You can have privilege and take All The Steps and still have things go to hell. I’ve seen so many bad things happen to people who were doing the right thing that I just don’t believe there is a right path that will keep you safe.

It takes all kinds.

How do I feel about people who refuse vaccines? Like they get to make their own choices and I hope to hell I don’t have to watch this person go through something awful. I’ll be there if something happens, but I hope I don’t have to help this person through a disease. And if my kids want to fuck a boy and the boy refuses to get the HPV vaccine… I will tell the girls that is a boy who cares more about his own discomfort than your potential cancer. Not a great choice for a partner. Even though I think it is ok to not vaccinate.

I’ve had people tell me they won’t have sex with me/come to my house/etc because of my disease and/or vaccine status. It’s not awesome, but it is life. You get through being held accountable for your actions. More than one boy has said they won’t have sex with me because I tested positive for HPV. They didn’t want to risk picking up an infection they would pass to their other partners. (Then I found that the next girlfriend was HPV+ in one case and I felt very rejected.)

People get to make choices and live with the consequences of those choices.

I do wonder about segregated schooling for vaccinated or unvaccinated children. I wonder if I would be ok with that. I don’t know. I haven’t thought through the topic enough. But it is a thought that wanders by occasionally.

Death

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I had the… fortune(?) to wander through a vaccine conversation yesterday. Lots of strong feelings. People tend to only believe that which supports their previous beliefs.

Life is really scary. I hate to break it to you folks: everyone is going to die. Whether you die from getting the vaccine or not getting the vaccine or cancer or a car accident or falling off a cliff. You aren’t getting out alive.

Sometimes I feel a little weird about the wide spread hatred of non-vaccinators. Ok, fine you think they screw up your herd immunity. Why don’t you just think of them as the low hanging fruit that can die first? Why bother getting mad at them? Why are you so angry that someone else wants to risk their kid?

Because you don’t really believe you are protected enough until everyone conforms. Well… hate to break it to you buddy, that’ll never happen.

My kids are not fully vaccinated. I’ve had people tell me we aren’t welcome in their home. I’m comfortable with that.

Life involves all kinds of risks. The fact that I haven’t fully vaccinated my kids on a schedule decided upon to hit the maximum number of poor people with little access to health care… I can live with that risk.

Even though I’m playing Russian roulette with the very reasons I’m alive. Live involves a lot of risks.

For me buying a big enough bottle of Ibuprofen is a risk. I want to die pretty badly. For me having a razor blade in the house is a risk.

Getting in my car is by far the most dangerous thing I do. I’m planning to drive 13,000 miles this year with my children. Where are the people lining up to rail at me for being a terrible mother and risking their lives more than absolutely necessary to shuttle them back and forth from the state run prison I mean school.

My kids are vaccinated for the diseases that would kill them or cause permanent brain damage. I sincerely doubt I will start getting the flu vaccine before I’m 60 and I don’t have any idea if my children will ever get it. If you don’t want me in the house… I can live with that. Yes, the flu kills lots of people. When my children were young enough to be at risk I didn’t take them out of the house much. The flu kills specific classes of people. It is not equally dangerous for everyone. I’m comfortable with the amount of risk I’m taking. I live very near wonderful hospitals where they can yell at me all they want as they save my life.

Modern medicine is a funny thing. I only want as much of it as I want.

Ok, we also haven’t vaccinated for chicken pox yet but Shanna says she is probably going to ask for it the next time we go in. I’m comfortable with that.

I made the decisions that could not fucking wait. I wanted to let them make the rest of the decisions. I think they have the right to decide for their own bodies. Just like I get to decide for my body. Most likely, the girls and I will get our hepatitis vaccines at the same time. We want to go to third world countries and it will be relevant. At that time it would be just flat stupid to ignore the hepatitis vaccines. (Given the amount of risky bdsm and sex I’ve done it is just flat stupid that I never got the hepatitis vaccines. I had multiple partners who were hep +.)

Life is about risks. It is such a near thing that I’m alive. I’m not going to be paranoid. I just can’t. Well… that’s not true. I’m paranoid about the things I can’t avoid being paranoid about. The stupid things that don’t matter, like: oh my god is someone mad at me. I don’t get paranoid about things like death.

What the hell is there to get paranoid about? It’s going to happen. Like, duh. It will even happen to my bright shining children. I hope I die first but I’m told I have to make it to old age. So we’re in a race to die of old age. That means I won’t have to see them die. I’m paranoid about Noah dying–which is kind of funny. Why just him?

I depend on Noah in a way I’ve never depended on anyone else. It’s not just that I’m a dependent. I’ve been a dependent most of my life. It is bigger than that. Noah sees me and is willing to engage with me on any old uncomfortable topic just about any minute of the day. He doesn’t need me to be convenient. He takes me as I am.

My kids need me to behave. They are getting stronger and stronger at defining what that means for them. I am so proud when my kids tell me that my tone of voice is too harsh or when they argue with my assertions.

But even though I worry about Noah’s death and I know it will hurt me a lot… I’m just going to take steps as if it is true. Noah will die. I don’t see trying to deny that it is coming. I need to be prepared. It could happen tomorrow or it could happen in 30 years. Either way has to be ok.

I don’t really have a choice.