Category Archives: adult-only

Published in the adult-only category

Frustration: thy name is internet disruption

Every so often the internet at my house gets flakey. I just can’t get a consistent connection for days or weeks. Then the problem kind of goes away again for a while. Not sure what is up but a couple of times a year I have a week or so of enraged fury. It’s almost awesome. Only it’s really annoying. First World Problems.

This is going to be a very busy weekend no matter what. I’m still waiting to hear how busy. I’m feeling some feelings about not knowing what will happen yet. I don’t handle indecision very well. When you are scheduling with other people… it can’t always be avoided. Drat.

I will take a moment to reiterate (state for the first time? Can’t remember) how happy I am that I drove up to see Jenny and my niece again before they left the country. My niece warmed up to me much more than she did previously. I think that after the parade of new people I seemed a bit familiar and that bought me some ease. I got a cheerful, eager high five. That was progress.

Some kind person (no clue who) sent my kids some curriculum. It came from Zulily. Thanks, whoever you are oh anonymous benefactor. Shanna likes workbooks. They are Star Wars and everything. And another science kit.

My kids are going to get older and figure out that other people think that science and math are too hard for girls. I hope their response will be to laugh. They both like math and science intuitively. They consider themselves really good at learning both subjects.

Just like they think their bodies are perfect. And they think my body is perfect.

I am deeply grateful every day for the bubble I get to live in.

I don’t remember what Shanna was watching but she kind of jerked her head back and said, “That’s so stupid! This person thinks he can judge (character name) by how he looks. You can never tell what someone is like by looking at them. You have to watch how they act. What a stupid thing to say.”

She says stupid a lot. I try to introduce other words, but whatever. It’s better than when she says “fuck” a lot.

I did something crazy. At the last home school meetup I got the moms to agree to go clubbing. The idea came up vaguely before this but I talked people into a specific date.

The first question is, “Where are we going.” I said, “Well… I’m not taking you to BaGG so I don’t really know where to go. What clubs play Ke$ha?”

That’s as far as we’ve gone with negotiations. I said I would ask some of my more festive friends for recommendations. Hey friends–any recommendations?

I’ve been talking to Noah about my nervousness about travel and monogamy. I am grateful that most of my travel will be well chaperoned by my kids. Relieves my needing to have self control.

I notice I’m looking more now than I did for a long time. Not to pre-kid levels, but pretty gosh darned interested. It is kind of weird to notice and choose to not really look. I feel like I am learning how to be respectful of people. Maybe these are skills I should have developed in junior high. It is a little weird to try this hard to not-sexualize people.

I go through periods where I sexualize everyone (at least in my head) and periods where it doesn’t occur to me. Trying to stifle it is hard and weird. I’m doing it. Sexualizing people uses a lot of bandwidth I don’t have going spare.

Recently I saw some old friends. I played with them a few times in a variety of settings many years ago. It took conscious mental effort not to play through whole scenarios about how things would be different now. That’s kind of weird feeling.

I have always been grateful that I am a female. Erections are really hard to hide. Guys have to have more control over their mental process. No one knows when I’m all slippery.

I think about affirmation and validation. What things make me feel approved of and loved. What things make me feel like it is ok for me to exist?

I have a lot of respect for people who can be good and kind and loving and celibate. I’m not one of them. If I don’t have sex on a regular basis pretty much all of my self-esteem crashes. I become completely hyper-focused on getting sex. I need that boost. That proof that I’m supposed to still be here. I’m good for something.

I kind of wish I had more ambient self esteem, you know?

I only have a handful of friends I have neither played with nor had sex with. That number grows by the year, of course, but most of the people I was close to when I was younger… Yeah. That’s how I proved to me that they liked me. (And I like the play/sex. Don’t get me wrong.)

Occasionally when I run into former lovers they are enthusiastic. The greeting makes me feel good. Even if I don’t particularly want to fuck them again, I like that they remember me as a positive experience. I’m glad I made them feel good about themselves. That was my goal.

Yes, DSH, I can’t make anyone feel anything. I do listen to you.

I like that they have such positive associations with me. I feel all warm and fuzzy inside that they remember me with such fondness. Even when I don’t love them, I love them for that.

I’m grateful that the piece of me I left with them is well treated and loved. Often way more loved than I can provide for myself. Those pieces went to mostly good homes.

Just like I think about my lovers and wish them well and try to mostly speak well of them. There are reasons I went there. I saw some good. I choose to mostly remember the good. I mean, I’m a catty bitch and I can name some complaints too. But I can honestly say positive things about everyone I’ve slept with. (By choice.)

Uhm, sometimes you might have to jog my memory for a bit before I remember who you are talking about. Kind of like with former students. Only I spent way more time with my former students than most of my lovers so it is more amazing that I remember the lovers.

Seriously, some of those people I had way less than four hours of conversation with total. Who the fuck remembers that.

(Ok, I do remember… but sometimes my memory needs a little jogging.)

I think part of the reason I’m getting more sexualized thoughts is I have more time away from the kids. I don’t look at people in the same way when my kids are standing next to me. I am always conscious that I am a role model about how to be an adult. I am god damn appropriate.

And as soon as they are gone, holy crap it is hard to control myself. I don’t know if I get checked out more or if I notice more. Probably a little of each.

I understand the issues between my mother and my sister very differently now. Hyper-sexuality and celibacy are extremes between which we swing. I am not sure I understand how sexuality works in “normal” relationships. Whatever that means. Define normal for me first.

Cause I don’t know. And if it isn’t “normal” does that mean it is necessarily problematic?

Seriously, is it a problem that given different life circumstances I’d be willing to go to bed with just about anyone who asked (and who had permission)? My life circumstances aren’t different. I don’t want my kids learning that. I had the option. I went into a non-monogamous marriage. I went and found someone who was amused by my rapidly climbing numbers. Between when I met Noah and when we got married I slept with somewhere between 70 and 90 people. He didn’t have a problem with that at all.

But we aren’t doing that now. Why not? Because the way you teach children how to be functional adults is to be one in front of them. Constantly pursuing sex limits your ability to be productive or functional in other areas.

If you don’t have kids, you can probably find the time to hunt forever without it being a problem. If you have kids… things change.

I know long-term poly relationships. I’m not talking about them. Clearly that isn’t what I did. I am analyzing my behavior patterns. If you aren’t someone who goes out and picks up 4-8 new sexual partners in a good weekend… you aren’t doing the behaviors I’m complaining about any way.

And if you have a split custody agreement and you only do that when your kids aren’t with you… I’m also not talking about you. Clearly we lead different lives.

I need to judge this. Not because it is absolutely morally wrong, but because I need to consciously decide what I want to teach my kids. What you teach your kids is your business.

I don’t know if my level of sexualizing random people is “normal” but I don’t want to teach my kids to do it the way I was taught to do it. If they grow up and do it, I will shrug. They didn’t learn it from me so whatever.

I need to not teach hyper-sexuality.

This is really important. This is a hill to die on. No, not for everyone… for me.

It’s ok to like sex. I have a sex buddy. He’s awesome. He’s My Favorite. I’ve tried lots and hands down, he’s the best. So life is fine and good and dandy.

If my kids want to have sex with lots of people I will teach them about safety and wish them well. If they want to only have sex with one person in their whole lives I will teach them about safety and wish them well.

I feel like I don’t have a horse in that race beyond controlling what I model.

I can’t change the past. I will never stop being “the kind of person who does that” like I will never stop being queer.

Recently a friend told me that she was a heterosexual. My jaw dropped. I actually said, “What?!”

That was rude and I apologized and she laughed and it was an ok conversation and all.

I am willing to understand that some people in my life are heterosexuals. I am willing to give the benefit of the doubt to many of the people I know.

But I still feel shocked when someone who is kinky and poly isn’t flexible. For me, all of my sexuality is just about completely fluid. I can be attracted to almost anyone. I don’t have categorical dislikes. I have categories I haven’t ventured into much because I don’t have a strong draw but I don’t turn down offers. Didn’t. In the past. Long ago. In a land far far away…

Ahem.

Cool. Plans for the day confirmed.

Today I get to run 3.5 miles. Then I need to go to the grocery store. Then I need to start baking cupcakes. Then some awesome-sauce kids arrive to visit us overnight. While the kids are here I will ice the cupcakes. It’ll be fun.

Tomorrow I get to take my kids to a bake sale. We’ll be there for 4-5 hours. It’ll be festive.

Really, we’ll have fun. Shanna will have so much fun. This is a dream come true for her. She’s trying hard to talk me into making her a sales stand for the yard so she can sell things.

I feel kind of guilty because I haven’t built it yet. I’m tired. Ok, time to go run.

Trees, kids, teaching, identity

6 Replies

I love sugar. Sugar makes everything better. Sugar is love. Speaking of which, it’s time to start baking for the bake sale this weekend. Other folks are buying things at Costco to resell. I’m going to make things. Because. Just because I’m already committed to more than 30 hours of babysitting between now and then, and a painting project with kids and…

It’ll be fine. You’ll see. Ok, maybe I will end up crying… but the work will get done.

Maybe this is why they go to Costco. The crying isn’t worth it.

Yesterday was good. Today will be good. Lots of work to do, always.

Yesterday a friend came over and showed me how to prune my fruit trees! I’m super excited! The trees look way happier. Take that home schooling list announcement of fruit tree pruning workshops that don’t allow children. I don’t need you. Nor babysitting. Neiner neiner.

Apparently my kids did not prevent me from learning about my trees. Fancy that.

I’m kind of petty. But I feel fairly resentful of the attitude that children shouldn’t be present for learning opportunities. And I wish that home schooling lists would block advertisements for adult only activities.

But it’s not my list.

I understand that some children are a distraction. Mine aren’t. And when mine are having a hard day, I walk away and don’t distract people as I deal with that. Not every parent works like me though and I get why teachers don’t want to deal with kids. I think they should work through their own difficulty and learn how to fucking deal with kids… but whatever.

Kids know how to do what they are trained to do. They know how to exist in the world they are introduced to but not other worlds.

A kid who has been trained to be quiet will have a hard time getting rowdy. Kids who have been trained to be rowdy have a hard time being quiet.

This is why I work so hard at teaching my kids that both sets of behaviors have appropriate times and places. I need them to be highly adaptable. Sometimes you aren’t the center of attention and you have to just deal with it.

If my kids throw a fit demanding that they get a certain color or it’s just not on… I respond by withdrawing whatever it is they wanted. Nope. Not doing that. You don’t get to fucking rage at me because I handed you the wrong color plate.

We don’t do that shit in this house.

So when Calli tries to throw a fit Shanna can repeat verbatim, “Take what you get or get nothing.”

It is occasionally mortifying when she turns to another family at a restaurant and says that to a kid who is having a fit. It’s about 50/50 with the moms responding, “See! That’s how it works!” or “How dare you correct my child.” (I tell her that’s she is not a mom so she doesn’t get to lecture yet, works with her as well as it did me.)

That’s how it works. I am not going to bend to whims. Get over it.

The other big one that is coming up lately is, “We are not a family of shirkers. There is work to be done. Get up. Now.” I don’t shout it. It works way better when the ‘now’ is delivered in a growly lower voice. No shrieking. Shrieking is super easy to tune out after a while.

That comes after I have asked nicely with “please” three times. This is more or less my alternative to whining, which works not at all.

The growly now generally only has to come out once. I feel mixed. Cause it feels like instilling fear. I have asked my kids if they are afraid of me. The response is something along the lines of, “Kinda sorta some days. Not usually.” Well, that seems pretty sane and rational to me. I feel sorta sick to my stomach that some days they are afraid and it’s a rational response.

I asked Shanna what she was afraid I would do. I asked her once if she thought I would hit her. She said, “Oh you wouldn’t do that. But you might be awful.”

Fair enough. I am awful sometimes.

I’m trying to build more of a pattern. Patterns are how children learn. When I was a high school teacher substitutes loved getting my classes. Because my classes ran themselves without me. I had my students so well trained that they knew what to do and how to do it and they went through the prepared materials without the aid of the sub. The sub could sit in the corner all day and take attendance and read.

I want my kids to be that well trained about what it means to be “functional”. We exercise. We eat healthy food. We clean up the messes we make so that we have the space to make more messes. When there is work to be done, you do the work. Then you play hard.

We talk about our feelings. We make time for affectionate discourse and playing. It’s important. You have to play or you aren’t really living. You are just surviving.

I feel so lucky that I get to spend all day every day with people who are so happy. Sometimes it feels like living in a tv show. I live in beautiful sunny California in my spiffy fun little house. I have two photogenic smart kids. I have a husband who is really nice to me and who wants to have really hot sex all the time.

My life is pretty much what I wanted. Holy shit.

But when I read the letter that my shrink wrote to recommend that I remain a heavy stoner…

Not so picture perfect. I marvel at my children being photogenic because many of the pictures of me as a child were so bad that my mother spent a lot of time telling everyone she fucking talked to how terrible it was that I was so ugly in pictures.

So it’s kind of weird that people tell me frequently how beautiful my children are. I don’t think I’m beautiful. I think Noah is attractive but funny looking. How in the hell did we make beautiful kids? Genetics are weird.

It feels like they don’t really belong to me. Like I am taking care of them for someone better than me. But I’m doing my very best. Clearly they deserve better than my best. This is all I have.

Why do doctors suck so much?

5 Replies

I’m not going to write a lot. Famous first words.

Seeing the med doctor last night was a little creepy. He asked me, repeatedly, when I was talking about anxiety–“Do you feel like a bad girl?” His tone of voice was totally “sexy Daddy is going to give you a spanking” and uhm… whoa. That was pretty weird.

Over all he usually manages to do a good job with “concerned and supportive”. He checks to make sure I’m following up with a “general doctor” for health check ups. He asks enough nosy questions about my PTSD (and makes notes, and has follow up questions years later) that he seems to have some familiarity with my case and with PTSD in particular. He asks specific follow questions about my patterns of self-harming behaviors because he knows what they are.

So overall he is a much better quality of doctor than I normally deal with, in my judgy-ass opinion. He listens to me.

But what the fuck is up with using the sexy Daddy voice? I’ve already stopped seeing one doctor because he wanted to do bdsm with me. (Specifically he wanted to cut me up and cauterize the wounds. He told me so. In detail.)

So yeah. I’m kinda sensitive. But I think I fucking should be.

I think he was trying to tease me. That was the overall tone. He thinks I shouldn’t feel guilty about using medication. He was pretty emphatic. It was a cheerful visit. But I felt pretty fucking squicked for a bit there. It was time to end the appointment.

He never gets to see me nekkid so it’s not an intimidating relationship. He continues to monitor that I have mental health issues. He checks for continuity of care among my other health care providers. He asks after my physical and emotional safety.

He asks questions about my parenting and how things are going with my kids.

What is up with me and the creepy Daddy’s?

I’ve already fucked enough dirty old men. Thanks.

And I’m declaring defeat on the attempted sugar fast. I need too much self control right now. I need the sugar. Yup, I’m an addict.

Life is pretty good.

2 Replies

Wow, thanks for all the comments. That started my day off differently than normal. I’m having trouble controlling my smileys despite my promise to myself that I wouldn’t use them in the blog. Ahem.

I’m in a good mood. I finished scheduling arrangements for the summer. Shanna has a couple of weeks of summer camp. They are kind of random.

Mondays will be cleaning/family-gym night. (Noah and I started dating by being gym buddies. He’s fun to exercise with.) And the kids love the day care. With a trip to Aqua Adventure in the middle of the day.

Tuesdays switch a bit. Every other week we go to Oakland for therapy. I usually spent post-therapy talking to K for a bit. Sometimes we go to park day afterwards. Or we don’t go to therapy and we try to go to park day. If it is my only unscheduled day of the week, sometimes we stay home during the day. Tuesday nights will be babysitting from 4-8. We will sometimes date but mostly that’s alone time.

Wednesdays are variable. Concerts. County Fair. Visits with friends. Stuff happens. We go to Aqua Adventure in the afternoon. Then Pam comes over to spend the night.

Thursdays mornings for four hours I exchange child care with a local stay at home mom. One week at my house, next week at her house. I can’t believe how crazily productive I am during that period. (It used to be three hours, we decided to bump it after we’ve ended up standing around talking for two hours after most sitting-sessions because the kids are not ready to split up after three hours.) One week I get to go up to L’s house and plan out Calli’s birthday party. (It’s a joint thing cause she’s got a birthday twin. It’s working out.) Every other Thursday I will be running with J. The in between Thursdays will be Noah’s night off.

Friday days are variable. Gym visits with a mom so the kids can play in the day care. Help K clean out her basement (I’ve been looking forward to this for years. I have pestered them asking, “So! When can we clean out your basement?!”) Aqua Adventure most weeks. (All these trips to Aqua Adventure are dates with another family. I have to go.) Nights are Family-Date-Night. The kids will help make dinner. When Noah and I cooperate, the kids always find ways to keep us busy.

Saturdays are variable. We do stuff. Sometimes it is just a massage. Sometimes we go see people. Sometimes we hang out at home and keep busy. This is when Noah gets in the epic reading sessions with the kids. (Would anyone like to go to the day-time PEERS event in August? It sounds fun…. And like my hours…)

Sundays start with Shanna making breakfast. Then we walk to the farmers market. Then we hang out and rest for the remainder of the day.

On top of that I have a very full exercise schedule. 2-3 days of running. One walk to the farmers market. 1-2 days of cross training. (I start out with more cross training and slightly less running but that shifts as I get closer to the half marathon.) Stretching and strength training. One rest day. Must rest or you don’t progress as well.

Dinners are planned until September. I consciously put a lot of easier stuff on the calendar. I’m going to need easier cooking if I will get through it. I’d like to conserve some money. I’ve been uhm, over spending. It’s halfway through the year and I am not over budget on most stuff, but I have absolutely no wiggle room and I really wanted a cushion. Sigh. At the end of the year I am going to send a bunch to the mortgage even if it hurts. I hope to build a cushion so it doesn’t hurt. The mortgage is still hovering at $200,000 and if I am going to pay it off in six more years then I need to get some large payments in, the sooner the better. Interest is a beast.

Debt is bad.

Really, if I got the house paid off in 2019, that would be dreamy. If all the mortgage money was suddenly going spare I could do a lot of interesting things. The longer I drag out the mortgage, the more I pay. That’s the simple logic of interest. The faster I get rid of the mortgage the more of my own money I get to keep. I can do fun things with it instead of give it to a bank.

I don’t pay on my car loans for the full term either.

Interest is yucky.

Except when I’m earning it. Then it’s awesome.

When I was a little girl, my life financial goal was to have $250,000 invested and to own my own home and car. I wanted no debt and a cushion “in case”. I picked that as a goal when I was, 10? 11? I know it was firm in my head before 12.

The fact that we have more than one account with that amount of money blows my fucking mind. I haven’t finished paying off the house yet. Damnit. Soon. Before I’m 40.

Thank you, Noah. I couldn’t have done this alone. To be fair, you couldn’t have either. You kind of suck at managing money. We make a great team. When we got engaged you had one account with that much money. You had a thirty year mortgage that you weren’t making expedited progress towards. You had a lot of debt from motorcycle purchases and accidents and home improvement and medical bills.

I’m pretty good. Doubled the investment. Paid off all the debt. Bought two cars, paid them off nearly instantly. The house is probably only six years away from being paid off. If I slacked it has a maximum of seven years left on the mortgage. Instead of twenty more years.

It is really easy to try hard for someone who rewards my hard work with kindness, attention, and love.

Not to mention that we went from being pretty much the crappiest house on the block to having people stop and offer to buy it because they like the garden so much.

I’ve been good to your bottom line. That’s pretty awesome.

You started off in a privileged position. It would not be reasonable to expect someone to do what we have done without the outrageous privilege of having a bunch of money handed to them.

I don’t know how I had my childhood but came out with different financial values. It’s A Mystery.

I honestly think it was the guaranteed income. It changes your whole way of thinking. When I grow up I might be willing to lobby congress for a guaranteed income. I think that is the only logical solution for a country with our resources and our degree of poverty.

Income inequality is bad for the country. Period. I don’t know when in the fuck I changed. Probably when I got my head out of my ass and looked at what was really happening to people near me because they didn’t have guaranteed income and I did.

I think I had the reverse of most people. Most people are protected by their parents during childhood and they have to make their way as adults–many are ill prepared. I was not financially cared for as a child. Once I turned eighteen I had a guaranteed income until I was thirty. I knew exactly how long I had to get my shit together and I put most of the money into college.

That’s an insane privilege. I didn’t know it while I was young.

It isn’t a hand out. It’s an investment. “I want you to do well, so our whole country will do well. This amount of money will keep you from making desperate choices so that you can survive. That way you can learn to thrive.”

This shit is studied.

Anyway. I’m in a good mood. The kids have been very affectionate and kind of clingy. Given how much they reject me lately I’m enjoying it. I think that they are noticing how much time we spend with other people lately.

Like: in the next two weeks I am providing 32 hours of babysitting for other peoples kids. That’s a fucking job. I do a lot of jobs all at once. I know that is kind of the joke about stay at home moms. Then add home schooling. Even unschooling is work. Don’t be fooled.

Right this minute I feel like I can handle all the balls in the air. I have said no to the things that weren’t fitting for me. It is hard but it was the right decision.

I can do this much scheduled and accomplish the things I want to do. Ok.

Also: I have to take the summer off of Netflix. I am watching too much. I’m going to try to limit my screen time to pre-6:30 am. I have a lot to do. (So I won’t be on chat much.)

I have a lot of projects I want to do. Sitting at the computer means I don’t get antsy enough to do them. If I change that dynamic, I get more done and I feel more satisfied about my time spent.

This is one of those times when my center of focus is moving in closer. I know this has happened before. It happened when I had Shanna for one thing. I just stopped communicating with most of the outside world. For years. I have been re-emerging.

Now I kind of don’t want to. I’ve built a world. I am really busy inside this little world. There’s a lot I want to do.

I need to buy saw horses. I have a lot of projects I want to do this summer and saw horses would make all of them easier. (So much for not painting this year.) That money will probably come out of my ‘entertainment’ budget. Because man is it cheaper to entertain myself at home than out. I have all the paint I need. Maybe another sheet of sand paper. Then we paint. No problem. I own all the other bits.

This is why some people can spontaneously make things. They have already accumulated all the crap. That’s why other people hoard. They want this feeling. “Oh I have everything for that.”

Only hoarders can’t find it when they want it. So they buy it anew for every project.

Man. Layers.

I remember my grandpa’s shed. He died when I was twelve. He was the only grandparent I met. He had painted the outline of every tool on the pegboard so he knew exactly where to put it.

In that moment, of seeing his shed I understood how things “should” be organized. It is all so clear. Yes.

I think I’ve been trying to get there ever since. I’m not there. I’m still shifting. He was in his 80’s. I doubt his work shop was always that meticulous. Give me time.

Someone recently said, “If this is how you use your garage… where do you put your storage?”

Storage? What’s that? My closets mostly don’t have doors. I don’t have an attic or a basement or a shed. My garage is fully occupied but not with storage. Ok, I store books on book shelves. Different.

I have what you see. I’m just trying to get the organization perfect. It happens in layers.

We change. Our needs change. Life is a process. I’m still arriving. I have so much more patience for that now than I used to have.

If a Zen moment appears, grab it. I feel ok. I feel like I am ok. I am doing what I wanted to do. I have, in fact, done far better than I dared dream. I haven’t perfectly arrived, but life is about the process. I’m doing well at the process.

My family thinks I am doing well by them. I’m not a perfect friend but I’m not a piece of shit. I do my best. Sometimes that isn’t enough. That’s life.

At this moment I honestly believe I couldn’t be doing more than I am. But I’m not over extended. Just busy. Booked. I can’t say yes to a lot more. People can join me on what I have already planned. That’s all I have to offer right now. And sometimes, I need to reserve family time. Holy crap do we spend time with people.

We need to reset our normal. Because even we–freaks that we are–have our own normal.

I have lots of gardening I should be doing. See–I need to stay home. There is work to do. While I babysit. Oh man.

It is going to be a blessedly full summer.

Running and body stuff

13 Replies

Bodies are weird. People are weirder.

I spent 2012 running because I wanted to be able to check “run a marathon” off of my bucket list. I had not been much of a runner before that. In the process I found that my body changed substantially. I was already riding the wave of lower-than-usual-weight because my Uncle Bob had recently died and I had divorced my biological family and that was really hard on me and I lost a lot of weight from not eating. I was down to the weight I had previously only reached while starving myself on Weight Watchers and exercising five days a week.

So having the “thinner” body is associated with lots of bad stuff for me. I get there when I’m starving myself and/or dealing with a lot of psychological pain such that my stomach hurts too much to eat. It’s not fun.

Also: when I lose weight the amount of street harassment goes up.

Think about the implication of that. I lose weigh *because* I am already having problems and then all of a sudden the ambient harassment I get in public increases.

Folks ignore the chubby chick running around the neighborhood. When I get thinner men start telling me they want to “come with me” or “distract me” or they just yell shit. And my neighborhood is pretty safe. I know enough of the neighbors that if I have a problem I can go three or four doors down, bang on a door and say, “I’m sorry to interrupt but I’m having a problem.”

I love my neighborhood so much. I appreciate that my neighbors are so friendly with me. I’ve been here for eight years now. I know people.

So it’s not like I’m scared but I really don’t like dealing with it. I feel worn down and tired. Being “thinner” feels more like being a piece of glass that gets thinner and more breakable with time. It’s not a good thing losing mass.

I don’t own a scale and I haven’t in a while and I don’t want to. I don’t care about tracking the number. Knowing it occasionally is just to have data. My recent doctor visit says I went back up to 170. Given the running schedule I’ve put together for the rest of the year… that won’t be true long.

Right now I have a belly. I like my belly. It means my forking pants fit. At this weight my “skinny” pants are tight and my “fat” pants are a bit loose but I can wear everything. It’s convenient.

If I lose a bunch of weight again I should probably just buy some clothes that fit instead of holding my pants on with rope the way I have been doing for a while. I don’t like most belts. So I use the rope belt that Jenny made for her Renaissance Faire costume years ago. She made it by braiding really bright ribbons.

I use this belt all the time. Every time I run it holds up my pants.

Every time I wear the belt I think of Jenny. I think of her kind of silently blessing my endeavors. Jenny loves me. Jenny wants me to keep on keepin’ on.

Being smaller is a weird thing for me. For one thing it means I am more shaped like my mother and that’s a mixed blessing. On one hand, she’s pretty cute. On the other hand… when I catch a glimpse of my body abstractly in a reflection I miss her so much I feel like I get hit with a solid fist of pain.

I want my mommy. I’d much rather be fat and never see her in the mirror again.

But if I’m going to run I don’t think I’m going to pull off fat. No matter how much I eat and let me tell you I try to keep weight on while I’m running. I eat like a hummingbird–my weight sixteen times over a day.

Running puts a natural limit on how much I can eat. After I get accustomed to the pace again I won’t be able to over eat very often. When I’m running my stomach picks a size and that is the size it is. I don’t get to under eat and I don’t get to over eat any more. It’s a really weird feeling. I didn’t exercise as a kid enough to know if that happened then.

So I do my best to eat a lot. I up the calorie density of everything (mmmm butter). But it turns into muscle and I melt away. Because apparently the me I see in the mirror is composed up of a lot of fat.

I don’t actually come from a family of heavy people. The only people in my family background who are heavy are the people with severe mental illness who are entirely sedentary. Everyone who isn’t so depressed they stop functioning is pretty fit.

I think I’ve tried to ignore that most of my life. I’ve always been sedentary and chunky-to-fat.

Losing the label of “fat” is weird and hard. It has been part of my identity for most of my life. I’ve been one of those prideful and hostile people. I don’t mind being fat and I will yell at people who act like it is a problem.

The heavier I am, the less sexualized I am to random men. Of course, there are guys like Noah who like heavy women but they generally are the kind to be chatty and friendly at a party and not the kind who yell things on the street. Which is to say: getting laid isn’t a problem at any size. But I like the invisibility of being heavy in day-to-day life.

My joints bother me off and on. Particularly my hand joints. I now compulsively make the same hand gestures as my mother. This getting old business sucks. As a result I semi-regularly don’t wear my wedding ring set.

I picked a platinum monstrosity. It’s gorgeous and I still feel a giddy thrill of “ohmygod someone let me have this?!” when I look down but it’s solid. Some days I can’t wear it because it makes my finger burn like fire. Which is unpleasant.

Oh holy shit do men feel like it is ok to just get close to me. I don’t remember this from when I was younger. “Hi” is usually the limit of the conversation with the strangers because I think my facial expression is not “welcoming”.

That being scary business is useful.

I wish I could be friendly without getting harassed. Gosh that would be nice.

I can. When I’m fat. So I look at my running schedule for the rest of the year and I have mixed feelings. On one hand, I sure like being fit and strong and there are a lot of things I want to go do with my body that require as much or more fitness than I have now. On the other hand… being attractive kind of sucks.

I’m really kind of funny. I spent most of my early life working as hard as possible to attract as much sex as possible and now that it is appropriate (hey–at least more than it was when I was a kid!) I’m trying to figure out how to make it go away. I’m kind of stupid.

I seem to never be willing to do what is expected of me.

It is easy for me to be loving with my body when I’m fat. I feel less betrayed by my presentation to the world. When I’m fat it is easier to take long baths and rub in lots of lotion and give myself gentle touch. When I’m skinnier I tend to take showers and try to get “being naked” over with as fast as possible. I don’t really want to look at or touch myself.

I can tell by my clothing that my weight is shifting a bit. I’m trying to be conscious of the nicer things I do to myself and I’m trying to not stop.

I’m not sure if stopping the nice stuff is because I was that skinny during periods when I was insanely busy or depressed and most of my “me” time available was spent on exercising or working. I didn’t have as much time to sit around and take a bath.

So is it the chicken or the egg? I don’t know.

There are all these layers of things. When I’m running I mostly eat a reasonable diet… only I can’t keep my sugar under control. Sweet bread. That’s my down fall.

The difference is the exercise. When I get into a good routine for exercising, training for longer distances means specific conditioning, it’s a shit-ton of calories. Not to mention that I’m building muscle, which is more efficient at burning calories.

I think I partially stopped running cold because uhm… I was starting to have thigh gap. I think I stopped having thigh gap when I was eight. I don’t feel all that good about having it now. Yes, I’m aware some women are obsessed with it. I do not want to be in that camp. I don’t want to be associated with that camp.

I want to be strong and fit and have the fucking body I’m used to. God damnit.

If I could be a marathon runner with a size 16 body that would be perfect. That’s what I would want if I got to pick a body out of a hat. Unfortunately when I’m seriously training I’m more in the 8/10/12 range depending on brand. I hate the brands that tell me I’m an 8. First of all: no I am not. There are standards, you fuckers. Stop lying to people. Second of all: it is really fucking frustrating to have to take three or four sizes of something into the dressing room in order to find something that fits. Fuck all you fashion bastards.

I fucking hate buying clothes.

And where am I going to store my “fat” clothes? I sure as fuck am not getting rid of any of it. I’ve very carefully found my wardrobe. Maybe under my bed? Oh man.

I like being strong. I don’t like that it seems to come packed with being thin. That seems stupid to me. See, no one asks me what I want. Whine whine whine.

I understand that I live in a time and place where being thinner is a fucking billion dollar industry. (Many billions? I don’t track.) People seem to waste their whole lives on trying to lose weight. I don’t get it.

Ok, I did Weight Watchers when I hit my lifetime maximum weight and I could no longer ride the rides at Disneyland Paris. That bothered me. Being kicked off a ride because I was too physically big was uncomfortable emotionally. So I didn’t want that to be true. Also: I was in the bdsm community and I was on the verge of leaving my Owner and I needed to hunt. So I did lose weight on purpose then.

Then it came back and I was a lot happier.

Then it went away and I wasn’t so happy.

Then it came back and I was a lot happier.

Here we go round again.

I think my lowest adult weight was 148 when I was depressed after Puppy left me and I stopped eating for a month. I was living on a Jamba Juice a day. I got the big size. Sometimes I could swallow cheese. Sometimes it made me puke. This happened right after I moved out on my own to live alone for the first time ever. No one was there to care. So I didn’t care.

My highest non-pregnant weight was 218 as measured at Weight Watchers. I suspect I was a bit heavier a few weeks previously when I was at Disneyland Paris. Pregnant was 222. In between pregnancies and for a lot of my life I hung out in the 180’s. During my previous “more fit” periods I hung out around 165. Running leads me into the low 150’s.

I know some people gain and lose more than a hundred pounds. I know people who have gained and lost more than two hundred pounds. A range of 70 pounds isn’t that extreme. But my body changes a lot. I understand that in the world of Fat Acceptance I max out at what some people consider “skinny fat”. But if I’m fat enough to have employees of department stores sneer at me and tell me I won’t find anything in their store and if I’m fat enough to have people yell it at me while I walk by… it counts.

And every time I gain and lose my body changes shape. I’m hoping that soon I will look matronly enough to be left alone. I notice the dangling chicken wings below my arms with delight. I have old lady arms! Yay!

I’m not dead. I get to be an elder. Even though I’ve never respected my elders, most other people do. People are getting nicer to me with every passing year.

I note these changes with happiness. I feel kind of confused by the people around me who want to remain as young looking as possible. Being young has not been a good stage for me. I want to leave it behind. Far, far behind.

I like being bad ass. I even like being hot. I don’t like being treated like I am responsible for the random desires of men I don’t know. Yeah, I used to be interested and I didn’t mind so much then. Things change. Figuring out the signals is really hard.

I don’t want to be hostile but I haven’t found a better way of getting men to take “no” the first time I say it. Any softer “no” leads to extra pushing. If I am sure the answer is “no” the first time I must say it with great conviction. Otherwise they will push much farther than I want them to. This is consistent.

Anyway. I’ve been running on schedule for about a week now. I’d been running inconsistently one to three times a week for a while. I trained semi-efficiently for the Oakland half in March and I seriously hurt by mile 11. I need to treat my body with more respect and train better this time. Which means being a lot more serious about my cross training and weight training and stretching.

Which means my body is going to change pretty fast. My body, much to my surprise, likes picking up muscle. The more exercise I do the more it snowballs. I come from a family of fit people. My brothers were sports nuts. They had some talent. Tommy’s team was on its way to the Little League nationals when he got hit by a car. (Not literally on the way. The game was a few weeks? days? away. I can’t remember. I was little and living in a different state.) Oops. I never did hear what came of the team. I was too little to care. My other brother was sixth in the state for cross country in high school. But he was expelled two weeks before graduation for having alcohol on campus so it didn’t go anywhere for him. He could have gone to college on scholarship. Whoops.

I understand more now about genetics. When I was a kid I mistook the fact that I was learning for being unable to learn. I thought that because the people around me were so much better than me and they always won that meant I always would lose and I had no ability to improve or ever win.

Now I feel really sad that no one ever stopped and said, “Dude. You are four. Stop comparing yourself to people who are five and eight years older than you. Go compete with people your age. You are doing just fine. Keep trying.”

I gave up before I ever tried. And moving the way I did meant that I never had… anything. I just stayed home because it was the only way to be safe. Being sedentary was mandatory. So I never improved and it became a self-perpetuating “I can’t because I don’t”.

The things I know now…

If I had somehow had the will to exercise I probably would have been a much scarier kid. Probably better that I preferred reading.

But my kids are buff. My kids have so much freedom to move. Sometimes my inner eight year old weeps at how unfair it is that my kids have so much freedom compared to her. That was probably one of the worst periods of “can not leave my room without pain being inflicted on me”. That piece of me is specifically alive and well and bitter as a pull out of my inner child. It is as close as I come to having multiple personalities. The traumas I incurred at different ages have left specific big knots of scar tissue.

I wasn’t hurt physically for all of my life. For most of the time I was just left alone. Even though I am an intensely social person. Just like Shanna, I came alive at the sight of another person. Shanna can, and does, play alone–but it’s very different from her interactions with people. She gets to be with people all day every day. Well, sometimes I tell them to go play and I spend an hour in the garage. But they have never ever been left actually alone in the house. Well, not beyond taking the trash out. I don’t forking count that. I’m on the property. I can hear them.

Stopping to pay attention to this connection (my inner child acting up means my body has more activation and energy and I feel pissy) is part of the re-parenting process. I feel self-conscious and bad because this is part of what I want to get from the home schooling process.

I have to work through my resentment of other people getting “better” than I had. It is a lot of conscious effort to relax and calm down and be able to be present with my children. I have to actively forgive myself for having the childhood I had. It was not my fault. Both of my children are well into the ages when I was out finding neighborhood kids for oral sex. My kids don’t know what oral sex is. It has never entered into their fuzzy little brains. They are too busy whacking things with swords. As they should.

In being nice to my children through their developmental stages I work through understanding what should have happened to me. I learn what appropriate behavior is by reading multiple developmental books and educational theory books. I cross reference and design a model of an “appropriate” teacher for this stage. And I embody it to the best of my ability.

When I fuck up I apologize, explain what I should be doing and I do better next time. Just like my kids do.

We are all in progress here. I tell them, “I have never been a mother to a six year old AND a three year old at the same time before. I am still learning how it works. I’m sorry I made a mistake.”

Our mistakes are small and our forgiveness is huge. It works out.

My children will never remember anything other than a mother who is physically fit. They will not understand that I spent most of my childhood in a depressed haze sitting very still watching the same few VHS tapes over and over and over.

I’m in one of those phases where I understand why the “Trauma Recovery” people say that you have to forgive. My mom was not in a position to give me what I needed. Not at all. Not even a little bit. I can see why I was so hard for her. I’m actually impressed she didn’t beat me more often. Now that I understand the context of her life better… oh poor Mom. I’m not being sarcastic. I feel really bad for her. But I don’t think she could keep from fucking up my kids. Maybe in thirteen or so years I can look her up. We’ll see.

I am a very active person. It’s kind of insane that I spent my childhood as stationary as I did. I get why it happened. But it was really crazy-making.

I did have periods of activity. Auntie was good about making kids go play in the woods. Well, more accurately… she worked night shifts and I was alone most of the time when I lived with her. So I went out into the woods. I couldn’t wander neighborhoods in the random other places we lived because I got lost or got into fist fights. Auntie’s house was consistent enough that I could learn the lay out.

My relationship to my body has always been one of frustration. I have always been torn between being mad that I’m not bigger and being mad that I’m not smaller. Ok, I’ve lost the desire to be smaller. When I was younger and trying harder to pick up sex partners I was wildly jealous of the women who were 5’1″ or shorter. Now I think it would be inconvenient. I retain my desire to be bigger so that I could be more physically capable. I just don’t have the leverage to do some things. It is really annoying.

It has always been weird how much I trade off using my actual weight for using strength as I get smaller. Many of the tricks to use my weight as leverage stop working. Even twenty pounds of difference is a lot. That’s a lot of strength to make up.

Bodies are complicated.

In the midst of birthday season.

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Our birthdays kind of bunch up. End of May, beginning of June. End of August, beginning of September. Then I have a blissful eight months to stop talking about them. Probably more like seven months.

Anyway. It is birthday season. So my birthday is on my mind. The kids are already telling me they don’t want me to go. I hear you. I want to go. I want to go off by myself.

I was thinking Harbin. But now I’m not. I looked around at other options. I think I am going to go to Calistoga. I think I will sleep in the van. I will splurge on body care awesome stuff. Because I get a personal budget and I’m allowed to use it. Noah buys video games. I buy access to mud. We are allowed to be different.

Looking at these websites is more fun than looking at porn. And I don’t twitch when my kids walk in the room.

Happy Fathers Day

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Today is a day to wake up and email all the Daddies. I have a lot of adopted/foster Daddies. I’m kind of a charity case in that department. I have Daddies with no biological children and I have Daddies that sit me at the table next to their biological children (who are near me in age).

They include me in their lives to varying degrees. It is never as much as I “want” but it is what I get to have. I understand that and I don’t bitch.

I am very careful to never, ever complain that a Daddy isn’t giving me enough attention. I know better. I know what happens to little girls who don’t make their Daddies happy. They stop having those relationships. You have to be fun the whole time you are with a Daddy.

Obviously I don’t spend much time with these men now that I have children and I can’t pull off such a facade so easily.

I need more support now than I have needed since my own early childhood. So I don’t see my Daddies much now because I can’t keep the whine out of my voice. If you aren’t fun, you aren’t invited.

I understand.

Also: I’m not willing to bring my kids to naked, drug-enhanced camping sessions. So I lost access to quite a few crowds of friends. I have no trouble going to such events (whether I do drugs or wear clothes or not I am pretty comfortable around naked high people) so it isn’t a judgment thing.

My kids are not going to grow up with that as “normal”.

It is a specific, conscious choice. They have grown up around casual nudity, but not around casual drug use. They see parents who barely drink, and who use medication grudgingly for mood control. Otherwise they don’t see drug use modeled. It is going to stay that way for years.

Right now the party line is “Drugs/medication are only to be used as prescribed by a doctor for the official use.” And all the super fun things we used to have in the house were passed on to other worthy childless individuals. They are having loads of fun. Good for them.

Am I a hypocrite? Maybe. I’ll talk to them about drugs when they are teenagers after they haven’t grown up with it. I won’t candy-coat anything or lie about anything then.

They are little kids and have poor judgment and a little slip could be fatal so easily just because of their body mass. The only reasonable line is a hard no stance.

Did you notice that whole my kid’s weight is in the 20-something%? (Yeah, I’ve already forgotten. Because I care so much.) She could get alcohol poisoning rather easily. Yes, I know that little kids drink without dying all the time. My brother Tommy enjoyed tequila shots from the age of three. I heard lots of stories. He would go out and drink with the men. They thought it was hilarious. I don’t know how many they would let him have.

I’d like to mention that Tommy was hit by a car because he had such a substance abuse problem by twelve.

My kids are not going to grow up with normalized drug and alcohol use. I believe in better living through chemistry but I also believe that you should be pretty careful what you put in your body. You need to make specific choices. While you are a kid and your body is growing, your cells should remain as whole as possible. What you do as an adult is your business. Get to your full potential before you slam doors shut.

I know a number of growth stunted men who are sad they did so much methamphetamine as teenagers. Hey, sucks to be you. (Ok, they were never going to be tall. It probably didn’t stunt their growth that much.)

Alcohol is poison. Marijuana seems to make it much harder for teenage boys (not as much chicks–no one is sure why) to find a direction in life. If you start when you are older it doesn’t have the same ambition blocking effect, and this shit is researched. No I don’t have the research in front of me so I’m not citing it. I gave the book back to my shrink and I haven’t bought it for myself. I probably should. Not today.

So I feel comfortable starting with “Drugs are wonderful tools that can be misused to become very dangerous easily. Kind of like my electric saw. Just like you exercise a lot of caution with it, be careful with drugs.”

My kids are getting a weird education. We read books about living with parents who have ___________ health problem. You name it, we’ve read about it. I want my kids to have scope for different kinds of lives. I am consciously and specifically working towards children who are not default able-ists. They understand that different people have different support needs in life. We are all highly variable.

It’s not a bad thing. It is just what is.

My kids and I spend a fair bit of time window shopping as a way to pass time. We go out and interact with the world. We talk to people. We walk around. They see and interact with a wide variety of kinds of bodies.

It is neat watching them improve. Shanna is way better at perceiving brush-offs than she used to be. It used to be hard to get her to walk ten feet down the side walk because she got to the first person and was content to stay all day. Now she can complete a walk with only 3-40 minutes of chatting per person. It is almost moving at a measurable pace.

My patience has grown by leaps and bounds compared to what it used to be. Some people meditate. I attempt to take Their Royal Heiny’s for a walk and deal with being on the circuit with beauty pageant queens. “I must stop and greet my adoring fans.” Once in a while… Shanna actually fucking says that. Want to know what is worse? They are her adoring fans.” They’ve been talking to her for years. They think she is great. When they see me running by myself… they ask for her.

Yup, sorry the chaperone got out alone. I know I am less interesting. Deep sigh.

Naw, it’s ok. I think it is hilarious. I’m glad it is happening. It certainly lets me feel like I’m off the hook for being a narcissist. Ha. I haven’t been the princess for years. Sigh.

Today will be fun. I should get up and go to the store to get apples so Shanna can make Noah apple pancakes for breakfast. They negotiated without checking the larder. I kinda wish they hadn’t done that, but what can you do?

Shanna’s new six year old chore is to be responsible for breakfast one day a week. She is surprisingly good at it.

Watching them fills me with pride. I know that kids do what kids do. I don’t think my kids are “special”. Only they are. Because I have been with them almost every day of their lives. I think if you count up all the hours I’ve missed and compressed them it is less than three months. It is going to explode soon though because they are doing more and more classes. Shanna is probably actually getting closer to six months of time away total. If I’m realistic.

But still. I get to be with them most of the time. I’ve watched every minute of helplessness melt into competence. I’ve stared and applauded every fucking milestone.

My baby is responsible for cooking breakfast. I feel pride. Even if it is stupid. My kid is learning things. She’s responsible. She’s helpful. She wants to be productive. She wants to know how to do things.

My kid will know how to cook more things at ten than I knew how to cook at twenty-five. I learn off the internet and out of books. I have had a few female friends kind of sort of show me a few things. Mostly I didn’t see food prepared as a child and I showed up at adulthood living on ramen. And things I could microwave.

Watching my kid learn the life skills that have been hard and embarrassing for me is really trippy. She learns things with ease. She doesn’t struggle. She doesn’t resist. She oozes into understanding. I see her take a few practice swishes in the air before she tries something and then: presto. She just does it.

Sometimes she spills. When spills she says, “Ah shucks. I hate it when that happens.” Just like I do.

She’s learning about cleaning up the space and cross-contamination worries. She can’t rattle off the names of specific illnesses yet, but she will soon.

She’s still pretty serious about saying she wants to be a doctor. I am not holding anyone to the career they pick when they are five, and yet.

I talk to her like she is someone who might have to do medical school. You need to figure out how to memorize lots of long and complicated names if you do that. You need to have a rich and varied understanding of how things layer together.

No time like the present to start learning that.

It’s not just about what happened, you have to care about why it happened and how. You have to think systematically about how to solve the riddle/puzzle. Although sometimes staring into space at the blinking lights and thinking abstractly brings you to the right answer.

It’s tricky. Finding the right answer. You can’t always go straight at a problem. Sometimes you have to figure out how to sidle in sideways.

Social problems. How to fix a toy that breaks. How to make food. How to ride your bike. All of these problems have solutions. Figuring it out might be tricky. Don’t worry, with enough patience we will get to the right answer.

She nods and looks up at me with perfect trust. Like I am Yoda. (I almost said “fucking Yoda” and I decided that had implications that didn’t work for the sentence. Ahem.)

Right now if you ask my kids if I would lie to them the response is something like, “Sometimes in obviously silly ways but never ever for real.” I’ve heard other people ask. Yeah–I do tell silly lies sometimes. I make it obvious in super dramatic massively over the top body language and tone of voice changes. Dropping and raising my voice multiple times on each word. Like dropping and raising the pitch. My whole body will shake and twitch and contort.

You can’t miss that something changed.

So I do lie for effect sometimes. When it is funny.

But no, I don’t lie to my kids. I evade. I tell them the part of the truth they need to hear today. I recognize that their ability to interpret what I say is limited in scope. I reread development books over and over to remind myself of “appropriate” disclosure. I do not treat them like my friends. I do not “share” my thoughts with them much.

When I have a really bad day and I’m crying a lot the kids ask why. At this point the patter is something like, “The things that happen to you in your life inprint on your brain. They make you who you are. They decide how you react to things. The things that happened to me during my childhood were very different than the things that are happening in your childhood and sometimes when I notice how different I feel sad. I wish someone had loved me the way I love you. Watching you makes me realize that I wasn’t actually a bad little girl. I just didn’t have a mom who was able to take care of me. ”

Shanna gives me a hug. Calli (if she is in the room) gives me a hug. Then we move on to playing and the tears kind of roll and I smile anyway. I make sure it is the real-fake-smile. The one I perfected in front of the mirror many years ago.

People usually know a fake smile because it doesn’t reach your eyes. I learned how to control the eye muscles a long time ago. That’s how you make people believe you are “happy”. You scrunch the eye muscles. The lips actually matter less.

So I play with them and hope that they never read this.

This is the happiest I have ever been. I am grateful for every single minute that I get to spend with them. I am glad I get to watch a happy childhood. I don’t resent you. I’m not mad. I am jealous. I wish I could have had someone love me. I wish I had been protected.

I used to rage at Noah because he was not protective. He was totally bewildered. He didn’t have any idea what I was expecting of him. Really most of our engagement was a rage fest. He wrote a lot of long, private journal entries in which he worried about me abusing him. Because I’m a nosy mother fucker there isn’t a “private” in this house.

He says I haven’t yelled at him like that since. I’m pretty careful to listen to feedback that I’m bordering on abusive.

Ack. Kid woke up. Time to go.

Control

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I’ve been thinking a lot about behavioral modification and control. I mean, these are frequent topics for me but they’ve been using a lot of bandwidth lately.

What do I want to be? Who do I want to be when I grow up? Am I allowed to be that person while I am fulfilling the same roles I have always filled for people who will not meet my needs?

I have some friends, at least a few, and many of them are guys. Not all of them. I’m not one of those women who “can’t get along with women”. Which I always hear as “it is easier to manipulate men so I stick with them”. I like and hate everyone equally. At least in terms of group identifiers. I like Christians as much as I dislike some of the dogma associated with the religion. I like guys as much as I hate them. Individuals of course all get their own readings.

“When women say “all men” they hurt the feelings of the nice guys.”

Maybe the nice guys need to learn that when people are writing something they aren’t always writing to and for you. If you can’t handle reading something unless it was specifically written to coax you then you have bigger problems than anyone else can solve for you.

I read a lot of very anti-white writing. I read a lot of people of color who have tremendous chips on their shoulders. They just fucking hate white people. I’m white. Do I feel like I should get defensive and try to get them to prove that they don’t hate *me* because I’m *special*.

Or would that make me a self-involved asshole? Think hard here.

I know more men who are not rapists than I know rapists. By a large margin. That does not mean I should give strangers the benefit of the doubt. Sorry. Even if it hurts your widdle feewings.

I don’t figure out who the predators are by looking at them. I do default to assuming that the less physically attractive someone is the lower the chances they are a successful predator. I am more relaxed around men who seem non-sexual enough.

Which is probably something that causes those men enormous pain in their lives. See how I can’t fucking win? The signals that do signal safety are things that are offensive to really judge.

But even that isn’t full proof. I know better. So I’m paranoid.

I don’t think that most of the men in my life would have the balls to attack me at this stage. I have done my best to develop a somewhat scary reputation and those things spread. Folks who know me are fairly safe. But a lot of my male friends are what I’d call Alpha. They are bossy motherfuckers and by and large that works for them. They don’t get called on it much. They have carved out little lives where they are tyrants and everyone around them does what they say and falls in line and things work out. They aren’t violent or “abusive”. But they will grind on you till you verbally give them what they want. I know a lot of men like this. Only a few women.

These men take a lot out of me. They take as much out of me emotionally and mentally as managing a large group of children. For one person. Seriously–I can manage six kids on a day trip by myself far more easily than I can have a friendly chat with many of my male friends individually.

I’m starting to see that as a problem.

As I get older the needs in my life are becoming more predictable. I have more of a schedule. I’m not always moving. I’m not always adjusting to an entirely new cast of characters. I have added in the home school crowd in the last three years and then a running buddy after that. Otherwise I haven’t been picking up new relationships lately. That’s weird. I have been dusting off older friendships. I have been spreading myself out differently.

Sustainability is more of an issue now. I can’t drop many balls in order to completely adapt to a new environment. That’s a privilege I have lost. I didn’t know it was a privilege when I had it. Now “normal” people make more sense to me. Why they say “I can’t” to so many of the things I propose.

Life is different now. I have to have a very different amount and kind of control. Now it’s a marathon, not a series of sprints.

My running buddy and I have decided that it is more sane (given our life constraints) for us to do a 10k at the beginning of October and a half marathon at the end of November. She thinks we will be walking. I don’t think so. I think our first 10k time was pretty fast. I think we will be able to train up to having my third official half marathon be as fast or faster than the second. We’ll see.

Running with her is fun. She and I have a lot in common. If our lives were more similar I think we would conflict like oil and water. Luckily our life constructs are so entirely different that we don’t have to worry about our (ridiculously firm) opinions getting clashed with. We are both very encouraging of taking up space and what that means. We are both also working on control in a variety of parts in our lives. But very differently so we can talk without feeling judged for how we do it. Our circumstances are entirely different. We need different tactics.

A lady I like and respect says she is thinking of starting a discussion group for women once a month. I would drive to Redwood City for that. I would feel comfortable and safe talking to people that woman would invite. I would be different from most of the people she invites. I may or may not be the emotionally explosive (we’ll see) but I will be able to blurt something, then apologize for tone and rephrase and they will try to hear me. The stakes will be low.

When I get too tired from the emotional labor of translating from my brain into “difficult self-centered man language” (obviously not all men or I wouldn’t be bothering to specify a sub-group) I get really testy and pissy. I take it out on everyone who walks by. I feel brittle and made of glass. Like the slightest lean of an arm on my boundaries might shatter them. Then I withdraw and spend a lot of time crying.

I probably need to pay more attention to who makes me react that way and pull back from all of those relationships. I’m starting to see how the cost is becoming higher than I can pay. I don’t have enough spoons to have to process someone that much. And the only way to get them to stop hammering on you is to keep arguing until you win or meekly say they are right a few times so they will back off.

I’m not fucking letting them win their bullshit arguments. I could start using some variation of “You are being an asshole. Shut the fuck up.” But I don’t think that would go over that well.

My other option is to drop the friendships. Which will result in its own bitterness and trauma. Because life works that way.

Knowing you and being your friend is very hard work. Sometimes I can do it and sometimes I can’t. Being friends with me is very similar, so clearly it isn’t an “only men” thing. But aping this form of masculine behavior (because clearly what the people who object to my attitude are really objecting to is that I am a woman with this attitude–from a man it’s ok) causes me other problems.

Men don’t like losing dominance challenges to women (unless they really like it and that’s a whole different ball of string). Although many men are just flat used to losing dominance challenges and they sort of sigh with resignation and get on with it. The fight has long-since gone out of them.

Then there’s Noah. He neither likes it nor has a desire to deal with it much. We try to solve this by not challenging one another because neither of us appreciate losing dick contests. We have different strengths. Cool. You go be awesome over there and I’ll be awesome over here and we can wave. Both of us are grudging losers. But we don’t hold grudges. And we are willing to be convinced when someone has good data. So it works out.

So clearly not all men suck. Yeah, I get it. But some really do.

I have control over very few things in this life. I sorta have control of my mind and body. I mean, I’m not crazy effective with my body but I’m relatively fit. Not mentally. Oh man. But I get by. My deficiencies exist in ways that I can work around and develop counter-balancing strengths that balance things out. Life works that way.

We aren’t all cookie cutters. Trying to develop the control to just do what others tell you is antithetical to developing the control that allows you really define yourself.

You must pick one or the other. If you want to be obedient, you give up the ability to really judge what you are. Your very essence and priorities and impulses have to be secondary to what someone else wants.

I am not a secondary character.

I have been. I was because I wanted to fully embody what that meant. I wanted to understand it.

Apparently I decided I don’t want to be it. That’s been an interesting process.

I don’t know what my very-argumentative-men friends get from knowing me. I think I need to stop caring. They take so much from me that I don’t have enough left to do what I need to do. That’s not fair to me.

I don’t really care if cut-off culture is “mean”. It is mean of you to come to my house and argue with me for hours such that I spend hours crying. For years.

Why do I accept every friendship on offer?

Because I do. Because I always have. I let people come until they don’t want to come any more. But sometimes they have to put up with me being explosive while they are here because I am just fucking out of cope. Lots of people take that as a sign and never come back.

I drive people away. I don’t do it on purpose. I do it when I lose control. When I can no longer choke down how bitter and angry and violent and hateful I feel.

It doesn’t have to be at the person in the room. Maybe I’m just having a day where I’m heavily processing stuff about my biological family. If I’ve done a lot of very hostile writing that morning the whole day might be off. Then I’ll lose the reins on my tongue. Something that is highly tinged by my ambient hostility will come out. Whoops. I didn’t really mean it. No really, I didn’t mean it. I said it because I’m feeling spiteful and that was twisting the way I think about you. I’m really sorry. I’m really sorry.

Is isolation really the best solution? Just work on cutting people out of my life until I get to the point where I can always control my mouth when I am with people?

When I hear people complain that someone requires them to “walk on egg shells” I hear “I don’t want to have to care about who is listening before I speak”.

Yeah, some people personalize everything they hear and decide that the speaker must be talking about them personally and therefore the speaker hates them and is a Mean Evil Person. Yup, I know.

I read a lot of rabidly anti-white writers. They are fully unapologetic as they rant about how evil they perceive white people to be, yes, all white people.

I read this and I try to understand why they believe what they believe. Why it has come to be unavoidably, undeniably true for them.

Everyone has a story. Their story makes sense for them whether you like it or not.

What kind of control a person has decides a lot about what kind of life they have. How do you teach self-control? Financial control? Work ethic? The ability to be adaptable and able to just make something work with whatever it is you have in front of you? These things are all experiential. You have to do them and make mistakes and learn how to do it right. The younger you start the better.

I confess that I feel a little growing anxiety around Shanna not reading yet. I’m reading dyslexia information with dismay. Most of the markers for a diagnosis of dyslexia involve social problems caused by the social stigma of being slow. I am choosing to just read the development books that say “It’s normal for many children to transpose letters till seven or eight.” I notice. But I’m not “doing anything” to correct her.

Everything I have read says that some children are just not physically ready to read until seven or eight. Their brains are too busy doing other things and when you try to force it, you lose a lot of self-confidence that can’t be gotten back.

I’d rather have Shanna deciding what she should be doing with her time right now. She wants her parents to read to her. She isn’t ready to start reading. Ok. I didn’t start reading until the end of first grade. I didn’t really expect her to be required to start reading before I did even though so many of her little friends read. We know a high number of hyperlexic children.

I need to not look at hyperlexia and think my kid is slow. That’s not rational. Good grief.

Shanna’s comprehension skills are several grade levels higher than her physical ability. Lots of research says that will equalize if she’s given the time and space to live and be and learn what she needs to be learning right now instead of worrying about that.

I read the nay-sayers too. I know the con arguments favor conscription into the systematic learning enclave for the sake of party unity.

I don’t think everyone is the same. And I don’t think that everyone has the same ability to be able to conform. I know what the standards are. My kids are always going to be above and below their peers in varying metrics. People are like that. The hope is that they will come away without the bullying and belittling that exists in public schools for any variation.

I’ve been to a lot of public schools. They are all brutal. Some people get lucky and they are in the middle or they are high in the pack so they do ok by the system.

I don’t think my kids will be in the middle.

I don’t think they will always be high across the board. Ha. Shanna isn’t that coordinated. She makes up for it with tenacity and endurance. She’ll try again. And again. And again.

Sometimes watching her fail at things fills me with awe. She knows it is possible for someone to do this. So even though this hurts (and occasionally out will pop “shit”–I ignore it) she keeps trying. I’ve seen her whack her head dozens of times trying to do something. She did get it right eventually. Stubborn fucker. My kid.

Calli, by contrast, is slightly less persistent but much more initally successful. I’m in trouble. I think Calli stands and watches Shanna’s fuck-ups and learns. She is much more able to figure out how to do something right after Shanna has figured it out. Ha.

School is almost out. We are going to be riding the bikes in the parking lot every day. Side walk learning was just a non-starter. She kept falling into driveways. Lots of scrapes. Lots of not-willing-to-keep-doing-that.

She sees no upside. “But I can already run to all the places you want to ride bikes to. It’ll be fine. I’ll just run along side you.”

Only then I have to go at the speed of your running compared to the speed of bikes. NO.

Calli can outdistance her with a balance bike. It’s pretty impressive to me.

In the last month I’ve had a whole bunch of people ask me “Is Calli tall?” Uhh, I don’t know? For the comparative age she is much taller than Shanna was. She’s wearing size five clothes and she turns four at the end of the summer. I think they are only 5″ apart in height. I don’t know what the average gap is between siblings who are two years apart in age. And I don’t know if Shanna is tall. I haven’t been paying attention to such metrics. I could go look it up. I mean, I am on a forking computer. Shanna is in the 88% and the 24% for weight. Calli is in the 96% for height and 57% for weight.

Holy shit. I guess they are tall. And I was right for perceiving that Calli was on a faster growth curve than Shanna. I think Calli will be the taller adult. That’s my current crystal prediction.

On the last few pediatrician visits we haven’t talked percentiles. I didn’t ask and it didn’t come up. I suppose he isn’t worried so he doesn’t say? He just says, “They are growing well. Good job.” and does a no-touch pat on the head.

Wow. I haven’t looked at percentiles in years. I’m writing it down mostly because this is the only way I will have later record.

Since Calli is by far the more coordinated one we should put her in basketball. Ha. I play more catch with Calli. Shanna has never liked it much. I’ve always tried. She likes “fetch” more than catch. It’s kind of hilarious. She’s happy for the interaction. She’s happy to be met where she is. She doesn’t like having balls thrown at her. But she’s happy to chase one for the fun of it.

I can understand that.

Put your own oxygen mask on first.

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I used to think it was useful for me to think of people as “family”. Tonight I got to have dinner then go to the Diana Gabaldon speaking engagement with a woman I used to think of as a big sister. I talked to her a lot when I was younger. She did a lot to guide me in the bdsm community. She helped me learn how to keep myself safe.

It’s been a while now that I have consciously eschewed the chosen family dynamic. I have friends. I have really wonderful, excellent friends. I am truly blessed in my friends.

So it’s weird sometimes when I spend time with people I used to think of as “family”. I can feel how my inner walls and boundaries have shifted. In the main I feel like it is a positive thing because I have a lot less hostility towards the idea that my friends are giving me every speck they have to give me than I do towards the idea that they are my “family” and they uhhhh… don’t meet a lot of my needs.

Do I have entitlement issues? Rage issues? Oh yes. I have a firm idea of what “being family” means. I experience it with Noah. I am teaching my daughters how to do this, but it’s different with “chosen family”. I drive people away. Or I walk away.

I have expectations and that screws me every time. The secret to happiness is low expectations.

But you can only keep your expectations low if you get your needs met some other way or if you are so beat down you have stopped hoping.

Sometimes I’m afraid of the bottomless pit of need I feel inside me. The desperate need for attention, affection, love, permission to live, approval.

Yeah, I take any relationship that is offered. They all have things to teach me. They all have things I want. Every person I walk by on the street is a missed opportunity. Sometimes I feel like I spend a lot of time grieving every single one of them.

I want you to love me. I want you to love me. I want you to love me.

I’m selfish. It’s not like I’m really walking around feeling like, “Oh man! Let me love you!” That shit sounds like work.

I really enjoyed getting to hear Diana Gabaldon speak tonight. She was very blatant in her enjoyment of the ego stroking she gets. It was hilarious to watch. She glowed. She’s 62 but from where I was sitting I would have guessed she was in her mid 30’s. She has a kid my age. And one older, I think–I may have misheard because it was loud.

She’s still happily and lustily married. I approve.

She talked a lot about her life and her career arc. She’s a good story teller and she’s obviously said that whole thing hundreds of times. Very smooth and entertaining.

I’m… too twitchy. I’m always afraid I’m on the verge of offending people.

I offend people. And then I feel very sad. Because that offended feeling is what they will walk away with. In their head, that feeling is me.

Oh man I hate that. It’s better to err on the side of being quiet. Only I don’t do that. Because I’m an asshole. But I’m a sad asshole.

Cause I embrace contradictory emotional states. I’m told by experts that such an ability is part of the reason I’m not dead.

Sometimes it feels weird understanding that historically, women like me rarely do as well as I have. I’m not talking about Noah’s money. I did get a bachelors degree and a teaching credential. I did successfully teach. I worked in theatre for several years and did just fine. I worked in libraries for years.

I go out and find ways to be part of things that work for me. I usually take small and/or support roles because I know I won’t be around long. I try my hardest to leave a good impression. I want people to think well of me. So I look for ways to work.

Often that work is social. I like seeing people. I feel validated by people in a way that is surely unhealthy. I do have crowd management skills. You can’t stage manage dance shows for small children without developing them. I like to believe that I’m charming. I like to believe I can turn out a descent conversation for a wide variety of people.

I’m not just a one trick pony. I’m Downer Debbie and I Deliver but I do also have other modes. I am not interested in online dick contests about academic theory (fuck you, grad school) so I don’t get into nuanced responses to the educational theory I read about but I’m happy to talk about it if asked. I travel and have neat stories that conveniently leave out the bits about hysterical crying and beating my head on the ground. These days I talk plants. That’s SO SAFE! It’s an awesome topic. Gardening! Running is safe to talk about.

I’m not just that skanky ho who talks about depressing shit any more.

More tracks. I still have great sex stories. But I need to be asked for them. Or I default to assuming people would retreat with their fingers in their ears screaming, “EWWWW TMI!” So I don’t write about sex much lately. Obviously sometimes I don’t give a shit and I tell stories, but only as they feel like a need to discuss topic.

I’m still obsessed with sex. But now it is legally and “morally” permissible because that just means Noah’s life is good. I do owe it to a man, don’t I?

Ugh and ick and weird. Sex is so fucking weird. It gets weirder every year. More complex. More complicated. Can’t I just go back to tracing the outline of a knot in a piece of wood on dicks and be done with processing this crap?

Even when sex was “simple” (ha!) it was never simple for me.

Sex is tied up in money and rage and entitlement and perversion and pain and love and tenderness and fear.

You don’t pick what you have the talent to write about. Or for fuck’s sake I would pick another talent.

Distraction

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If you do much research on mental illness, or really any undesirable behavior you want to eliminate, distraction is key.

This week in therapy my shrink spent a lot of time harping on the idea that I need to start being a lot more choosy about who I allow into my life. I always wonder how much my shrinks judge me. No, actually I don’t wonder very often or I would be very paranoid. Occasionally I wonder. When therapists very rarely encourage me towards squeezing people out of my life (it is rare but it happens) I always wonder how long they have sat on that impulse.

When did my description of my friend start bothering you? They never tell me, of course.

Therapy is such a weird beast. It is a relationship but not a a real one. It is unidirectional and unbalanced. There is honesty but not full honesty. Truth but not the whole truth. The whole truth involves someones opinions which I shouldn’t be taking into consideration.

I shouldn’t change to make my therapist happy. She otherwise isn’t part of my life. I should not alter the support I get to make her happy.

But sometimes you do have to follow their advice because they are right. She doesn’t say “so and so is icki” she says “what do you get from this relationship and what do you give to it? If the balance doesn’t work for you then you need to move on”. She says to me, “I know that for most of your life you have had to accept relationships with anyone who wanted to have a relationship with you. That is no longer true. You need to keep your children safe.”

I was raped over and over because I made a lot of stupid choices. Because I accept any relationship that is offered. Because I don’t say “no” when I should.

Yeah yeah yeah people think of me as being overly firm with my “no” delivery. You only know what my life is like after more than half a dozen rapes or more. The people who have known me the longest met me when I had been raped at least half a dozen times.

The things that happen to you change you. I did not know how to say “no”. I have learned to say it loudly and firmly. Loudly and firmly enough that I often bother people who wish I was “softer” about the process. Oh fucking well.

“Most people have no more than five people in their true inner circle.” (Quoting my shrink again.)

Jenny. Noah. K. My kids. Pam. That’s six. I have absolute trust in their love for me. Do I feel that way about anyone else? Not really. Jenny bought her way in by being the only person who comforted me during a horrible childhood. K has been the single most helpful person by a humongous margin during the parenting journey. I talk to her more often than anyone I don’t live with. I think she is the most motherly friend I have ever had. She has actually shown up when the rubber meets the road for the past few years. Pam has been with me for more than half of my life. To the best of my recollection I have gotten really pissed off at her, but never for actual boundary violations. I can’t remember one.

Other people were in the inner circle at other points. When they were able to show up. Life changes. I don’t stop loving them. Not a jot. But I don’t have trust any more. If I search my body this moment I’m not angry about the fact that I have seen the waxing and waning of so many friendships. They were with me when it made sense. It doesn’t make as much sense any more.

I can’t explain what it was like in my childhood. I was not allowed to cry. My crying irritated people and it was beaten out of me. That’s a lot of why I cry so much now. I was horribly brutalized and then punished if I grieved.

I want to write in excruciating detail about my current emotional outpouring towards people. But I don’t want it as part of the record. There are names I don’t write about. Lots of them. There are lots of specific details I don’t want to announce in public. Mostly because I’m aware that my perceptions are highly biased and I’m a much bigger judgmental asshole than people understand and I need to keep it that way.

I don’t want the fall out. I’m that lame. So I’m having trouble working through the emotions. Writing things out is a lot of how I get rid of things. It has become very useful for me over the years. (Yes, people who like people journals get these things out without the public fall out. Clearly I don’t write that way. You don’t get to pick the writing talent you get. You just get it.)

So I’ve been looking for distraction. Painting went so breathtakingly well. The only time I raised my voice was when Shanna was backing into an open paint can. (It was a good save. She wasn’t cranky.) *phew* I did it.

I’m reorganizing toys again. Because I like playing house. Because it makes me happy. I refine how I organize as I watch them use things. I try to figure out where how to have things “live” where they are played with. I want to make their set up convenient for them so it is easy for them to clean up.

It is hard to find a system when you are a kid. You literally don’t have the schema to do it. Kids need to be shown how to find systems. Some people are naturally very gifted, but usually there is the overall framework of systemization within their life and that is why they are so accustomed.

I’m not very good at providing constant systemic living. I will never run a prison. I believe that needs and wants change dramatically over time and it is good to be constantly tweaking your system to be more appropriate for where you are today.

Sustainability is hard to find. What can you keep up? Deciding to be rigid in your system means you exclude millions of awesome options. I like trying lots of things. I need more flexibility.

It is hard reading my shrinks’ evaluation of me. I don’t think it is accurate that I can’t work because of relational issues. Although I had a lot of job volatility throughout my work life. Ha.

Today will be fun. I have babysitting time this morning. I am going to sit here and do all the work for the home school yearbook. (I’m a slacker. I should have done this a month ago.) I need to go to REI. That will be festive. I’m glad I can do it without the kids. I would like to work on the reading list for the book, but I only get three hours. I will need to get it done soon. Blah.

I need to do scheduling today. I need to plan out my running and exercise. I’m doing a half marathon with a friend in October and I’m really not doing appropriate exercise to support that. I have to start. It takes planning or I just don’t get it done. Deep sigh.

I don’t understand how other people naturally just do exercise. I have to plan how I will force myself. I have to have a reason to exercise–an upcoming obligation that will require my body to have something it doesn’t have right now. Long-term planning is too hard.

Distraction. What is distraction? What is focus? What am I doing with my life? Are the people who come and go the focus or a distraction? Is the painting a distraction or a focus? Is reorganizing the toys so they are easier for the kids to clean up a distraction or a focus?

Isn’t it all about your priorities? Isn’t it different for every person you ask?

Is writing a distraction from my life or one of the focuses in my life? Gardening? House maintenance (both of the repair and of the cleaning variety)?

What is life?

What does it mean to have a focus in your life? I read a lot about what other people do with their time. You can tell what people care about by looking at how they spend their time.

It’s ok that we are all different. If we were all the same that would be boring. We need symbiotic relationships.

The inner circle doesn’t mean that you only have relationships with people you trust that much. There are lots of other kinds of relationships. It is ok to share smaller pieces of yourself with people.

And it’s ok to walk away when it no longer works for you.

It doesn’t make me a bad person. People come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. Not everyone will be there forever.

There are some perverts who probably shouldn’t be around my kids. I recognize that in a larger sense–my kids are not exposed to the broader bdsm community.

Things that are ok for me aren’t necessarily ok for my kids. My kids are impressionable.

Boundaries are complicated.

What makes someone an asshole? Caring about their own needs to the point where they are ok with other people getting hurt sometimes as they take care of themselves.

What makes someone a bitch? Saying or doing things to hurt other people on purpose to be spiteful.

Notice how the gendered one is a lot nastier? I notice that in my language.

I’m an asshole. I try hard to not be a bitch.

I don’t have time to explain why this dude is wrong. There are so many ways he is wrong that I would permanently damage my arms. Ain’t worth it.

I get to walk away. Yeah, it might hurt you but I am not obligated to sit around and tend your feelings. Notice how you have never tended mine? Fuck right off.

But spite isn’t necessary. What’s the difference? When you are writing, what’s the damn difference?

Well, I say fuck you to the universe but I don’t say it to people. I don’t publicly (or privately) slam people when I end a relationship. In general I maintain a policy of being very positive when I talk about former friends/partners/acquaintances. I’m well-fucking-aware that you are judged by how you judge other people

So I’m an asshole, but I try to limit the scope.

I always have the right to walk away. It is the most American attitude one can have. Well, or the other American attitude “I have the right to own a gun so I can shoot people who seem scary“.

I seem scary to a lot of people. To the point where strangers will comment on it in public. I worry a lot about guns.

I kind of hope that the next revolution in this country is a call to disarmament. Citizens give up their guns so that police can de-militarize.

Wouldn’t it be nice?

Wouldn’t it be nice to stop hearing about mass shootings at schools?

And wouldn’t it be nice if white people were called terrorists when they instill terror just like people of other races? Parity in discussion would help us figure out the common solutions.

I need to answer a whole bunch of emails. I haven’t forgotten you. I just… haven’t scheduled yet. Scheduling goes in batches. I can’t handle adding things in between scheduling-fests. Then I get “over scheduled” and I’m shaking by the end of the month. It sucks.

Tonight I get to have dinner with an old friend before we go to the Diana Gabaldon reading. I’m excited. There’s a new book in a series I love.

This will be the very first time I’ve ever been to a reading for an author I know. I have heard random people at college but I had no previous knowledge of them. A step towards fandom I guess?

What is the focus of your life? How do your actions support that? How does your time spent support that? How does your energy spent support that?

When you are old, what will you appreciate more? That you spent time working in your garden or that you spent time with people you will definitely not know by then? Depends on the person. Depends on how the time with them is spent.

Sometimes you need to pick the garden.

Boundaries are hard. Being an asshole is hard.

Good day.

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Today we painted. So we had a good day. It felt nice to stay home and not have to be careful what I said or how I moved. If I cussed I didn’t have to feel guilty. (My kids tune out my frustrated grumbling.) Really, I didn’t grumble much today other than when I slammed my finger twice in five minutes. I was using a sharp metal tool. That sucked donkey dick and yes I yelled “fuck”. I don’t feel bad. My kids just say, “Oh poor mommy. Do you need a kiss?”

I got a new letter of recommendation from my therapist. It is time to renew my medical card. I feel pretty shitty about the way I was described. It is simple and literal and accurate and yup my body sucks. But there are no cats in America and the streets are paved with cheese so everything will turn out fine.

“Do you like being this way?” No, not so much.

But today I got to paint a picture. (Bailey-I didn’t see your comment until I was wearing jammies.)

The kids helped a lot, more than you would guess by the final product. You can’t tell in the picture but I used a bunch of glitter all over. It’s sparkly and fun.

I’m going to bring the armoire like piece of furniture out of the playroom and create a false wall so that the kids can have a “play room” behind it in the corner of the garage. I’m going to bring the play kitchen out here.

Moving things around my house is satisfying to a ridiculous degree. I feel kind of lame about how much pleasure I get from rearranging my house.

Our needs change. I rearrange based on what best suits our current needs. The kids move through developmental stages and I rearrange their shit. They play with things more and with more intensity for a few weeks after a rearrange. They rediscover what they own.

I require my children to be self-starters. If you want to do something, do it. Don’t stand there and tell me to do it so you can watch and be entertained. Not so much. But I like reading educational theory books and rearranging the toys. It feels like teaching. Maybe I am still just “playing school”.

I feel self-conscious about the way I’m teaching my kids. I think that I am nurturing creativity, independence, and self-motivation. I think that because I’m following some theories I’ve read about.

I could sit here and bandy about theorist names, but I’m not trying to convince anyone that I’m right so whatever.

I get two chances in this lifetime to really teach children the way I theoretically think is best. That’s a complicated thing. Modeling and experience and practice and freedom. But how much freedom do my kids really have?

It’s complicated. How much freedom do most kids have? I’m pretty controlling about the things I’m controlling about. (We have chores, dernit. I require manners. I respond very poorly to pestering. Etc.)

I’ve asked Shanna a couple of times if she thinks that she will be sad about missing first grade. I asked her if she wanted to go. When I explained how many hours she would have to be there she changed her mind.

I don’t think I’m trapping them. I think I’m keeping them in a bubble. I have mixed feelings about that.

So many mixed feelings.

I think I’m going to stay home more for a bit. I need to focus more on the kids. At least, this is what I think I will do. Who knows. Maybe I’ll be a jerk and not pay attention to them. It will honestly depend on how much babysitting I figure out. When I “don’t pay attention to them” it means I sit in the room with them and read. I make lunch and clean up and answer questions and what have you. But I don’t do much directing. They have to entertain themselves. They are great at it. But they are hurricanes.

Mess, mess, everywhere! Cause that’s just the chaos we live in. I keep thinking about becoming like those wonderfully mean home schooling moms who only let their kids have art supplies and outside toys. I’ve read about it on the internet. I don’t think I will do it though. I don’t buy stuff for them. It just arrives. They have grandparents who are slowly mailing them a legacy of toys from multiple generations in their family. Oh man. I couldn’t say “no toys”. It would be fucked up.

So I sigh deeply and clean the fucking floor again. I don’t insist on them cleaning up their rooms most of the time. I do insist they clean up the living room. Common space must be respected. I do require you to clean the floor in your room often enough to vacuum because we get bugs. Whether I am a fascist or not I live in a swamp and them’s the rules buddy.

I feel sad that my therapist can accurately say that my relationships are short and argumentative. I hope my relationship with my children goes better than that. So far so good.

Time to run.

Feelings

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This week I read an essay by a female writer in which she mentions that she “never writes personal essays because she doesn’t want them to take away from her reputation”. She writes about “real stuff” don’tchaknow?

Well, I write personal essays. And bugger off if you have a problem with that.

So, that said, lots of feelings lately. Jenny and her wonderful baby visited us over the weekend. (Another mom friend came with her baby on Friday. It was baby central. Having the three of us together with our kids felt like a dream come true. I’ve been hanging out with those ladies (all of us have birthdays within four months of one another) for over ten years. Watching us grow up has been so neat.

Jenny (but mostly her baby) is used to a quieter life than we lead. My kids are *very* overwhelming for people who are used to quiet. My kids are shitty at respecting personal space. We are working on it, but this isn’t a skill that will come naturally to them. They want to be close to people. Like, on top of them close ALL THE TIME.

It is always an adjustment for us to try to tone down for other people. It is good for us but it is hard. If you throw in the whole fact that Jenny is one of the most important people in the world to me and losing her friendship would be devastating it makes for some tension.

I was too worried about the kids. So I started out sounding pretty nasty. Jenny heard my way of speaking and copied some phrasing and then my kids freaked out. That is not Jenny’s fault. But it made for a rocky first day. Jenny asked if they should leave early. I felt so sad that we are so hard to put up with.

So Jenny and I had a talk and then I had a long talk with the kids. Things went way better after that.

Shanna was inclined to get her back up. “This is my house and I shouldn’t have to change.” I said, “But Jenny is my best friend and I only get to see her every few years and I miss her so much it hurts and can we please try hard to make everyone feel comfortable?” Shanna agreed after that.

And the rest of the visit was great. But I had lots of leftover anxiety/stomach pain.

I feel pretty proud of all of us that we managed to have a good rest of the visit. It was really wonderful to see Jenny mother. I have known her for about twenty years now. It was like seeing, “Ohhhhhh this is what you have been building towards all these years. This is who you wanted to be.” It was really beautiful. She’s a very good mother. My friends inspire me to try harder for my kids. Jenny’s daughter is very shy. Jenny makes sure the world is appropriate for her kid and she does not back down. I have so much respect for that.

I have twinges of sad because, why didn’t anyone love me like that? but mostly I stomp on them and I’m just really glad to see that my friends are such good people.

I am so blessed in my friendships. I don’t know how I managed to meet such good people. I feel honored and unworthy at the same time.

I think that if Jenny lived closer we would adjust better and my kids would get used to the different rules. They have adjusted to K’s house (my friend who baby-sits while I have therapy) even though they really didn’t want to do so. (Shanna in particular is really stubborn about not wanting to adapt. It takes me explaining the consequences for not adapting before she is willing to try.)

Then yesterday after Jenny and her wonderful daughter left a different mom and kids came over. And we had a different friend planned for dinner last night.

Jenny was the last person added to the schedule and I was going to shoehorn her in no matter what. But if I had known Jenny’s schedule further in advance I wouldn’t have booked two social engagements the day she left. Holy crap I am tired.

The dinner was easy-peasy. He’s non-stressful.

The mom and kids… whoa. All the anxiety of the weekend multiplied by ten shoved into a 2.5 hour period.

When I get to the point of snapping, “I’m kind of tired of being wrong in my own house so can we just change the topic?” it’s not going well. (She apologized later for jumping all over me, but holy shit it was a stress monkey visit.) I feel like things must be kind of rocky for her, because she had a lot of anxious energy (shoot me now before I go all woo woo on you) and she probably wasn’t so much reacting to me as just in a room with me.

But the weekend with Jenny used up a lot of my ability to sit still even though I felt anxious. And there is the little fact that fucking up my relationship with Jenny would do a lot to ruin my life and fucking up almost any other friendship I have would have lower impact. Yeah, even though I don’t see Jenny very often.

The older I get the more I look at the pillars of self. The things that make someone “Them”.

Brittney was my oldest friend. But Brittney never did a god damn thing to help me. She wasn’t there after trauma. She didn’t want to know about my life. She wanted me to visit her upper middle class valley lifestyle and act like I fit in. I don’t.

Jenny, at this point in time, is the person standing the longest. Twenty years of friendship is an accomplishment for someone as unstable as I am. Especially because Jenny and I have never been the most obvious of friends. We have very different personalities.

But when I can’t function and I need help Jenny has shown up. The emotional support is as important (or more so) than other kinds of support. Jenny held me when my brother killed himself and when my father killed himself. Jenny has been there through boyfriends and friends groups and hobbies.

I am so glad the rest of the visit went well. I felt really happy about seeing her. I probably won’t see her again for two years. I feel like I already want to count the days.

They are going on a Disney Cruise with us in 2016. Because Jenny loves me.

I really don’t understand why. I don’t feel like I deserve her friendship and loyalty. I recognize that I have it, but I don’t understand. I hope I was as nice to her as I was trying to be. It’s always a bummer when I am an asshole on accident.

When I’m an asshole on purpose I don’t feel so bad.

I remain grateful that I get to have the lifestyle I want. I am so grateful that I get to home school my kids. I am so grateful that I can stay home and play and learn with my kids in a non-stressful environment for me most of the time.

The occasional stressy weekend reminds me that my life is so blessed. All of the Jenny stress was worthwhile. I feel anxiety about being nice enough. That is something I have to work on and be aware of. I understand it to be a legitimate issue for me.

It’s not like having to be in a stressful environment for no good reason. It’s not like dealing with school. It’s not like dealing with jobs. It’s not like dealing with extended social groups.

Jenny is one of the few people on the planet whose judgment I actually care about. I mean, yeah, I have issues around wanting people to like me but in general… I don’t actually feel it matters enough for me to change myself for other people.

Jenny is worth any amount of adapting I have to do no matter how hard it is for me. That feels hard. Over longer periods of time I can adjust and change more slowly and that feels easier and more manageable. Just having a weekend feels like “Be good or lose friends” and that is so hard.

I fuck up so much. I feel so ashamed of how bad I am at controlling my behavior. I’m too loud. I’m too aggressive. I say things people really don’t want to hear.

I feel ashamed that I live on the sufferance of people being willing to tolerate someone who is not very nice. I wish I were more worthy.

My stomach hurts so much.

I’m tired of feeling afraid all the time.

Hey, today is a therapy day. Maybe EMDR will help. Ha.

Less to read.

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I miss g-blog. I don’t miss facebook. I’m having trouble adjusting to taking fetlife out of the loop but I think I will be a happier person in another couple of weeks.

I’m making it harder to casually maintain contact with me. That’s a mixed blessing. It means “catching up on the internet” doesn’t take very long. I am spending less time just staring at the screen.

But when I want to be distracted a shorter reading list is frustrating.

The last few days have been good and intense. It is always challenging to be around people who have very different physical boundaries. It is totally ok for people to have the boundaries they have–I support people being comfortable. But adjusting to new boundaries is work. I feel very tired. I’m really grateful I have had this opportunity. I had fun. I’m very tired.

Also: I have the cutest little niece and nephew. Life plugs along. It’s kind of crazy how many of my friends have wonderful children now. When in the fuck did that happen?!

Who am I?

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Today as I get dressed I stopped to think. I’m meeting my “niece” and my “nephew” today. One of them for the first time and one for the second time.

Wow. What do I want to wear? Who do I want to be in their memory?

Noah, you say I dress for comfort and not for style (or you did once and you will rue that day for eternity [I love you so much, thanks for putting up with me.]) but there are actually a lot of style choices in the whacky-ass way I dress.

I start out with the requirement that as much skin must be covered as possible. That narrows the field of my clothes quite a bit given the leftovers from my more festive life periods.

I’m pretty happy that my pants fit again. Yay for gaining weight. Ha. How many women do you know who say that?

Ok. I picked a dress I bought with Jenny in Inverness. Because I bought it while nursing (i.e. my breasts had to be easily accessible at all times) of course I have a shirt on under it. HA!! MY BOOBS ARE MINE. Ahem. Sorry. Got carried away there. Those were a long four years.

With the black and white dress I like to wear red pants. Capri’s? Long shorts? They cover all the way down to my shin bone but you can see my Hobbit-hairy legs under them.

Still haven’t shaved. This is getting more interesting.

You can tell I haven’t shaved with the shirt I have on under the dress. There are sleeves, but they are short and kind of flippy.

Cause I like flippy stuff in my clothing. It’s a style choice.

And of course I’ll wear purple shoes. Cause that’s what I own. And I have a red cowboy hat for my sun hat.

Tell me there’s no style there.

(Tongue in cheek.)

Visiting

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Given that I cleaned my house on Monday I find it a little horrifying how long it has taken me to clean my house again. Maybe I should dust more than once a year. It takes me forever. Also: there is a very different kind of baby-proofing for one year olds than there is for 3/6 year olds. My house was not very baby safe. I don’t have babies any more! It’s ok! Only… I’m going to have a baby for the weekend. So I should probably make the house safe for her. And the other wonderful baby who will be here today.

Usually when babies come for one day I make the main room baby safe and just block off the not-so-safe bits. When I have a visitor for a whole weekend the house has to be safe. Period. There aren’t other options. (I worry.)

I didn’t finish dusting two book shelves. The chance that I will do them this morning is small and dropping. But my bathroom is shiny clean! Even for people who crawl! Luckily I think we have two newbie-walkers coming today. But hey–they are totally still in the floor candy stage. Now my house is less likely to choke them. Go me.

(I have older kids who have embraced the tiny choking-hazard-toys with a vengeance. Cleaning up enough to be baby safe is work.)

Sarah–this is why I told you that planned visits involve much more stress and anxiety than surprise visits. When I plan for a while around someone coming… I always add extra work to myself. Oh I should clean _____ before they come over. When I don’t know someone is coming and they surprise me then I have to just roll with my house being what it is and I don’t have the adrenaline surge of “Must. Not. Look. Bad. Must. Clean. Shit. Oh. No. Get. In Trouble.” It really is that choppy, thus the periods. I’m not sure why my thinking gets so choppy on that topic, it’s almost like a stutter.

I think I read too many threads on mothering.com about people getting harassed by CPS if their houses were just barely out of line. I am absolutely terrified of people finding out I don’t clean enough. Whatever “enough” means.

I clean enough. My kids aren’t living in squalor. CPS isn’t worried about me. I’ve lived in squalor. I know the difference. I have never lived in self-created squalor. I have always been too afraid, deep in my belly, of the consequences. I fucking clean. I have gotten myself out of a lot of trouble by being the one to volunteer first for clean up.

“If there is work to be done you had better get out of Lenora’s way. She’s going to do it.”

It remains one of the sweetest compliments I have ever received.

My shrink says I am “highly unusual” in the degree to which I use cleaning to get people to like me. I explained that my early relationship with Jenny involved a lot of me coming over to help her clean her room and I *still* go to my friends houses to clean on a regular basis. She had this weird shocked expression. “Do you understand that people just don’t do that? Cleaning the homes of their friends. That is very unusual. You are nice.” *shrug* I’ve been doing it all my life. How the hell else do people make friends?

Many of my relationships have been cemented by the fact that I don’t judge anyone morally for living in mess. I view it as a logistical problem. Most people who have more things than they know what to do with hit a point where their brain can no longer see the larger pattern and they can’t organize the stuff any more. I don’t view that as a moral failing at all. It is about the fact that most people have a hard time visualizing a large and complex system with many sub-pieces. I can walk into any house and immediately start visualizing how and where storage should go and which items should be stored how because of bulk and quantity.

Sometimes I feel like I think in store-display-guides. (I worked retail for a while.) I can organize fucking anything. And I’m quick too.

I have learned to appreciate that I have an actual gift in this department. Many people feel completely helpless and scared when they have to start organizing. They can’t see the system and they don’t know what to do. That’s hard. I don’t handle it very well when I feel like I’m in limbo and I don’t know what to do. Emotionally it is draining and that makes dealing with the situation incrementally harder as time goes by.

Life keeps happening. Cleaning can get overwhelming pretty fast if you don’t keep a handle on it. So when my friends get overwhelmed and they ask me for help of-fucking-course I help. This is a task that is easier-than-usual for me. Why wouldn’t I just do it to be helpful?

I think it is kind of hilarious how much cleaning is part of my identity. I want to be useful. When people invite me over and give me carte blanche to reorganize part of their house… my little heart goes pitter patter. Really?! I can! Whoohooo!

My shrink says I have to start charging for the service though. We’ll see.

Today I am feeling really lucky. Not only do I get my Jenny and not only do I get to meet my little niece FOR THE FIRST TIME we also get to play with another friend and her little boy. Us three moms have known one another for a long time. We were friends before the marriages and the boys and the babies. Now we get to show up each with our kids. It’s kind of crazy. Seasons of life or some shit. I’ve known Jenny since I was twelve. I met Miss L when I was…18? 19? 20? Something like that. Our lives are on similar tracts.

Only Jenny lives in Scotland now. That was NOT part of my plan. But, life laughs at my plan. She’s very happy where she is. So mostly I’m supportive. I keep my thoughts limited to my head or the occasional blog post where I’m not even that whiny. I miss her. I’m sorry we don’t get to spend more time together. But life works that way sometimes. This way my kids will get to have the experience of having a lodestone in Scotland. That’s cool too. We will get back to Scotland for more visiting. We talk online. It’s ok. But I miss her.

The house across from mine is for sale. Someone I love should buy it.

I still carry around a note from Noah in my wallet. “I have permission to be here”. He officially signed it and everything. It’s official. I have permission to be here.

Sometimes I acknowledge that it isn’t fair that I expect other people to invite me into their lives so hard. You can’t do it once and think that I will keep showing up. I assume people are better without me. I assume that knowing me just brings disruption and pain. I know that the things I talk about hurt people. And I’m not going to stop talking.

I kind of expect that eventually I will drive everyone away and I will find out that being alone as an adult is very different than being alone as a child where there are people who are legally required to check on you once in a while.

I think I clean so much because I’m trying to wash my sins away. Maybe if I clean enough it will make up for how bad I am. Maybe they won’t notice that I am not actually good enough for them. I clean enough to pass for a member of the middle class. Surely that means I’m good enough to stay.

I will probably never feel like I belong any where. Not a place and not in a relationship. I’m buying a temporary pass. It’s different than “belonging”. If I don’t work hard enough my pass will be revoked.

I want these people to like me so much. And I know that most of my social problems are my own damn fault. I have no one to blame but me for people disliking me.

I’m “aware” that most of the people who love me “wouldn’t care” if I stopped obsessing about cleaning. But it’s “most” of them. I don’t know who I would lose. I don’t know what the push back would be. I don’t know how the shaming would start. And I don’t really want to find out.

My friends who need help cleaning all have complexes around their cleaning stuff. It’s an emotional minefield. It seems harder to live with than my perseveration on cleaning. Yeah, I’m a dork. Yeah, I waste a lot of energy. But I get to feel more control over why people reject me.

People don’t get to reject me just for being “gross” any more. They have to have more of a reason than that. It’s important to me. When I was a child I regularly had other kids be told they couldn’t play with me because I was gross. I was literally physically dirty. I never cared for my hair properly–I didn’t know how. I had head lice over and over. That was when my mom started keeping my hair really short.

I clean because I have such vivid memories of those mothers yanking their kids away from me and saying clearly, “Ew. Stay away from dirty children. They have bugs.” Then they sneer.

Stay away from people like me. You might get dirty. You might get corrupted.

Noah is reading my book. He has positive things to say so far. But he’s very biased. He’d like to get laid again someday. (I’m teasing. Sorta.)

I need to write the bibliography. I haven’t started. I’ve been cleaning instead. See how this goes?

It will be a good day as soon as I stop crying. I’m not going to have problems today. I don’t need to be so afraid. No one will be showing up with their white gloves to get mad at me for not finishing the dusting.

It will be a nice visit. Hopefully some year I can get rid of this pervasive feeling that these lovely ladies should be spending their time alone together without me because I am just so difficult. Things are easier without me.

It’s not true. But I feel like it is true. Anything could be without me. Everything is better without me. I say that and think that and in walks my Shanna. She saw me crying and said, “Can I come in? I want to help you feel better.” I feel ashamed that she sees so much crying.

Time to run away. I need to hear about Shanna’s beauty sleep.

I think we’re funny.

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At breakfast the other day Noah observed, “I don’t worry about your usage of medication because you are way more hostile about being denied Earl Grey.”

Apparently I don’t flip people off just because I can’t have pot but I will when it comes to tea. I did it under the table and the waitress totally didn’t see me..

But it was funny.

Who needs a title.

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Even though I rarely split my random thoughts into multiple posts, today seems like the day. Scheduling can stand alone.

I am so excited about seeing Jenny that I can barely sit still. I haven’t seen her since her wedding and that was literally years ago. Scotland is pretty far and I don’t have the money to travel with two kids as often as I would like. Too many other trips I’m saving for. Damn priorities. I will make it back to Scotland. Just not that soon. This way I get to meet my niece! She is coming to my house! I am so excited. I am going to take many pictures. She won’t remember Wonderland but hopefully the pictures will inspire her to feel more comfortable visiting again when she gets older.

I fantasize about trading kids for a year when they are older. We’ll see. Not because I want to be away from my kids for even five minutes. Just because it’s an opportunity to live in a different place with someone who would be good at taking care of you. That’s not an opportunity every kid has. My kids are so lucky. They will never have any way to wrap their tiny entitled little brains around how lucky they are.

I struggle with that. I talk to my therapist about my jealousy. She says it is a good thing I can admit it because lots of people feel jealous of their kids and can’t admit it–that creates other problems. I know I’m jealous. I know I wish I could have had a life that was 20% as nice as their life is. But I can’t change the past. My life is pretty rad now.

I don’t have complaints about my life. I’m in one of those magical windows of time when even my fucked up brain can look around and register, “Yup I’m safe. And my life is fucking awesome. I get to do exactly what I want when I want. No one yells at me. People like me enough to let me get away with shit. I have totally nailed this ‘life’ thing.”

Ok, I’m still sad about not having a mom who cares about me. But that isn’t something that *I* can do anything about. Everything that I can influence is going well. It isn’t my fault that I have the problems I have. I’m doing very well with what I was served this lifetime. Most people who get the hand I’m dealt burn out long before now. Most people who grow up thinking they are a worthless piece of shit who should die never get past that.

I’m grateful for every moment when I don’t feel like that. It feels like a gift. It feels like a surprise. I don’t hate myself right now. I don’t feel like I should die so that I stop poisoning everyone around me. The absence of feeling is amazing. I don’t feel like I should die.

Dealing with being suicidal is very hard. It hurts physically and emotionally. The days when I don’t have the evil voices whispering that everyone would be better off without me are by definition Good Days.

Today I baby-sit and I clean. Because I’m a dork. Jenny and little djinn won’t give a shit if my house is cleaner than it is right now. Jenny won’t complain about the fact that my annual dusting day is months away. (Ha. I wish I were kidding.)

But I love them. I love them so much and I don’t get to see them very often. It feels like an honor thing. I want to welcome them into a nice-ish home. Ok, my house will never be a Nice House (imagine I know how to do the little raised TM thing like a trademark sign). I have a weird house. It’s small. I repair things and they kinda look like shit. It wasn’t a Nice House when I arrived. But it is a lot of fun. There is a lot to look at. There is a lot to do. If you are bored in my house it is because you are of a weak and inferior mind. And don’t fucking say out loud to me that you are bored because there is always cleaning or dusting. I don’t care if you live here or not I’ll make you work if you complain .

I feel weird pride in my house. It isn’t a Nice House but it is a really lovely home. I think that I was a big asshole to Brittney because I always felt insecure about the fact that she has lived in a Nice House her whole life other than her college co-housing experience. Her family just does that. Last I heard she was putting off kids kind of indefinitely because it was more important to be able to afford a huge house. She didn’t want kids until she could give them what she had. But when we were kids the Nice House didn’t require two parents working 50+ hours a week. So she isn’t giving her proto-children what she had. She had a mother who stayed home and took care of her.

I am insecure and petty. I am not very supportive when people talk about such goals. I shoot holes in the reasoning. I think this contributes to Brittney ending the relationship. I was not even vaguely supportive of her lifestyle. Really she didn’t dump me until I talked honestly about her dad–she has to pick him over me. He’s still a constant source of money and support. I don’t think he would tolerate divided loyalties.

I’m not even sure why I’m ruminating on her this morning. Because I contrast her in my head with the people who haven’t decided to ditch me? She had the right. Any one and every one has the right to not want to know me. I can be a serious asshole. No denial here.

Losing Brittney was as hard or harder than losing my family. And I lost all of them permanently when I wrote the first book. No one wants me to reflect on how they impacted me. Ok.

I developed the desire to NOT have a Nice House when I visited Brittney as a child. We weren’t allowed to touch anything. Her mom was very house proud and made sure that everyone knew that the house was HERS and we were there on sufferance so DON’T TOUCH ANYTHING.

I don’t want a Nice House. I want a nice home. I don’t want expensive things that can’t be touched. I want shit I can touch and break without having to scream and cry over how terrible it is.

So my house is full of shit from Ikea. And I’m pretty happy about that. When my kids draw on things I shrug. When things break my kids know to say, “Oh thank goodness that came from Ikea so it is easy to replace!”

I was exposed to Nice Houses as a kid. What I learned from that experience is that I don’t belong there because I’m not good enough.

So why do I care so much about cleaning my house just because someone is coming over?

Well, the traditional meaning of the word “slut” more meant “woman who is bad at house keeping”. I may be a slut (retired) but I’m not a slut. I know that women are judged very harshly on their ability to keep a reasonably tidy house. Yes, my house meets “reasonably tidy” in spades but I spend a lot of time feeling guilty about my annual dusting. I just can’t give a shit to do it more often.

But I might feel panic and do it before my lovely international visitors show up. Because neurosis is like that.

Jenny lived in a Nice House when we were kids. (Yes, I know that the pre-earthquake house was far less Nice but I only knew the post-Loma Prieta Earthquake rebuilt house. It was Nice.) Jenny had a mama who could cook, clean, garden, and work.

I felt so jealous of Jenny when we were younger. Now not so much. Not because her adult life has been bad (not even close) but because we have such different personalities that we want very different things. I don’t feel jealous towards her any more. I just like her. I just feel glad when I get to be around her. I know more of the cost of her life. I no longer begrudge her the way I did when we were in middle school. I didn’t understand then.

Sometimes I wonder if I ever could have gotten over feeling jealous of Brittney. I don’t want what she has. Not even slightly. I don’t want the asshole-liar-cheating father even if he is rich. I don’t want the narcissistic mother who cares about very little other than her looks. I don’t want the job that is soul crushing and terrible… but earns a lot of money.

I don’t feel jealous any more. Instead I moved on to being a critical asshole. Cause that’s so much healthier and shit.

Brittney was my first friend. I was born across the street from her five months after her. I’m very sorry I only had her for thirty years. Even if I am a fucking asshole who doesn’t appreciate her the way she deserves to be appreciated. I miss her like I miss my abusive-as-fuck sister. It doesn’t matter that our relationship was totally fucked up. You are what I had and I miss you. Even though I’m an asshole, you are such a huge part of me. So much of who and what I am came to being because of reacting to them. For better or worse.

I have been so blessed in my friendships. Brittney did love me. She just can’t deal with someone who is as much of an asshole as I am. Somehow I think that is a very healthy choice.

Maybe in another few decades she will forgive me and look me up. I doubt I will look her up. Just like I will never chase Anna again.

Some doors are slammed closed for good reason. People protect themselves for good reasons. I know I hurt people. I have to be supportive of them protecting themselves from me or I am just another monster.

But it makes me appreciate Jenny so much more. Twenty years of friendship now. And we started on such rocky footing. I haven’t always been as nice as she deserves. (To be fair I’m not sure she has always been as nice as I deserve…)

At some point you have to forgive people for their fuck ups or you don’t get to have relationships. Every one fucks up. Every one. There isn’t a person on this planet who is perfect.

I’m really excited about seeing Jenny. I may even splurge on energy and dust. Just because she is So Special. Not many people merit me dusting LetMeTellYou.

My house may not be Nice but I like it. When I look out the garage window I get to see a lovely garden. I get to look at the marigolds that started as volunteers in my friend’s yard. She told me to take some home. Now every time I see the flowers I think of my friend and feel happy and loved. My tomatoes are protected by love, motherfuckers. (Companion planting. Marigolds help chase off pests from tomatoes.)

I’ve spent a lot more energy than average on being sad that I am not “good enough” for people to love. I am not the kind of person that so-and-so wants. That was part of moving all the time and constantly dealing with the fact that I disappointed people everywhere for not being… something enough. It varied from place to place.

I’m never right. Not for any where.

But I’m right here. In this house I’m the right kind of me. I don’t have to be like anyone else. I don’t have to know how to maintain a Nice House. I’m not inferior and bad just because I don’t know how. I’m not bad here because my seed using skills are… limited. It’s ok that I need starts.

I spend so much time and energy being ashamed of my mistakes and inadequacies that sometimes I wonder if I could single handedly run a power supply plant with all my wasted energy. If I could take back that wasted energy and put it on the power grid I could probably power Fresno.

Lame.

Today will be good. Babysitting and cleaning and resting. That’s enough for a day. The next few days I will have to be on my best behavior. No crying. No slamming things. No shouting. The little one who is visiting isn’t used to someone as volatile as me. I don’t want to scare her. That means I have to reign in. I don’t as much for kids who get to know me over time.

In general I think it is good for little kids to know a variety of kinds of people–including volatile people like me. Life involves a lot of different coping skills–I’m a useful person to learn to deal with. But for short periods of time sheltered kids just hide from me if I don’t tone it down. If I know this in advance it is my fault if I don’t solve the problem. I can’t expect a freakin one year old to adapt to me. Let’s be reasonable here.

One of the moms in the home school group keeps saying that she thinks I’m meditating in secret and lying to her about it. This kind of confuses me. She perceives that over the time she has known me I have gotten a lot better at keeping a reign on the energy I put out into the world.

K-I think these fucking kid-lit books by Tamora Pierce are useful. And I feel lame for that.

I still don’t meditate (though it is on my checklist of things to start doing. Yes, I know I freakin should) but I do consciously think about reaching out and metaphorically grabbing my extra energy and putting it in a box. Not the same as meditation. But I am trying to conserve my energy more. I’m trying to scare people less.

I know that my frantic-self disrupts lots of people. Just by standing near me. I’m trying to be better about that. Being near autistic folk has made this…. more important. Sometimes I walk into an autistic house and get immediate comments about how I need to pull in my anger because it negatively effects the people present. I’ve heard this from more than one person in more than one place. So I’m trying. I think it is funny how it is mostly the moms of autistic boys who tell me this. “Don’t set him off.”

My existing too loudly in a room (while standing still and not saying a word) sets people off. It gets kind of annoying.

But you get the body and life you get. You can deal with it or you can be an asshole and expect the whole world to bend to you. I want to keep being invited back. That means I have to figure out how to stop radiating anger when I’m in those houses. It is hard. Sometimes I can barely even tell that I’m doing it. Nevertheless I have to gain control.

Just do it already.

Searching for a schedule

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On Sundays I wish we went to the farmers market. In reality we go about once a month. Mostly we try to stay home and rest but sometimes we get invited to events. (Like camping.) Some weeks I blissfully get about four hours off. Oh! Shanna has asked that Sunday breakfast go on her list of chores as a six year old responsibility. Along with emptying the dishwasher, cleaning up her toys, and clearing the table (which she almost never does–sigh).

On Mondays I usually have babysitting time, but not for two weeks in June because my babysitter is on vacation. Either two or four hours depending on how fierce her school schedule is. I clean on Mondays and mostly try to not clean much the rest of the week. During the summer I will try to squeeze in an Aqua Adventure trip in the afternoon. Not sure I can do 11am when our friends want to be there. Monday nights are hit or miss. Lots of different things happen.

Tuesdays every other week are therapy days. They are also park days. I mostly go to park days but I miss one or two a month. Depends on how far away they are and how guilty I feel for dumping my kids on K for babysitting then whisking them away to the park immediately. Tuesday nights are usually (but of course, not always) my night off. I get two to four hours of free time where I am not supervising the kids.

Wednesday is more hit or miss. Often unscheduled. We frequently go somewhere. During the summer it will be a definite Aqua Adventure trip. Also, once it is summer and the school lets out we will be using the parking lot to practice bike riding every Wednesday. Shanna still sucks at riding bikes. She would prefer to run. It feels safer. She doesn’t fall as often. D has been coming over on Wednesday nights more often than not for a bit. She cancels when her family needs her for something but we probably see her 3/4 weeks a month on average.

Thursdays start with three hours of babysitting. I found a local stay at home mom to do trades with. Every other week I have her kids and every other week she has my kids. I asked originally out of desperation for finishing the book and it turns out she has a lot of work she needs to do and six hours a month is probably enough alone time for it. I’m in a similar boat so this is working out. Later on Thursdays we go somewhere to get out of the house. Thursday night is Noah’s night off so on a regular basis we don’t get home till almost bed time. This is the only night of the week when I habitually am ok with staying out kind of late.

Fridays are frequently unscheduled. Once or twice a month we have something on a Friday. A friend coming over to play. Tea parties for the home school group go then when I host them. (Need to schedule another one. I’m almost physically over the last one.) During the summer I want to squeeze in an Aqua Adventure trip. I really need them to get more proficient at swimming. Friday nights are usually family nights. Frequently we go out to dinner–sometimes we walk. Those nights are my favorite.

Saturday mornings I try to get up and run. Anywhere between 30 minutes and and three hours depending on how far I’m going. Then Noah gets a bunch of the day off. His timing is flexible around whatever else we have scheduled. Sometimes I take the kids out of the house to a park or some-such just to give him space and quiet. Saturday afternoon/evenings have parties once to three times a month depending on the month.

Going to the grocery store, other errands, and people visiting disrupt my schedule all the gosh darn time. But people are wonderful. Sometimes I feel like I live just because I want to see people.

Sometimes I feel lonely. Then I look at my schedule and notice that I couldn’t shoehorn in a lot more stuff. Like… when do I garden on that schedule? When do the kids take other classes? When do we “officially” home school? Oh man. All the time. We are never not-home schooling. We home school all the forking time.

I love unschooling. This lifestyle works for me. I’m so grateful that my schedule comes and goes with the seasons and my kids learn with me. Frequently I feel taken aback by just how educated my kids are. They pay attention when I talk. Which shocks the shit out of me because I don’t remember paying attention to adults. I didn’t respect adults much. My kids respect me and like me. My kids know that when I fuck up I apologize profusely and otherwise I’m pretty reliable for my information. So they listen.

It’s crazy.

That is as close as I am to a frame. That does not reflect writing time. Or painting time. This is why my schedule gets tossed topsy turvy constantly. I want to do so many things that are full time jobs that I can’t settle on a schedule. But this is kinda sorta where I am now.

Busy. Lots of people. Lots of love. I really shouldn’t complain about my life. I am very lucky.

Bounce (again)

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Sometimes I feel weird writing about my good moods. I am, generally speaking, such a whiny bitch that talking about the up days seems… misleading? Confusing? Inconsistent? Whatever. It’s a good day.

The camping trip continues to give a rosy glow. I’m really grateful that it went so well. I am feeling much more confident about my plans with the kids.

Today was an EPIC park day. We took the yearbook picture so families who hardly ever come out were there. We stayed for four hours and I had to drag the kids bodily out of the park.

I talked to the mom I have been having the feelings about. The one who implied I wouldn’t be missed. She was horrified that I took it the way I did. She said (roughly–of course), “I meant that it is not unusual for you to stay home for periods of time. It is ALWAYS obvious when you aren’t there and you are missed quite a bit. I’m so sorry it sounded that way. If I ever sound that way again–ask about it immediately. I don’t want you to stew in feeling bad about something like this.”

So that went about as well as it possibly could have gone. For which I am extremely grateful.

It is very hard to know how much of my hand wringing self-hatred is just my brain hamsters and how much is that people genuinely have problems with me.

People have problems with me. That’s not in dispute. I am difficult and complicated and lots of other challenging stuff. That’s just a fact.

But as time goes on it seems that people are having fewer problems and my perception isn’t changing. Maybe people always had fewer problems with me than I worried about, but I had a lot of people react with great hostility so I don’t think it is all in my head. Parts of it, sure. Not all of it.

Things are changing as I get older, too. I am so glad I found this home school group. In general I feel like I am fitting in well. By that I mean: people seem to actively appreciate things I have to offer. Many women sigh with relief when I gather the children together for the group stuff. I have no problems screaming across the whole park to round people up. Other people really don’t want to do it. Yay for synchronicity.

In general today was really good. Multiple women extended “Hey we want to get together and do ____ when is good for you?” I feel so overwhelmed with gratitude it is kind of pathetic. Wait… you want to spend time with me? Really? You aren’t putting up with me because you have no choice?

Oh. That does change things.

Some days there is this feeling of, not exactly relief but a lower level of difficulty. I feel less like every body hates me and I should die in a fire.

This weekend at the camping trip one of the dads was being a dad about the topic of fire. I kind of tried to deflect it and said, “I don’t feel real comfortable with fire” and he kept on going. Eventually when he was still making jokes like four minutes later I blurted, “My brother went out behind the local grocery store and doused himself before lighting a match. I don’t really like fire.”

His eyes went wide and he stopped poking at me. He said something to the effect of “Wow. I’m sorry.”

I know I am over sensitive on a wide range of topics. I know I am a whiny baby. I know. I know.

I want other people to know too. And to know why. And to care. And for people to not have to walk on egg shells but not poke me on sensitive subjects either.

It takes time. It just takes time. And I’ve been part of this group for over three years. Things are a lot better. In general my life is so much better than it was.

Most of my recent flares of “OHMYGOD” drama that I go through have been resolved with calm conversations. I clear up my misunderstandings and someone apologizes for not being more clear and we move on.

This is still new to me. I’m still learning. I wish I were better at this already, but I’m not. I’m just where I am. I’m trying. Things are improving.

Sometimes I feel shocked that things continue to improve. When will I hit a big nosedive and do super shitty all of a sudden again? I did spend a lot of May crying and feeling really depressed.

The last four days have been good. If I add up all the minutes under an hour of crying. That’s really good.

I’m grateful that people keep giving me chances. I don’t think I deserve them but I understand that these chances are not all about me. Mostly they are about the fact that I have enough to offer and people have enough need that we match up. I’m really not as bad as I think.

We are all just trying.

Good weekend

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We went camping with the home schoolers. I think this was the sixth? Seventh? Time we have been camping since we got married. Once or twice was pre-kids. So we haven’t been camping a lot. Before I got married I went camping with Daddy J a few times. He did 100% of the work before giving me drugs so it was a … different experiences. Otherwise not a lot of camping experience.

I’m getting better and more competent. Multiple times this weekend people expressed delight at how prepared I am. “Oh crap. I forgot ____. Krissy!…..” I always had whatever they forgot. It’s not because I’m so cool. It’s because I spent three weeks on Pinterest copying packing lists.

It was fun. The people were very nice. I didn’t feel defensive at all. That is pretty rare for me. I played with the kids a lot. Other parents are starting to refer to me as the cruise director. “You’re bored? I’ve got badminton rackets, frisbee, card games, decks of cards, chalk, play-doh, little random animal figurines, My Little Ponies, books, magnifying glasses….” the list goes on. I had a lot of shit for keeping kids busy. Thanks to Pinterest! And given that I will cheerfully suck at badminton in front of them to show them “how” to play it all goes well.

It was a really nice weekend. I medicated, but on the distinctly low end for me and it was ok. I didn’t get anywhere close to a panic attack. *phew*

Now my house is a huge mess and I bought this camping shit and I don’t know where to put it. I love first world problems. First world problems are so awesome. I am SO HAPPY that I get to have this problem. Just to make it clear to the universe that I don’t need a demonstration of worse problems. I’m good.

It’s awkward talking to people about my writing. Folks who knew asked about progress. So new people asked, “Oh what are your books about?”

“Uhm, shitty stuff. Scary stuff.”

“?? You mean like horror?”

(Everyone who is already “in the know” starts giggling.)

“No… not really. My first book is the auto-biography of the first eighteen years of my life. I needed to write it all down as context for the stuff I will write later. I can’t otherwise explain my life. It’s not pithy.”

“Oh, so what was your life like?”

“Oh the garden variety life. Lots of promiscuous sex starting in early elementary school, incest, rape, drugs, alcoholism, people lighting themselves on fire, lots of suicide. You know, a normal life.”

BIG EYES. “So uhm, what is your second book about?”

“My second book is the book I wish I could have read when I was twelve. All the information about sexual safety and drugs and cutting and mental illness I needed to know about. Oh, and lots of stuff about managing money and figuring out how to find adult allies. The stuff I cared about.”

“Wow. Those sound like intense books.”

“Yeah.”

Then they kind of walk away looking shell shocked. I need a better patter. But man. How in the hell do you soft-sell this shit? It’s really bad. But in this group after hearing what I write about no one has required that I stay away from their kids. I’m going to say I’m doing ok with my behavior as far as earning trust goes. *phew*

Just keep on doing what you’re doing.

You just keep going

Do the best you can

Category Archives: adult-only

Frustration: thy name is internet disruption

Trees, kids, teaching, identity

Why do doctors suck so much?

Life is pretty good.

Running and body stuff

In the midst of birthday season.

Happy Fathers Day

Control

Put your own oxygen mask on first.

Distraction

Good day.

Feelings

Less to read.

Who am I?

Visiting

I think we’re funny.

Who needs a title.

Searching for a schedule

Bounce (again)

Good weekend