Category Archives: adult-only

Published in the adult-only category

Clarity

1 Reply

If I say, “If you oppose a blacklist existing within a closed alternative sexuality community (if they are private clubs who insist on membership they are “closed” communities) then you should have the same legal rights as the rape victims these blacklists are designed to help” that doesn’t mean “I think you should be raped.” It means that if a whole bunch of people show up with stories about you violating their consent then I think it’s ok to say maybe you shouldn’t come back.

Yes, this conflicts with disability rights if the person being complained about is autistic and “didn’t mean” to offend anyone. Yup. That’s true. Given the sheer numbers of people being assaulted versus false report statistics… I think rape victims need some way of aggregating their stories so they can figure out that people in their community are habitual predators.

Do I think the black list is the best way to solve it? Meh. I don’t have a better idea. And I recognize this as a problem that needs to be solved. I don’t have a better solution to offer. If you have nothing better to offer and all you want to do is enforce the status quo… Maybe you need to find out what happens when things are shaken up.

Sure it might hurt some people. Life is like that. There are people being hurt right now. If there are hundreds or thousands of people being hurt right now and there is the possibility of translating that into dozens or hundreds then… are the handful of people being persecuted for how “weird” they are worth the trade?

Clearly the men being shoved under the bus don’t consider this a worthy trade. They think that as long as all the rape victims have access to a legal system (that prosecutes less than 5% of rapes) then we are all good.

I’m very sorry that you make people so uncomfortable that they habitually feel sexually violated after spending time with you. That sounds pretty awful. But maybe there are some aspects of your behavior that could be tweaked a bit. I’m not saying you shouldn’t exist. I am saying maybe you shouldn’t interact with people in the ways that are causing problems. Am I victim blaming? Maybe.

The rate of false rape reports is very small. Estimates between 3% and 8% depending on where you look. I will not take seriously hyperbolic statements about how prevalent false reporting is. It’s not a big problem. It just isn’t.

I can’t throw out a reporting system because of a 3%-8% error. That’s small enough that there will still be enormous benefit. What about the 92%-97% that might be accurately tracked? That’s a lot. That’s huge.

It’s not perfect but I support them trying.

Why is a closed board with hidden reporting better than the transparency some detractors are demanding? Because perpetrators are very good at shouting down victims. If every report is real time shown in a place where the perpetrator can see it then the spike in abuse will be horrendous.

If we were talking about taking away their jobs or their homes or putting them on the sex offender registry I’d agree that we need all due legal process. Of course. People are allowed to decide they don’t want to invite you to their party without due legal process. It’s called freedom of association.

I get banned from places too. I’ve been freakin excommunicated. So yes I get that social ostracism sucks a lot.

But we live in a big world. People can move. If one social group doesn’t work for you that doesn’t mean you should have the legal right to force those people through some semblance of being your friend.

What if they are picking based on race? Or religion? Or. Or.

You can’t force people to be friends. That never works out. There will always be pools of people who don’t want to do __________ with you. Is it hard? Yes. But I don’t think there is a way to take away that hard.

Especially when what you want is access to a sex community where you get to hit people… you really don’t have a lot of right to be demanding. Sorry. No, you aren’t entitled to anything. You can still hunt for partners. You’ve been hunting on the internet for sex partners for almost as long as I’ve been alive. I think that it will continue to be fruitful for a few years now.

If the quality of the partners you find is not what you want then you can’t get mad at the community for not providing. Maybe an appropriate partner for you doesn’t exist. That happens sometimes.

It is very convenient to talk about the fact that some people never find a partner when I am all cozily partnered up.

My husband could die. My husband could leave me. These things happen. If I am alone when I am an old woman it won’t surprise me a bit. I won’t feel entitled to a replacement body just because I like having one around.

We are never entitled to sex. We can only have it if we manage to inspire people around us to want to have it with us. Yup, that is often harder for guys than girls. Sorry. That’s a big fat privilege. I get it. You resent that in some ways it is easier being a woman. Don’t know what to tell you.

No one is entitled to sex. It may be a personal need but that doesn’t mean that anyone else needs to help us out. Sometimes our needs go unmet.

Sometimes in life your needs will not be met. That happens. There is no way to make it not happen. You just decide what kind of person you will be.

If you can only be a nice person when you are getting what you want then you aren’t a nice person.

I am not a nice person even when I’m getting what I want just for clarity. No ambiguity here.

Do I think a blacklist sounds awesome? Not really. I don’t think I will end up on the list purely because I’m not picking up new partners any more. I don’t think people will dredge up shit from ten years ago. There are more than a few people who could complain about me though. If the community board wanted to have words with me about my ability to maintain respectful boundaries I would listen. I’m aware that I frequently fail in that department.

These days I default to not touching people. Apparently that is not an acceptable alternative for some people. I think the justification is that I get a lot of touch from my kids and partner so I don’t get to say that they have to do with no touch at all.

But if you don’t have people in your life who want you to touch them… actually your only option is to not touch. Sorry. Your need to touch does not outweigh peoples right to decide when and where and by whom they are touched. Even the back of my fucking hand, mother fucker. Go talk to HAI. And if you get kicked out of HAI I really don’t know what to tell you.

You are not three years old. You can’t get away with stroking the hands of strangers just because you want to. Yup, life is unfair and you are persecuted. I get it. Sometimes life is like that.

I love you. I don’t even know why. I never really understand why I love people. Why I put up with the things that bother me. Because I don’t want to be alone either. Because I understand that skin hunger and loneliness. Because my company is really all I have to give and if that is enough–here fine.

I can see benefit to knowing almost everyone. People have things to teach me. Stories to tell me. World views to help me understand.

It sounds like being autistic is shitty with a side topping of shit sandwich. Not because being autistic is bad but because people often are really mean to you because you can’t just “be like everyone else”. Because you can’t pull off the social mechanisms that neuro-typical people use to be liked. These things are just invisible.

The thing is, I’m only good at a very narrow range of those social skills and learning them was very hard. It took a lot of fucking up and specifically working on how to talk to people.

You know how folks sit at home and play video games because they don’t know how to talk to people? I go walk around malls and strike up random conversations. I walk around my neighborhood and force conversation on my neighbors. I talk to people in grocery stores. Other parents in museums. I have learned how to talk to anyone, anywhere with a lot of painstaking effort. Sure most of my early efforts concluded with someone walking away rapidly and sometimes calling me a name. So what? They are low stakes conversations. I will probably never see them again. Who cares if they call me a freak or a bitch?

I’m not the most socially adept person out there but I haven’t had anyone recoil from my inappropriate behavior in a while. (I feel like I should get one of those signs they have in auto shops: “X days since our last accident” only mine will say “X days since Krissy was last socially inappropriate.”)

Want to know the single biggest factor in making me less offensive? I’m not chasing sex any more. Women don’t react as if I am a hated competitor and men (and women) don’t feel the need to either respond sexually or reject me. That means that I’m a lot easier to deal with. Sex makes everything more challenging and complicated. I no longer cause people to have a complicated and uncomfortable conversation with themselves about what they want from me.

And the second biggest factor in making me less offensive these days is despite being a serious know-it-all I don’t act like I am socially dominant in most spaces. I may chatter and babble on but I don’t boss people around. I don’t tell them what they “should” do.

If you spend a lot of time telling people that you could “fix” their problems if they just listen to you then be fucking prepared to get your fucking life in order so you can fucking prove that your “fix” is effective.

I kill most of my relationships trying to fix people. It’s a quick way to drive people away.

Social dominance is a weird game. I’m not a good leader and I’m not a good follower. I tend to get into major personality clashes with people who are pushy with their social dominance. I try to be more timid with timid people. Putting most of my personality into a bag and storing it for later takes effort.

I don’t believe in government blacklists but I do believe that small groups of people are allowed to be selective about who they hang out with.

Otherwise you can’t have a Masons group or a Girl Scout troupe or a Boy Scout troupe or a Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival. We are allowed to discriminate. There are fucking millions of people within an hour drive of me. I don’t have to be friends with all of them. (Brain goes explode.)

Many years ago a nice lady in the scene told me, “Be careful about playing with him. He goes hard and fast.” Then when I did play with him he put a cattle prod on my cunt.

If there had been a community board where I could have reported the issue and people who were more experienced than me could have sat him down to talk about why his thought process broke along the line from “I have three hard limits: scat, water sports, and cattle prods” to “Oh surely she won’t mind!”

I think it would have been good for both of us. I think that it would have been helpful for both of us to have support talking through a difficult issue.

It wasn’t an issue I wanted to take to the police and I still feel like that was the right choice. He fucked up pretty big. Putting a cattle prod on someones cunt after they have explicitly told you not to is kind of a big deal. I could have gone to the police… only I wouldn’t have gotten support. I would have felt revictimized. And it was an otherwise consensual scene. I *did* want him to hurt me. Just not like that. That’s not something that should involve police in my opinion.

But… right now there is nothing. There is shut the fuck up or sue. I think a community board has the possibility of being a useful mid-level way of handling things. Not everything requires the police. Sometimes there are still problems that have to be handled.

I’m trepidatious but willing to give it a shot.

Getting to know you

1 Reply

Callidora is an adventure every day. She isn’t much like Shanna. Watching Calli and seeing how frequently I dramatically underestimate her gives me perspective on my mom. I understand better how she ignored me–maybe ignore is the wrong word. I understand why she had trouble seeing me.

In some ways I’m an open book. I will talk about a lot of things with ease that other people simply cannot discuss. But I talk about things on my terms and on timing that I pick and fuck everyone else. I didn’t tell my mom much about what was happening when I was a kid because she didn’t believe me when I tried. So I stopped trying. I can see how I could have that problem with Calli if I’m not careful. I work so hard to stop and sit down and listen to her. I need to treat her like she matters if I want her to believe she matters. That belief or lack of it will largely come from me.

No pressure.

Shanna has a kind of preternatural self confidence that blows my mind. She has been walking up to strangers and announcing, “I’m Shanna and I’m awesome” for pretty much as long as she has been able to walk and talk. She could speak fluently by 18 months so this is a very well established pattern.

Calli doesn’t do that. Calli is more scared that people won’t like her. Calli is less willing to believe with her whole heart that she is awesome. I feel like that is my fault. I sure haven’t spent the first few years of her life staring into her face and talking about how much I like her the way I did with her sister. It’s harder with divided attention. I feel like I’m letting her down over and over all day every day. I’m trying Calli. I know you want more attention. I’m doing my best.

I’m trying really hard to have special one on one time with Calli. She needs to feel like she is as important to the wholeness of the family as any of the rest of us. When I say “she needs to” I really mean, “I hope I can help her feel like”. I can’t make her. I can’t require her to have an emotion. I can’t force her to feel loved and accepted.

Calli has a lot of extreme jumps in emotion. Very sad to angry to happy within a short period of time. Sure, it’s normal for the age but emotional self regulation is a major thing to learn. We are trying. It’s hard. She is going to struggle more than Shanna. She has less inner peace to draw on. I feel like that different amount of starting reserve is my fault. I didn’t give Calli the center-of-the-world experience. I couldn’t. I try to help her see that even though there are down sides to having a big sister there is a lot of upside too.

Sibling rivalry has absolutely arrived but it is pretty mellow compared to some families I’ve seen. My kids have been harped at their entire life, “Your sister is the primary person who will be on your team in this life. You be nice to your sister and teach her how to be nice to you. Otherwise she won’t want to be your friend when you are a grown up and that is horrible and painful. Be nice to your sister.”

Shanna needs to back off and let Calli have more space. Calli needs to learn how to assert her boundaries without hitting. It took me till my late 20’s to master that so I can’t really throw any stones. We’re working on it.

I like that Calli likes different books and different colors and different foods. I’m getting good at that mom-skill of preparing separate meals from a joint list of ingredients. “Column A for people 1 and 3. Column B for people 1, 2, and 3. Column C for people 3 and 4.” Etc.

Both children have decided that since Noah and I don’t eat onions they are done. Fair enough.

Even though I get all tetchy and I wish I had a bit more personal space I’m still grateful every day that I get to have this life. Watching them grow up feels like magic.

I read parenting things that say that you shouldn’t tell your children that they are beautiful. You shouldn’t comment on their bodies. There should be respectful silence due to their right to privacy. Or something like that. I’m sure I misunderstand. Or rather I’m sure someone would be happy to yell at me and tell me that I’m misrepresenting the position somehow. Anyway.

I comment on my kids. I talk about the fat on their bodies and it coming and going as they grow. I do it in a positive tone of voice. “OOh! Your cheeks are getting chubby! You will grow soon. Want extra food?” “Oh your face thinned out last night. Here and here and here grew–I can see it. You are so beautiful. I love watching you change.”

We watch documentaries about history and culture and discuss why bodies vary throughout the world. There is a fairly distinct difference between your average Samoan person, your average French person and your average Japanese person.

Jared Diamond’s work has been incredibly instrumental in guiding how I talk about these things. I talk about what kinds of foods grow in different climates and why people evolved differently in different parts of the globe. And I tell my kids to assume that every kid they meet on the play ground is a Californian until they are told otherwise. You no longer have any idea where someone lives based on how they look. Totally irrelevant. Just because their distant ancestors were in Asia or Africa or Europe that doesn’t necessarily mean much about the behavior, likes, dislikes, or language skills of these current kids.

I am looking forward to traveling with the kids so much I ache with it. I don’t know why I have this strong need. I want to take off with them for a long time. I want them to have this basically risk-free chance to get good at meeting people when they are young. They will have a small taste of the perpetual new-kid experience I had but with a guide and assistance and safety I never had.

We are always trying to solve yesterday’s problems. That’s mostly because we can’t get enough perspective on the problems of today to understand what we should be doing. You solve the problems you can see. That’s all anyone can do.

All three of us Gibbs girls are now bike enabled. I asked Calli if she wanted to ride on a tandem sort of device with me or just get her own bike and she absolutely insisted on her own bike. I’m scared shitless. Bikes are terrifying to me in a way that other people simply can’t understand. Bicycle accidents have done a lot to ruin the lives of my family members. It’s a big deal.

We’ll see how it goes. Calli is on a balance bike and Shanna has training wheels. I tried to talk her into learning balance first and she refused. Ok, whatever.

I want us to be able to seriously get around on bikes. I would like to be able to do most of our activities on bikes. I would kind of like to move towards being a one car family again when one of ours dies. That means the kids and I can’t be trapped in our house without a car. We need to be able to live.

Not everyone in the world gets to have their own personal use car. I probably don’t really need to be one of them. But because I have the privilege and the luxury I’m going to wait until my kids are big enough to kind of get around more on their own steam. Like a lazy person. Because I can. Because that is what privilege means. It means getting to decide yes or no instead of having a choice thrust upon you with no alternative.

My mom usually had access to a car. Except when we didn’t. The idea of choosing to only have one vehicle is really scary for a lot of “I want to be able to leave in the middle of the night if I have to” kind of reasons. Not that things with Noah are bad.

I just like having options. I have other random shit I do to “be prepared”. That’s not the point of this journal entry though.

I see a lot of parallels between myself and my mother. I think I am past the point of being upset with her over not preventing the abuse. She didn’t. That’s the end of that tale.

If I try to be generous, at the end of the day I basically like myself. I’m interesting and motivated and stubborn and sassy. All traits I highly esteem. I learned a lot of those traits because my mother let me.

Clearly she isn’t all bad. She didn’t try to control me much. She let me explore and try things on and she would roll her eyes and accept every phase.

My mom hit me when my actions caused her to feel like she was failing as a mother because I was so bad. I get it. She was trying to instill boundaries. She didn’t have other models. She hit me less than she was hit. She hit me less than my father hit all of her other kids. She hit me less than my aunt and uncle hit their kids. She hit me less than my uncle did. She hit me less than my siblings did.

She tried. She really did.

She survived a rather hellish and horrible life by putting her head down and just getting on with it. If I would come crawling back she would take me. She loves me.

My mama used to scream at Uncle Bob that he didn’t need to hit me. All he had to fucking do was explain it and then I would do what I was supposed to do. My mama did that for me.

No. I won’t hit my kids.

When I think of what my mother was going through during my childhood I’m kind of amazed she was as nice to me as she was. I was like Calli only turned up a lot of notches plus constant sexual acting out. So uhm yeah. I feel a lot more compassion for my mother as the years go by.

I hope there is a way to consciously choose to fix these issues in my family. My mom was ignored because her mom dealt with mental illness and I don’t know what else. I was ignored as my mom dealt with mental illness and trauma and horror. My kids aren’t ignored.

I hope this will be enough of a difference.

Today’s run was long and hard. 10.75 miles. Took me 2 hours and 40 minutes. Everything just sucked. I wasn’t there. I was so sad. Tommy. My mom. Am I paying enough attention to my kids? Too much? Are they excessively self absorbed? Oh man. How the hell do you judge? God I don’t know if I am doing this right. Are they going to be able to take care of themselves? Oh man oh man.

I’m down to 12 years with the first kid and 14 years for the second kid. For some reason all of a sudden that doesn’t feel long enough.

I’m scared. Will I be able to teach them enough?

Kind of funny

Leave a reply

Online I keep seeing folks post about an existential loneliness and longing for a specific kind of gathering. I can’t help but feel like people are describing Disaster House Parties. A large event that crosses community lines and encourages people to get to know new people. Not just a dance event but lots of dancers would be there. Not just a programming event but a lot of programmers would be there. Not just a knitting event but a lot of knitters would be there. Not just a home schooling event but a lot of home schoolers would be there. That kind of cross over.

Sometimes in the back of my mind I wonder if part of the reason I initially liked Noah so much is because he is a better host than me.

I love hosting events. I love having people come to me. I started hosting as soon as I moved out when I was 18. I hosted Thanksgiving that year for my family. I hosted all the birthday parties for the theatre crowd so we could be not-in-a-parents-house. I hosted a lot of small dinner parties for my Owners friends during the bdsm period. I’ve had parties pretty much everywhere I have ever lived.

I like my friends and I have a hard time inviting myself into their lives. I like my friends and I think that many of them would like other friends of mine. I like my friends and I think that sometimes even if they don’t like one of my other friends it is good to hear multiple points of view so get the hell out of your bubble. I know a freakishly broad distribution of people and I love them all. There is value there. If you want to know what I love about someone just ask. Gushing is available with the slightest provocation.

I think about my friends. I think about their good points and bad points and how I can balance them out a bit. Usually I try to keep my meddling to a mental exercise because that is polite.

Sometimes I love people as much for the reasons I dislike them as for reasons I like them. Life is surprising to me. I’m glad you are in the world even if I only want to see you once or twice a year for an hour because you drive me insane. I love you anyway. I want you in the world. I want that catch up with you. I want to know you are off doing things and existing. You make me know the world is not pointless. There are reasons to strive. You are here.

What is love? What is “family”? Living with the kids and Noah and having this experience of people genuinely getting to know one another… I am so glad I get to have this. I know other adults who have managed to do this with adults friend groups but I haven’t. I’m not sure what broke in me. Noah genuinely adjusts to me. He accommodates me and my preferences and my issues and my shit. No one else has ever been willing to be so tolerant of me. My kids, err, have fewer choices and what I like is all they know.

I have never been so comfortable in my whole life. I have a whole pod of people validating me. Oh. This feeling. This is why other people hold on to their culture so tightly. They want this “I’m right” feeling. I’ve never had it before. Not with anyone else. Not in any other situation. Not at any other time.

I feel like I am right for where I am standing. Clearly my house and yard and kid and husband and neighborhood is better because I am standing here. (Ok, sitting on a swivel chair. Whatever.)

I’m not anyone’s savior. I’m not rescuing anyone. I’m not fixing everyone. I’m just… doing what I’m doing. And it’s ok. And my neighbors talk to each other more. Neighbors who say that they hadn’t talked to a neighbor in decades now know the names of the people in several directions from their house. Because I’m a busybody and I like to meet people.

I hear that in Nordic countries it is very rude to randomly talk to people in public. Small talk is verboten. Good fucking thing I don’t live there. Here I am delightful.

Sobonfu told me that if I lack a family and a community that I just fit in that I would have to build my own. That requires a force of personality that I am scared to admit I have. It’s not that I’m going to deny that I have it, but I’m scared to own it.

I think I am afraid to actively invite more because I am afraid of rejection. I’m afraid the ebb and flow of people being available for what I want from them will hurt. I’m chicken shit.

I know that I get what people have leftover. It is a lot easier for me to live with that when they invite themselves over. Then I don’t worry about imposing on them or taking a share of them that is not for me. I don’t need to drain energy from people that they need just because I am a bottomless pit of need.

And yet it hurts people a lot that I don’t invite more. They do not feel comfortable inviting themselves over. That feels bad. That feels like forcing themselves on someone who doesn’t want them badly enough to fucking invite them.

Maybe I should read Catch 22 so I can use the phrase and not feel stupid. I finally read 1984 and Animal Farm last year. I’m actually glad I didn’t read them as a teenager. Talk about fueling my destructive rage.

I don’t even know what kind of hosting I want to do more of. Well, I have a lot of ideas. I don’t know how this is going to work long-term. Probably start with one small thing. The problem with “small” is that it either turns into a one on one thing, which actually takes a lot more energy from me than a group event, or I don’t know how to get traction with predictability.

Our schedule is highly fluctuating. I suppose we now have at least four weekly appointments and four floating monthly things. Almost all of that is fairly one on one or it is park day or swimming. So yeah.

What do I want my kids to remember from their childhoods? This is the time. If I want my kids to have memories of group events I have to go fucking figure out how to be part of a group.

But I’m scared.

Aren’t we all?

I will fuck up. I will alienate people. I will hurt people. I am a monster–it is unavoidable. But I’m a reformed monster. I haven’t raped anyone in decades. I no longer hit people, even when they ask nicely.

Oh shit. Does this mean I am a case for reformist crap? No. My friends will be happy to hit you for me if we both go communicate that desire along. (If it’s in my name I would have to consent too. Consent for everyone! Hurrah!)

Consent for everyone. What kinds of crossovers and gatherings do I host? Oh man. I like to tell stories about having a gun held to my head or this other time when my skull was crushed against concrete while this guy stepped on me. The context of each of those stories is so different that I feel emotionally disrupted while having thoughts about them.

But I can also talk about traveling in foreign lands with small children. Non scary, totally vanilla shit. Want to talk gardening? I semi-run-mostly-jog long distances. I have hobbies now that I’m allowed to talk about in public, honest.

I will always cuss. I’m sorry. I have managed to make “fuck” more rare in my speech most of the time. I cringe less when my kids say “shit” or “crap” than I do when they say “fuck” so that is the only one I feel motivated to address.

I’m sorry.

Culture is a funny thing.

No, my kids aren’t sheltered in the ways in which other people think when they think “sheltered”. But my kids are not real likely to develop eating disorders. They are incredibly positive about a diverse range of bodies because I have very consciously created a house where that is the only reality they know. They are sheltered from the idea that princesses are helpless, weak creatures. They are sheltered from the idea that girls are supposed to be passive or quiet or cooperative.

It all depends on what you want to filter. I want my kids to know that masturbation is an awesome thing you do in private. Afterwards wash your hands because you don’t want to cross contaminate the bacteria that live in your genitals with your mouth because you can get sick. And they’ve heard that speech delivered with a smile a thousand times already. Pretty much every time they fondle themselves in front of me. “Vulvas are wonderful and private.”

Which is hilarious given how many people have seen my vulva. Hilarious. I think that being able to deliver that line with a straight face means I deserve some kind of award.

Shanna is changing her tune about wanting to go to school. Sometimes when we walk past the school the class doors are open. She watches the kids sitting in desks. Her interest in being one of them has evaporated. She doesn’t really like sitting still or being quiet. “Notice how it always seems to be the teachers turn to talk?”

I tell her that at some point she will want to know something badly enough that it will be worth listening to a teacher for a long time. She says with disgust, “Not for a long time.”

But she loves movement classes. So I think it’ll work out.

I think she is going to teach herself to read by memorizing Girl Genius (we have the graphic novels but all of it is available online for free). The whole series. It is much more engaging to her than childrens books are. She will sit and listen to it read out loud for as many hours in a day as Noah and I will consent to read. This is funny to me because I was never a graphic novel fan when I was younger. They read too slow. I am not patient enough to stop and look at the stupid pictures. They are distracting. Heh. Noah has tried to get me to play nice though.

Noah makes me feel like I should be a nicer person. He is nice to me even when he clearly would prefer to make a different choice. It is long-term self interest. If he is willing to work so hard for me, don’t I owe him equal effort?

Doesn’t everything require effort? Boy I like my alone time.

Behind on editing. Drat. I periodically try to reduce my internet usage for strange and convoluted reasons I’m not up for typing today. I’m in one of those periods and I’m having trouble defining the restrictions for myself. What am I limiting and why? I’m thinking about it a lot. But after blogging again my arms are annoyed at me. Maybe ergonomic set up is not a luxury that can be put off longer. I need to get a system. And really soon.

Not getting a lot shorter.

Leave a reply

I am really bad at “editing to make shorter”. I’m all “What do you mean you want to delete some of my PRECIOUS WORDS”. The book may be longer than 30,000 words. Ahem.

The suicide book is hard to read. When I go through sections I stop to reflect on my grandmother, my father, my brother and myself and I put all the theories through the different forced perspectives.

I don’t know why my grandmother killed herself. I know she was the only illegitimate daughter of a prostitute. I know she was married to a Mennonite who was controlling. I know she had five kids and lost one. I know she was very over weight. I know she over dosed when my mom was pregnant with me. There is some possibility that it was an accident. My mom said she saw multiple doctors and had prescriptions for fucking everything. Maybe in the days pre-medication-databases people didn’t cross check her medications. Who knows.

My father killed himself the morning his trial was supposed to start. He didn’t want to go through being prosecuted for raping me. Even though he confessed to the police he wrote suicide notes denying his guilt and blaming me for being a liar who destroyed my family. He sat in his garage with the motor running. Everyone thought he would put a gun to his head but I suppose he was too much of a chicken shit.

My brother covered himself on gasoline and lit himself on fire. There is no accident there. There is no going gently into the good night. Tommy was fucking sure he wanted to die that day in a very painful way. Tommy probably didn’t want to find out what would happen when my dad went on trial. Tommy was very dependent on our father because of his brain injury. And if Tommy was put on the stand it might come out that our father was raping Tommy too. I doubt Tommy wanted to face that.

Suicide happens when someones pain is too big for them to contain any more. I don’t know what pain my grandmother was in. I don’t know what happened to my father in his life to cause him to become a monster. I don’t fault my brother for being done with his shitty life. It was really bad.

But I look at these different perspectives and then I think about me. I don’t know how my grandmother was treated in her life. I know that I went from being treated pretty badly to being treated extraordinarily well. Thank you, Noah.

Noah is sure he wants to keep me for as long as he can have me. This baffles me. I’m not easy to be around. I argue a lot. I can be fairly nasty. I am inherently biased against many of Noah’s points of view–which makes me an asshole on a regular basis. Well, sorta.

I’m careful not to attack Noah. I’m careful not to be mean to him. He has carved out an exception. If he was more sensitive to comments about groups he is sort of part of then we would have more trouble. Luckily being “sensitive” is not one of his strong suits. Phew. He ignores my sniping. Well until he doesn’t and then he argues and argues and argues until I back off. But boy howdy we are civil about it.

It’s kind of weird. Even when I think we are all set for an argument to clear the air… we have a civilized discussion where maybe we don’t like the topic but we can get through it without insulting one another or being a jerk. It’s weird.

I like Noah. He is worth modifying a lot of my behavior. He is very good at challenging me and not discounting me at the same time. We are very good at kicking one another in the ass.

So I don’t have good reasons to die any more. I have a really good life. I spend my days with people who are delighted to be in my presence. I spend my days with people who will cheerfully retry on word choice and tone of voice with a simple “Try again”. We all will. This is an even-steven job. We want to be nice to one another and we all recognize that sometimes that is hard. Sometimes things come out wrong and you need to try again.

No big deal.

It is really nice being able to assume the best of intentions. I think this is what my family resented so much. I never gave them the benefit of the doubt. Not once. Every nasty thing was taken at full face value with extra venom assumed. But they hit me a lot. And told me I was worthless a lot. They called me cunt and bitch and whore and stupid and told me they wished I had never been born.

I don’t think giving them the benefit of the doubt would have been wise. I still feel sad and miss them. That missing is the dangerous and scary part. I feel very bad for hurting my family. If there is a pain that will drown me still in my life that is probably it. Luckily I have three people who are very clear that I am not hurting them and they want me to stay very badly.

I try to remember that. I am important now. I am no longer just that stupid bitch at the bottom of the shit hill. I am not worthless.

It is hard to really believe and see myself as what I am. It would be easier to ignore the real self and try to build a grandiose persona.

But the simple realities of who I am are ok. I’m not as lame as I like to think. I am a teacher. I am a doer and a maker. I help start businesses. Some continue and some fold. I haven’t lost all my money on a business venture yet. I think I always believed I was not someone who “could” do things. I travel the world and my country. I am really good at talking to people. I’m not the best friend over time but I am good at meeting people. I’m a decent mother. I feel proud of the self control I have had in my relationship with my kids. Only fourteen and a half years to go.

Countries: Australia, New Zealand, England, Ireland, Scotland, France. I am looking forward to finding out what it feels like to be in a place where white people are not the norm. I have been reading some interesting things about volunteering and the great white savior thing.

I feel some shame about what I want from the WWOOF year. Am I going to be exploiting people? I don’t know. I am not going with the assumption that I am there to save anyone. I am going as a student hoping to learn. I do not think I have the answers or that I will be the best helper they have ever had. I hope I don’t do something so badly that they have to fix it after I leave. That would be embarrassing and pathetic. I do have carpentry skills. I have helped build things.

I don’t know. No motives are above suspicion.

I don’t want to travel the world from tourist spot to tourist spot. That isn’t my way. I want to take my kids to where the poor people live and just meet people. Not because I think I will save anyone. Not because I think that their lives will be better if they meet me. I don’t think I will have a lot of impact on their lives. Not really. Maybe I might be a pleasant afternoon or few months of conversation but I am not going with the idea that I am so awesome that I will make everything better for the people around me.

I think that the people I meet will change me more than I will change them. I am selfish and selfish and selfish and I want to have that experience. I am privileged and I get to do it. Even though I have a lot of mixed emotions about the carbon footprint and economic impact and social implications and blah.

I’m not a hero. I just want to listen.

Ok, I hope I will know one or two small tricks that will be useful for people along the way. But I’m talking minor shit. I don’t think I will be what makes or breaks people. I don’t over rate my importance like that.

Sometimes my friends are very kind to me and they reach out to let me know that I have work to do when my fourteen and a half years of parenting are up. They need me to keep writing.

My not-so-secret wish (I am putting it on the internet and all) is that I want to help people deal with incest and suicidality. Some day I hope I can make a difference in some lives. I hope I can make it easier for people to live. I hope I can ease the burden of their pain.

I hope that some day I can help people feel less alone. And that the feeling of being not-alone will be helpful for them.

I hope.

I can’t solve your problems. But I can listen.

I go in waves of feeling surprised by how I feel about having my childhood story out there for people to read. People bring it up. I need to get it back out for sale very soon. Yeah, I’m just going to self-publish. Maybe by the end of this year I will have the nerve to do a Kickstarter to get it in print. Then I get to hawk it to book stores. Terrifying.

“Hey, want to read about my shitty life? I hope it will inspire you.”

Sometimes people tell me I’m inspirational. My heart soars. But I don’t want to go the televangelist route or anything like that. I don’t really want to be a life coach. I do fantasize about a part time job putting together displays at Ikea. That would be so much fun for me.

Today is long and busy. Woof. We start the day in San Pablo at 9:00. That means leaving my house by 7:30. We have to leave San Pablo by 1:45 because we have to be back at swim lessons at 2:10. Then we come home and a friend comes over for dinner and spending the night.

Someone commented that socializing is my job. I said that wasn’t far from the truth. I spend as many hours socializing as many people spend at their jobs. That is the only way I have ongoing relationships. I don’t know who will stay for longer stretches and who is temporary. If I’m overly selective then attrition means I spend a lot of time alone feeling very bad about myself. So I say yes. And sometimes lots of people are only available on the same damn day of the week so I have marathon days in order to not pick and choose between which relationships I want more.

I want them all.

I’m in a lucky phase. I don’t have to chase in order to be so busy I can barely manage. I have managed to talk people into inviting themselves over. I have managed to get enough reoccurring dates with people that I don’t have to ask much. Thank you all for consenting to the way I like to do things. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

There is, as always, a long list of people I wish I had the courage to approach right now. I miss them. So I passive aggressively hint about it in writing and put my head down and barrel through my day. Like I do. Of course I wish they would invite themselves over. And they wish I were less of a passive aggressive twat. It’s good to want things.

My shrink tells me that given how demanding my kids are I need to be ok with more of my friendships being on a long timer. Don’t think of them as “over” just because you aren’t being very active in them right now. Life is long.

But that is how I didn’t see Jill for almost two years and then she died and… I miss her. I miss Anna. I miss Brittney. And they are done with me.

Other situations seem a lot less like I should put a lid on the coffin and start nailing. Who fucking knows what the future might bring. Maybe we will get our heads out of our asses.

We all want community. When you start rejecting people for not being perfect you quickly find that you are all alone. It isn’t better. Sometimes we have to accept people warts and all and just find a way to get along. I don’t really like that idea very much. But I have several very close friends who have a +/- window on arrival time that would have caused me to jettison them from my life years ago. Punctuality was a bigger deal pre-kids.

I come to realize that part of my softening on punctuality is because I now have a place to wait where I don’t feel awkward, stupid, abandoned, and like I am on public display as unwanted goods. I like my house.

Stop typing, Krissy. You need to edit then start the day. Go.

Medication then catching up

Leave a reply

I know I go through periods of fewer posts. Don’t give up on me. I will always come back to writing. My arms were really bothering me. Typing less has brought the pain down to the 1-2 level. Hurray!

Yesterday Shanna asked me about my medication again. It comes up once in a while. She knew I was tapering in December and that I was having trouble with being patient because of it. Now that I am medicating on a more regular question it feels more intrusive to her and so she asked me again why I need it.

I asked her, “Do you think our life together is scary?”

“No.”

“Do you think anyone in this house might hurt you?”

“Well, we have accidents and bump each other. That hurts.”

“Ok, fair enough. Do you fear that your Daddy or I might do something terrible to you?”

She started giggling.

“Ok, so you feel safe and happy and loved, right?”

“Of course I do. I am safe, happy and loved.”

(I swear to God my heart almost exploded.)

“Well I mostly feel that way now too. Our life is pretty wonderful together. But a long time ago before you were born my life was different. I wasn’t very safe. I wasn’t happy. And for a long time I wasn’t loved.”

She leaned in to hug me at that point.

“Thank you for the hug, honey. My point is that what you learn as a little kid is kind of hard to change when you are a grown up. You will probably always feel safe, happy and loved because you are getting used to it as a kid. I have a hard time not feeling scared and angry and unsafe because that is what my life was like when I was a kid. I have no good reason to be scared or angry or unsafe now. My life is awesome. But it’s hard to change what your brain thinks of as “normal” and the medicine helps me with that. The medicine kind of helps my brain ignore the parts that say BUT YOU SHOULD BE SCARED!!!!”

“Ok, so the medicine makes you feel less scared?”

“Sorta. Not exactly. The medicine helps my brain relax enough to really look around me. Is there any reason in my life right now for me to be scared?”

“Uhm, are you scared I will cut my hair again?” (Calli gave herself a haircut this weekend. Sigh. It’ll be fine. Today we will see the hairdresser and she’ll have sassy cute short hair. All’s well that ends well. I laughed when Shanna said this.)

“No I don’t feel scared that you will cut your hair. It’s your hair. If you want to cut it I need to suck it up and deal with that. Ok, let me try again. I don’t have any reason for my brain or body to be scared. But my brain forgets that I should stop being scared because it was scared for so long. The medicine is kind of a way of gently nudging my brain into saying–‘hey dude–look around, your life is awesome‘.”

“So the medicine helps you be less scared?”

“Sure. The medicine lets me be not-scared. Some bodies function differently and need medicine. Your uncle has problems with his blood sugar, right? He talks to you about how that works for him.”

“Yeah. He has diabetes. He has to check his blood sugar with a machine and then he has to be careful what he eats.”

“Right. So some people who have diabetes have to be on a medicine called insulin every single day and some people don’t. It depends on how the persons individual body is working–right? Because not everyone needs insulin.”

“Ok.”

“I need cannabis because my body needs the reminder to look around at how calm and happy my life is. This medicine allows me to do that whereas without the medicine I am too scared to notice how wonderful my life is. And that’s pretty sucky feeling.”

“That makes sense.”

“I think so.”

Then she handed me a book and expected me to shift gears.

I’m making steady progress on Outrunning. I will absolutely be done by June. Many people are bringing up the idea of self-publishing. I think I probably should do that for No Secrets but I’m still afraid that Outrunning will need established distribution networks.

I’m taking a few weeks off of social media. Stop fucking up your arms with lame attempts to connect that don’t really go anywhere, Krissy.

I’m reading, of course. Three books at once. Stealth of Nations by Robert Neuwirth–it’s about System D economies. Piracy, non-registered, street vendors, all kinds of different subeconomies that operate outside the “legal” sphere. I’m also reading Out of the Nightmare: Recovery from Depression and Suicidal Pain by David L. Conroy, Ph.D. It is as fucking cheerful as it sounds. And last but not least: Playing Well With Others by Mollena Williams and Lee Harrington. I feel like an asshole because I’ve owned the book for over a year and I haven’t read it yet. I’m telling newbies to go read the book without prereading it. I recommend it on the basis of, “I’ve known Mollena and Lee for almost a decade and a half and I’ve been to their classes and I’ve played with them and been friends with them so it must be good.” Good to actually read it though. Ahem. So far it is as good as I expected it to be. That is a good sign.

I have more work to do on the garden, of course. That never ends. I didn’t finish putting the last few seeds in the ground. And now it is hella wet which means I won’t have to soak the seeds when I plant them. Maybe I’ll get that done today.

The Prius is in the shop. New auxiliary battery, alignment, and brakes. Ouch. Today I stop and say a prayer of thanksgiving that I am a rich person now and sudden car maintenance is ok. I don’t need to feel scared just because unexpected bills came up. That is such a luxury and I want to be conscious of it for the rest of my life. Relax. I don’t need to be scared. It is only money and we have enough. We have enough. We have enough.

First Sunday in April I am going to co-teach a bdsm class. It will be fun. It will be about boundaries and having them and dealing with people over-stepping them and such. Because that’s how I roll.

Running is going very well. My next race is only 19 days away. Eeep. I still haven’t scheduled the Portland race. I’m dithering for a variety of reasons. I’ll do it though. I have one friend coming over on Tuesday nights to walk five miles with me. That’s pretty exciting. She might make it a regular thing. I want to bully/beg my neighbor into going out with me on Thursday morning runs. His wife says that once my mileage comes down after the race she will shove him out the door for me because he needs the exercise. Saturdays will remain my long days and they might stay solo for a while because post-race I’m thinking I’ll keep to 10+ miles. I feel better physically and I man I like eating like a horse without gaining weight. I seem to have gained ten pounds from all the cookies I ate over the winter. My pants fit better. Yay!

I keep thinking that I should make up a few mailing lists. Shanna is enamoured with the idea of last minute invitations. I’m not so good at making those work. I only know how to get big groups to congregate if I start talking about an event a few months in advance because then I poke people slowly in person over a long period and get them to commit. I’m not good at “Let’s have a spontaneous large get-together tomorrow.” I… I fail. I don’t know who to call. I even feel awkward about individual emails. “If this person isn’t available will they be sad and feel kind of rejected if I bring it up?”

I have been debating with myself how I want to structure this. Do I want one big mailing list that people can sign on to and then they have to ignore the non-relevant emails? That seems like trouble. Do I want a working parents list and a stay at home parent list? That way I am not constantly spamming the working friends with, “Want to go to a museum on Tuesday at 10am?”

I have several friends who actively are trying to run large groups of people already. If I have a mailing list and I want to do things that conflict with their public schedule… am I being rude? Should I have people on a mailing list when I know in advance they will frequently already be asking me to do something else on that day but I don’t want to do what they want to do? That seems… problematic.

But I’m really not willing to drive far enough to just up and join someone else’s group full time. All the folks running active groups are at least thirty minutes from my house and I’m not up for an hour of driving (or more–sometimes two or three hours) of driving for socializing almost every day of the week. I’m just not up for it.

So it goes.

I feel stupid. I want it to be an opt-in thing. But I’m afraid that having it as an opt-in thing will mean that people will feel rejected because I didn’t seek them out and beg them to participate.

I’m being an idiot.

Heck, I’d kind of like to have a mailing list for “Adult friends who do not have children” but who like tagging along sometimes so they want to know what is going on so they can say, ‘That sounds like fun’ without me having to go through my damn Little Black Book thinking of everyone I know before I do stuff.

I like community but I’m shit at organizing it. Anxiety for the win. And I’m a bad joiner. And I want to put a sign in front of my house advertising that I will teach English in exchange for people teaching me their language and I haven’t gotten up the nerve yet.

So many things I want to do and so little time. And so little self-confidence.

Wait! It’s not just lack of self-confidence… it’s uhhh I’m already over scheduled. Yeah. That’s it.

Ok, I should go edit now that I have one more hour of work time left this morning. I miss you, oh blog, when I am not babbling into you constantly. I will always come back. This is an affair I can’t give up on.

Not dead.

1 Reply

My arms are being fussy. And lots is going on. I am having lots of big feelings. Clearly being on medication is not enough to make that problem go away. Stupid shit. I’m trying to not be an asshole.

The speaking event we went to tonight was pretty fun. I think I’ll be talking for them next year. Diversity. Poverty. “Upward mobility”. Adverse childhood experiences. Brain development. Raw potential. Community influence. Sure. Talking to them would be fun. If you live else where check their dates for your city.

Noah and I were treated like B list celebrities. (In a sweet way. We didn’t expect to be recognized.) People knew who we were before we arrived and then spent a lot of time telling us how fantastic we are. I walked out with a puffed chest. Hilarious.

I got to drive a stick shift. That was an adventure.

How to protect oneself from the potential fallout from decisions one can’t control? It’s a mystery.

I come back over and over to this idea: my primary job is educating my children. My primary job is educating my children. My primary job is educating my children.

All the rest is optional. It should get jettisoned in favor of proper focus on my primary job.

No, I don’t think that all mothers should spend all of their time obsessively with their kids whether they like it or not. I have never said they should. (Well you could cut’n’paste and shit and make it look like I did but I didn’t.)

I want to home school my kids. If they want me to do so as well, of course. So far my kids express zero desire to be away from me all day. They get pretty pissy when I’m away from them for a while. This too shall pass.

My primary job is not cooking, cleaning, shopping, laundry, writing, reading, or gardening. All of those things must be placed in their proper order.

I don’t want to outsource the work of my life. I do not aspire to dropping off dirty laundry and picking up clean clothes. I’m not sure I aspire to a house cleaner. My gardner (whom we keep around to trim the front hedge because otherwise the city gets mad at me and I don’t wanna do it) is always anxious because I don’t want him to do much but I give him periodic raises and he seems to think he is ripping me off. It’s cool. Stop butchering the god damn blue potato vine. I was shaping that fucker.

Oh well.

I just want to hear you talk.

Leave a reply

I am nearing the end of the seventh season of West Wing again. I think I am up to eight run throughs. When I think about all the hours of my life I have given this show…

Not long ago Noah indicated to me that he would try harder to not talk about work. This came up because I complained about him not listening.

So towards the end of the WW CJ and her long-time beau (Danny) have to figure out how to make a relationship work. It is as awkward and strange and delightful as those characters deserve. At some point CJ will have to figure out what to do next after the White House. CJ and Danny have a large argument about learning how to discuss things with one another rather than making decisions on their own.

Danny says, “I just want to hear you talk.”

It isn’t that I don’t want to hear about Noah’s work. That’s not it. There are reasons I can scout for appropriate people for him to chat with at parties. I listen and pay attention to the work stuff. I can give run downs on the programming languages he favors and why. I can discuss different attitudes about programming languages depending on ones initial language acquisition. I can reference different departments in a large number of technology companies.

I uhh don’t work with computers or program. I mean, I’ve figured out how to use a laptop so I “work with computer” but I don’t design programs. I just write my shit and hit “publish”. Someone else makes magic happen.

Sometimes it is incredible to me that we live in such an incredible time. There is so much untapped potential every second of the day. You have to pick and choose which aspects of it are worth your time.

Anyway, back to Noah. It’s not that I don’t want to hear about your job. It’s that I want you to be able to rattle off as much shit about me as I can about you. I want you to listen when I talk instead of formulating the next thing you want to do at work while I happen to be standing nearby.

It’s not that I don’t want to hear about work. I want to feel heard.

I want to hang out with you for the rest of my life. I want you to think I am interesting. I am scared that you don’t unless I do some pretty extreme things. That is hard sometimes.

When I was younger and I had less to be responsible for I set some pretty high bars for expectations of my behavior. Uhm. I’m tired. I’m scared that I won’t be interesting to you without masochism.

It’s not that I think I am over perverted sex. I feel very different about my sexuality being performative than I used to. Things change. I think spent a long time using sex as one of the primary ways I tried to get people to like me and now it’s… different.

I suck at sustained intimacy. We both work too much. We are both tired.

I’m sorry I made you feel like I don’t want to hear about work. I do. This balance business is hard. I know it is hard for you that the kids interrupt. They kind of feel the same way about you. They are here all day. They have a running dialogue with me that you interrupt. You aren’t doing anything bad and they should share turns with you. I’m sorry that it frustrates you so much. They don’t mean anything bad by it.

I know parenting is hard for you. But you work so hard. I am so consistently proud of your ability to take a deep breath and change your tone of voice. It takes the smallest indication that you should and you just presto like magic do it. I think that is pretty fucking cool. Emotional regulation for the win.

I am so grateful that you like to read to them as much as you do. I would have to do way more reading out loud if you didn’t and I kind of hate doing it. It makes my throat ache.

I try to thank you at every meal for making food for me. It really is a big deal to me that you do this. I feel loved and cared for. I feel grateful that you take this burden from me. I’m not very good at feeding me. I’m pretty bad at it. I am a lot healthier now that you cook for me. Thank you.

I appreciate that you spontaneously notice that the house is clean and you thank me for my hard work. That makes me feel good. See, this is why I let it get nasty. That way the difference is more stark and it makes your job of noticing way easier.

Ahem.

I’m hoping for some good date nights this week. Two! Unbelievable! Two dates in a week!

Do you know I used to go on dates five to seven nights a week with somewhere between three and seven people of ranging gender presentation? Now I celebrate two dates in a week with cartwheels. And with one guy. I used to keep detailed records of who I had what kind of sex with when so I could potentially trace back uhm issues. Now… not so much.

You are the only one I get to fall into for the rest of my life. Yes, I want to hear about your work. Your work will be a big part of my life forever. If I try to shut it out I won’t get a very big piece of you. I want you. I really do. That means tolerance for long philosophical conversations about the merits of programming languages I don’t use. It’s kind of hilarious.

I understand that part of my role here is to be your test audience for arguments. I ask questions that surprise you and cause you to have to rethink your approach to arguments. I have value as a muse even though I have no interest in sharing your work. I get it. I accept it. I’m down. I’ve got the 411. What have you.

It just needs to be an ensemble piece with all of us functioning as “main characters”.

I don’t do top down authority much. If I have to get you to do something by hurting your or forcing you then I probably don’t god damn need it done. I’m a big girl. I can do things for myself.

But you feed me. Cause you want to. So I do your laundry and clean your house and talk to your kids all day. Believe me I understand having questionable interest in the productivity of my days. Whoopdie shit. Six loads of laundry. Whoo fucking hoo.

I have treated every job I’ve ever had as something to try and take pride in. Retail, teaching, food service–I showed up and worked as hard as I could. I work as hard in your house.

I’m sorry I’m so hard on you.

The best things in life are free.

5 Replies

Noah and I were talking about my feeling that I don’t contribute enough. He disagrees, of course. He was fine with rattling off all the things I do to “contribute”. Yes my dear Mrs. Lincoln but how was the play?

If I can make our investments grow by even 5% a year I will eventually outpace Noah at earning money. Even though I feel he is so much “smarter” than me. I think he is more marketable. He has a much better memory. My memory comes and goes and surprises me. I can’t just memorize long blocks of text the way he does.

I know things he doesn’t, though. Things that do have value in the world even if they do not directly translate into me receiving a salary.

I should pay more attention to the investments because a)I have time b)I have motivation and c)having access to this kind of money is a gift, luxury, and privilege. With great privilege comes great responsibility.

The thing is, there is this balance I’m dealing with. The earlier I put money into investing the faster it will grow and the larger it will get. I could significantly out earn the benefit I get from over paying my mortgage. But having the house paid off is such a psychological thing for me that.. No. I’m not going to reduce my mortgage so I can “play” with investing faster. That’s not for me.

But I keep seeing the phrase “Even $100 a month can multiply to…”. I’m investing more than $100/month. Maxing out Noah’s 401k, maxing out an IRA in my name, $100/month to Shanna’s 529 and $350 to Calli’s account, and now $100 into a brokerage account that I’m picking. Gulp. We’ll see, right?

It is hard having this series of revelations, is that what being an adult means? You realize in layers oh shit–I’m also responsible for this other stuff that I never even knew existed.

I think that the plants help. Responsibility is seeming different now that I perceive it in terms of other living things will die if I don’t pay attention. It changes the perspective. My cat is also much more loving now that I take better care of her. Now that I am less neglectful.

I don’t think my self worth should come from what I do. But I believe that a lot of my life long safety will depend on my ability to create that safety for myself. I don’t have a fall back. I have the security that Noah and I build together.

It is no better or worse than anyone else has in the end. Families have problems. “Support” comes and goes. Your parents die. Medical problems come up.

What does taking care of yourself mean? What does providing for the future mean? Holy shit. How am I going to make sure I have a place to hang out when I’m old and not up for doing a lot of work? How will I eat?

Will I get old? Will I get cancer? Will I kill myself?

I’d really like to see what this house will look like when I’m sixty. It’s a deeply selfish wish. I have to not die even if I have no use to anyone else if I want to see it.

I noticed yesterday that I haven’t made progress on any of the suicide books since I was last experiencing ideation. It’s been a nice break.

I want to relate the change to being more fully medicated but that isn’t it. I have periods where I am suicidal even with medicating. The cycles are different. I think obsessing about money is a better distraction from feeling suicidal than most other tactics I’ve tried.

Tommy’s birthday didn’t trigger me this year. It was a decent day. I kind of talked to him all day long. I told him about my kids. I felt a little sad but ok.

Sissy’s birthday in January was harder but I still didn’t feel worthless.

This is such a deep puddle. Splash splash. Go eat breakfast.

find gratitude (body edition)

1 Reply

Dear body: thank you for waiting until the night after my long run to start bleeding. That is so kind of you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I am  not even going to bitch about you coming on with so much agonizing pain I can’t sleep through it. It’s ok. I love you.

I’m not even going to complain that you woke up so hungry that it hurts a lot. You need what you need. You are doing a good job of asking for your needs lately. Keep it up.

I’m thrilled with your ability to show up and do what I want. I appreciate that you rarely flake on me. Bodies are tricky things. Sometimes the mind says “I want to do ____” and the body laughs. Not today, bio-tech. Mostly my body cooperates. Thank you.

My head and arms hurt. I’m grateful for the reminder that I am alive. I’m grateful for the reminder to rest.

I didn’t have a bad day before I started bleeding and I often do. That’s pretty awesome.

Today is a clothes swap. We’ll see what I find. Maybe some pants without a hole. Who knows.

All the things.

Leave a reply

I finished The Cannabis Health Index. I may need to own a copy of my own. It was incredibly hard to just sit down and read it (I’m pretty sure I’m confusing a lot of cancer information in my head right now because I’m really not a medical expert.)

Mostly what I come away from the book believing is that I need to do the math on how much pills cost and find a way to earn that amount of money for myself so I get over my overwhelming guilt about taking family money for “drugs” (apparently that is the deal my brother had with his wife as a stay at home parent–he had to work enough to pay for pot and alcohol). I have a lot of “risk factors”. I can’t do anything about that. My body is not in great shape. I need to lower my stress and this is the most effective medication I know exists. Ok.

Apparently my shrink knows the author and she’s going to have lunch with him this week. She says she will pass on my opinions on the book. I feel a little weird about that.

I finished the first round of editing Outrunning a week early. That makes me feel happy with myself. I read through the essays and got rid of the worst of the grammatical weirdness and put keywords all over the place. Round two involves matching up key words and eliminating all the duplicate phrasings. Going through it once helped me spot some of the repetition. Key words will help.

It’s still kind of unorganized and there are a few sections I need to hack and write again to be more explicit. I’m pussy-footing and being vague in a few places where I should be more explicit. Kids won’t understand the PC hand-wavey shit. Say it like it is.

I do need to justify why arbitrary rules can be ignored. Don’t worry Pam. I’ll tell them why eating dessert first isn’t a big deal.

This week has been packed. I am very lucky that people ask to spend time with us. Very lucky. Overwhelmingly lucky. Sometimes lots of people ask for the same week. This week had 2-3 social engagements every day. It would have been three on almost every day but we had some blissful cancellations. Sometimes I feel weird about being glad for cancellations. At least it feels emotionally superior to my years-ago feelings of fury and hate. Easier to maintain friendships and be understanding.

People get sick. The parents of our little friends sometimes have to work. We can either be understanding and supportive or we can give up on them as friends.

I’m not really in a jettisoning people from my life stage. I’m trying to build. Tolerance is in my best interests. Enlightened self-interest and all that.

I do not worry that I am under socializing my kids. Oy. I don’t worry as much about me being isolated either. I’m starting to see my time alone as strictly self preservation against all the different things I have to think about all the forking time.

I appreciate that I am managing to build a life that mostly exists within ten miles of my house. It is a slow process but it is working. I’m existing in the space I’m in. I’m Occupying my space. I take up room and talk to people and get to know them and ask about their lives. I’m getting to know more home schoolers and better know the ones already in our lives.

I’m in the phase I’m in.

I want community. I want it so bad I can taste it. This is the process and I need to figure out how much of the cost I can bear.

It occurred to me that I should stop thinking of our food budget as an area to constrict. Part of the reason that we spend as much money as we do is that we have extra people at meals at least five days a week. Sometimes just one person but often up to twelve. We have several parties a year. That’s just part of our life.

We’re feeders. Come here hungry. We’re happy to fill that need. There are a lot of problems we can’t fix but you don’t need to leave our house hungry.

But I’m kind of a fascist about what I want my kids to eat. And I read too much about food quality to buy cheaper products full time. I have the luxury of buying food that I prefer. Ok, that still includes Kraft mac’n’cheese and ramen because I have some taste preferences I can’t seem to ditch. Also: when I’m very overwhelmed and I need to stay in emotional control I can’t cook anything more complicated than that. Even making sandwiches stresses me out more than that. Making ten sandwiches will result in my hands shaking by the end. Lame.

So I do what I need to do. I feed people. I have good nuts and fruit and cheese and meat and awesomely shitty starches. Take your pick.

We all make choices and set priorities.

I will continue to hemorrhage money on meat, fruit, and vegetables. I will source them as locally as possible. Dairy is more mixed for me. I’m going to keep buying my fucking ramen and mac’n’cheese.

If I want to be able to keep sharing this quality of food with my family I have to just accept that as the cost of doing business and not feel guilty. It is expensive to eat well. It sucks but it’s true. I need to get over my inclination to feel guilty about high grocery bills. I’m not wasting the money. Yes, we “could” spend less money on food. But I get to buy meat mostly outside the industrial meat complex. I get to support farmers trying to grow organic food for a living wage within 100 miles of where I live. I want that industry to succeed. I like shopping at my farmers market.

I have choices because I have privilege. I’m not doing what I “must” if I force my family to live on rice and beans all the time. I could do it. But I don’t see high moral value in doing it. It’s a perfectly valid choice. It is not, however, a more moral choice. It could be argued that a vegan diet would be more moral but I’m at peace with my status of omnivore. I try to make sure the cows, chickens, pigs, and lambs that make up most of my meals lived decent lives. It’s important to me.

I think that understanding my choices in context helps me appreciate my successes against my metrics.

If I had a different amount of money my metrics would change. Like they do.

Trying to look for some peace with my budget process. Looking for that Zen place.

It’s kind of funny. Today I sit down and feel like I’ve checked almost all the boxes for this month and it’s the 21st. I still have some seeds to get in the ground. Two or three hours of work, not bad.

Next week there are one or two things every day. Swimming counts as a thing. Dentist counts as a thing. It’s not all social. Looking at the number of hours of babysitting I think I should spent all day with the kids in between or they will flip out. Brace yerself, Eppie.

I’ve had a lot of alone time this week. (Thus the productivity.) Next week I need to be done at 6:30 and be more present with them during the day. Ok. That is the main job and all. Noah has been reading to them for hours every night and I either hide in the garage or go to bed.

But when I cycle this way sex gets fewer and farther between. (Last night was great, honey. Thanks.) It seems like the main way we can work it out now is to have me go to bed at 6:30 pm so I can take a three hour nap and wake up for sex when the kids are asleep. Ha. Disco nap.

Keep all the balls in the air. Haven’t had a panic attack in more than two weeks. That’s pretty good. I have been medicating. I haven’t felt the need to cut. It is nice to notice the absence of that wanting. I have other anxieties but it’s not extreme.

Just keep swimming swimming… something.

Ugh. Going in.

Series of small heart attacks.

1 Reply

When I was a little girl I spent a lot of time fantasizing about what it would mean to be “safe”. One of my qualifications was that I wanted to have $250,000 in savings of some kinds and another was that I wanted to own my house outright.

I’m pretty sure I’m five years away from owning the house outright. I linked all of Noah’s investment accounts up to Mint. Apparently we have more than $500,000 in investments to go with our more than $55,000 in cash.

If you add in the house value (which we don’t fully own yet anyway) we are over a million in net worth.

My head has been exploding and I keep getting these energy bursts. Oh my fucking god I am so going to fuck this up. I am going to do something terribly wrong. I am going to break the whole fucking thing.

Unless Noah gets over his abhorrence of management he is probably just about at his salary max for this lifetime. He probably has fifteen more years where people will hire him for coding. After that his salary is probably going to drop precipitously. I hope to be ready to coast from there.

I’m thinking about this really hard because my spending this year matters if I want to do a bunch of the upcoming stuff. And I’m kinda trigger happy. I shop more than I need to. I have a lot of years of deprivation behind me. It is hard to always say no when I know I “could”. It uses a kind of self control that is new to me. It is really draining and hard.

But there is a big part of me that says, “Shit dude. You could cash out half the stock and pay the house off and be to your former goal. Declare yourself the fucking winner already.”

But the goalpost moved. If I don’t fuck with the investments then over the next period of Noah’s employment we will absolutely reach more than a million invested. Apart from the supposed value of our real estate.

That idea fills me with anxiety.

Just like Noah doesn’t want to hit a net worth of a million through inheriting from his family I feel weird about being baggage. I’m not doing this. I don’t feel “worth” this.

He’s adamant that it is all joint money. I’m not complaining about Noah.

This is about me. Am I going to make something of myself or am I going to be the dependent of someone who made something of himself.

The funny thing is: I was totally ok with that with regards to my Owner. I feel weird and uncomfortable with this dynamic as a marriage. I wonder if it would have changed if my Owner had been interested in children. I will never know but I wonder about myself. I wonder how I would deal with this panic.

It would be really bad. Noah is willing to cooperate with my budgetary restrictions and limits. He’s willing to allow me to grow our mutual wealth. He’s grateful.

My Owner uhhh wasn’t open to that kind of dynamic. I don’t think marriage and children would have changed that.

I don’t know why this is bothering me so much.

I had a fucking plan for how to get to the point where I owned a house and had 250,000 fucking dollars. And now it’s been blown all to hell. I mean, I can’t bitch about being twenty or thirty years ahead of where I planned for times two. Yet here I am.

I’m not bitching. I don’t wish it away and I’m squirreling more away as fast as I can.

Well, not as fast as I could. I do own a second high gas consumption vehicle. But I use it. The cargo space is fantastic. I have moved a lot of stuff. I need the seat space or cargo space at least once a week and often two or three days. So I eat the cost.

I do have luxuries. I try to be grateful for them every single day.

I eat very good food. I have a fairly balanced diet despite my griping that I live on dairy, wheat and meat I don’t. I eat a lot of vegetables. I just don’t give myself credit for them yet.

I am so grateful that I get to spend as much money on food as I do. Both at the grocery store and at ethnic restaurants. We eat a rather diverse diet and I’m thankful for it. I try new things. I continually try new things and try to be open to new flavors.

This is such a big deal for me. I can do it because when I really don’t like something I stop eating it. I’m allowed. I’m not in trouble for wasting the money. Noah is happy to pay for experimentation (within reason).

I am free to focus on a lot of types of personal growth and non-income producing work because Noah chooses to take me on as a dependent.

Why do I feel so bad about it? I know all the signs of dealing with a psychopath. I know all the early signs that lead to people getting screwed in divorces. Noah has jumped over enormous hurdles establishing that legally I am protected so that I can stop being anxious. I get half. Period.

Yet here I am. Even though my “half” of the cash is exactly the amount I always said I wanted. It’s not just that we haven’t finished paying the house off.

I’m siphoning off bits of the cash and investing it. Maybe if I can make that grow it will change my feeling of worthlessness? Somehow I doubt it. Not worthlessness exactly.

I want my own god damn status. I don’t want to be so-and-so’s wife. Even though I like him a lot. Even though I think he is spiffy and wonderful and I’m looking forward to decades of hanging out with him.

I read Clan of the Cave Bear at a formative time in my life. The idea of status is firmly implanted in my head.

I don’t want to go out and climb a ladder though. That’s not really my way. I want to build a ladder, not climb one that someone else built. I’m an asshole like that. And I get to be that asshole because of privilege.

I feel like I owe Noah more gratitude than I show and that leads to me feeling resentful and that’s not great. I don’t think I’ve been pissy with him. I don’t actually feel resentful. It’s more about feeling restless.

I’m struggling with that “gotta be something more” feeling. Yes, I’m doing all the things I should be doing to be a more balanced person. But I don’t earn money.

Why does that feel so important? I feel like a bad influence. I’m not modeling how to be a productive member of society.

Do I really think that every person has to produce money or they don’t have value? What the hell does that say about me?

I want to be with my kids. I want that more than I want a job. Even though a career would be the most likely way for me to get the money I kinda sorta want.

 

“Deep” conversations

Leave a reply

Had dinner with my friend and his brother recently. After the fact the brother said to my friend, “I was quite surprised by how deep that conversation was. I don’t usually talk to people about those things.”

I don’t really know how to have casual, surface conversations. I want to know the details about your childhood. I want to know why you are so violently opposed to having kids given that you are married to someone who wants kids even if it is none of my business. I’m not going to judge your reasons or argue with you. I’m just curious.

I want you to tell me why you think my friend ended up the way he is. You were there during his childhood and I wasn’t. Yes, I totally want to hear about the long-term relationship ups and downs you have had.

I don’t have relationships with my siblings. I don’t know how they work. I want to hear how they work for other people so it can help me guide my kids. I need to hear as many different points of view as possible because I don’t know what the range is. I only know my life. I know the books I have read.

I want to know about real life. I haven’t seen very much of it. Of course I am going to ask you deep and probing questions to find out what causes you to behave the way you do. The why behind people intrigues me.

Thank you for humoring me by telling me your story. I won’t reveal the details in public and I won’t betray the secrets you gave away on accident. I’m kind of like a bottomless well. I hold lots of secrets. The only ones I tell are my own.

That’s not even true. I’ve told secrets that aren’t my own. I do try to limit my confessional spews to my family. And lovers. Err, and I only tell ones that relate to me.

I’ve never gone through my brain and tried to organize my thoughts into lists of rape survivors. I don’t know how many I’ve talked to and I don’t want to. The list is very long.

I’ve never gone through my brain and tried to organize all of the incest survivors I have met. I don’t want to think about them that way.

Instead I think of my friends in more abstract pictures. They kind of swirl in my head in bright colors. Some of them have deep cracks fracturing their section. They aren’t broken but they show a lot of wear. Some of them are pale because I don’t know much about them. Some of them are bright and shining. The cracks don’t decide if the color is strong or weak. That’s on a completely different gradient.

Despite my obsession with lists I try not to list my friends or categorize them much. I do have some groupings. Breeders and non-breeders. Perverts and “I’m not privy to information about their sex life”. In town and out of town. Dancers. Home schoolers.

But I don’t list them. I just try to poke that corner of the web of my brain and see what floats up. I consciously don’t want to try to write them down.

I do think about the whole level thing. Level one, two, three, four, five. It does decide a lot of my behavior with people.

Level one gets to actually see me relax. They see the full variety of my behaviors and hear my thought process. I think out loud as much as I don’t. Level two gets to hear my unedited thoughts when we are together. I don’t use tact. Level three gets a strong dose of tact and an attempt to conform to their culture as much as I am able. My behavior and thoughts are censored but I feel comfortable with the idea that this person likes me. I can talk to them and feel safe but I know I need to be mindful of behaving “appropriately”.

Level four are people I think don’t like me very much. I try to avoid speaking directly to them and I literally keep my head down when I am physically near them. I am trying to stop. This is less pronounced than it used to be. I’ve worked on it pretty hard. I generally have to be near these people for reasons of shared community.

Level five is for strangers. How I treat them partially depends on how embedded in my web they are. I am tentative with people who know a lot of people who know me. I worry like fuck about reputation. With people who are completely unrelated to me I am much more free with casual speech. I babble, to put it frankly.

The more I spend time with Shanna the more validated I feel in my basic approach to strangers.

I wonder how much of our ability to talk to people will work in more diverse settings? I hope to find out. Will we be able to adapt into different settings? I wonder how much of my, and her, ability to talk to people is grounded in looks versus personality. I will never be able to know.

I hope I am not failing them.

Anyway, I don’t write down lists of people I know and sort them into levels. That uhh would take a lot of energy I don’t want to spend. I just notice the physical differences in how I react to people and I need to be honest with myself about that structure. If I settle in to understanding how I work I can figure out how to break patterns.

I suspect a lot of people I slot into level four don’t have a problem with me and it is all in my head. If I recognize my own inability to determine other peoples emotional states perhaps I can figure out some sort of testing protocol over time. Yes, I’m that dorky. But how to float test balloons and all.

It is very useful for me to determine who should be on level three instead of level two. That way I don’t cross lines and offend people. I’m really good at offending people if I’m not careful. When I’m careful I can sit and talk to someone of any religion of any color of any socio-economic class and have a lovely conversation. I can be respectful of other boundaries and social limitations. It just takes a lot of work and it means censoring out a very high percentage of stuff I think.

I can have a lot more time in a week with level two people without feeling physical stress than I can people of lower levels. Lately I feel quite supported. I worry about the eventual shift in life. The last two months have been really nice. I’m working on figuring out how to have more like this level of support when things change.

But if I think I have an “in” with you of any kind–of course I will ask personal questions. I’m not really interested in anything about you that isn’t personal. I’m kind of weird that way.

I’m happy with my forward progress this year in terms of gardening. Next year will be a fallow year because of the road trip. I think I will leave a stick house and come home to a playhouse completely covered in vines. I can’t express how happy that makes me.

I have this deep need to figure out how to live with my kids in a migratory fashion. I don’t know why I need this as bad as I do. I feel weird about it.

Maybe I want to prove that I could do it better than my mom? I don’t know. My mom didn’t have my life circumstances and I can’t blame her for doing the best she could with the meager resources at her disposal.

I have the internet. I can’t judge what she did. That would be a completely asshole move.

So if not a competitive thing, what? A way to figure out how it should be to break my ingrained patterns of panic? It seems unfair to drag my kids through my exposure therapy. Only…

If that is the way that I teach them how to have healthy reactions and they don’t know what I’m doing… is it actually bad? I don’t know.

I want my kids to see as many different kinds of lives as possible. I want them to understand the vast differences that privilege make. I want them to think about what they actually see in terms of generosity, community, and humanity as they meet different people.

I don’t believe I can force them to think the way I do or reach the same conclusions as me. That’s not the point. All I can control is what they see and are exposed to. And only for a short time. After that I don’t get to be the boss any more.

Go now.

My kids express fervent appreciation of fat bodies. They are completely blind to the world of “diets” and “thinspiration”. When I read articles about the prevalence of eating disorders in children under ten I feel so sad. I can’t do anything about all the kids. My kids so far are lucky enough to love their bodies and bodies in general. They have positive associations with people of all body types.

That’s all I can control.

I feel sad when I read about the color coded and gendering of toys that seem to be common now. My kids don’t live in that world. Sure, they have some pink and they play princesses. But they are also fierce knights and doctors and cooks and fire fighters and cupcake girls and super heroes and …

They have no idea that people think girls shouldn’t “do”. They are incredibly assertive instead of passive. They are not aware that some people believe that children should be seen and not heard.

I was told and told and told and told to just shut up. My kids don’t hear it.

Today should be a nice day.

I miss tracking

Leave a reply

Five kinds of seeds to go. I’m trying to not work to exhaustion.

I have a lot else going on. Only thirteen chapters left to edit. Yes Pam, I am looking at your suggestions. Soon I will go through and fuck with the google docs. I should be done in five days with the first round. At least two to go. Shit.

Yesterday was Cirque. We had a blast. It is weird knowing that the homeschool group is probably going to be the definitive school group for my life. I have never before been involved in any learning collective for as long as four consecutive years–the longest was in graduate school. I’ve been in the homeschool group for three years now. I never went to an elementary school, junior high, high school, or college that long. Just graduate school. Graduate school kinda stretched over seven years but I took a lot of semesters off in the middle. I left without a degree and only knew the names of three people from my program.

Haven’t had a panic attack since the museum/swim combo. That’s been twelve days.

Usually I feel self conscious about logging them so I don’t write down every one. It’s embarrassing.  But I want to have fewer. Commenting on them increases how well I do at suppressing them.

Suppression is such a mixed bag.

Last night was one of my rare Zen moments while running. I had this really wonderful sense of calm. These are the best days of my life. I will probably never again be this happy. I will never again feel this needed and wanted. This is the peak for me.

I have 14.5 more years before I’m not very necessary any more. That scares me.

What will I have to offer the world then that will make me worth the resources I use? I’m scared.

I’ve been spending some obsessive time looking at Mint. Our net worth is blowing my mind. I keep checking it to make sure I’m not wrong and it hasn’t evaporated.

Our communal net worth will be over a million dollars by the time I’m forty. Sure, Noah makes a lot of money but I save well and invest. I’m getting really brave about investing–which also scares the shit out of me. Lately I have been twice as much in savings as I used to live on in a month. Maybe closer to three times as much if you count the 401k money I never see.

It is hard to have self discipline and say no to so many things. I “could” do them but I choose not to because I want to be able to have a future self who can do the things I want to do then.

I’m nervous. Shanna is saying she isn’t sure she wants to be away from her dad for multiple months. Hmmm. Crap. Still in negotiations. I’m mentioning Skype…

Today is pretty booked. Babysitting. A friend visiting. Then a different friend for dinner. Oof. I’m happy to use my babysitting time for a date. I should pay attention to Noah too. With all my copious spare energy. The poor guy really does get the short end of the attention stick in this house.

It’ll all work out.

It’ll all work out.

I have a lot of gratitude today. It’s just another day in paradise.

Plugging along

2 Replies

The girls and I are still a little sick, but not terribly so. We are doing lots of playing and gardening so we aren’t that sick.

I’m putting 70 plant seeds onto the ground this year. A high percentage of them are clearing out the last of the 2002 seeds a friend gave me. I have very little expectation of them all coming up.

Because I’m a huge nerd I wrote them all down. Because you are silly enough to read my journal you may skim the list. Or read it carefully. Whatever you choose, obviously.

I haven’t finished the front yard or the back yard yet. I still have piles of seed packets. I think it’s going to take another two days of working because I have only been working for about three hours a day.

In the ground in the front yard:

Sunflowers(!!!!): Elvesblend, Evening Star, Golden Honey Bear, Mongolian Giant; sweet basil; moss curled basil; carrots (rainbow colored); spinach: Baby Leaf and Bloomsdale.

Still coming to the front yard: marigolds, sugar snap peas, asclepias incarnata (butterfly flowers), climbing nasturtiums: Amazon Jewel and Moonflower, cinnamon basil, broccoli, and sweet corn.

This is added on top of all the front yard stuff already: six or so varieties of roses, hydrangea, jasmine, plumeria, tulips of many varieties (I wasn’t smart enough to write it down that time), pansies, snapdragons, geranium, cactii, three kinds of blueberries, apple tree with three kinds of fruit, asparagus, strawberries, sage, rosemary, aloe, jade, mums, iris, lily, and at least five plants I can’t remember the names of. Japanese lantern? Maybe? (I do these lists because I’m trying to memorize all the fucking names and sometimes I have to stop and look things up while I’m writing this down. This is my botany class.)

For starts inside (just because I want to practice the starting seeds process): more strawberries, parsley, bee balm, lavender: True; Lady; one I forgot to write down, lemon cucumber, white tomato, three kinds of bell peppers (didn’t write it down because I ran out of space on the page in my garden journal–ha.), hot Thai chili, cauliflower.

Added to the back yard: Hungarian Breadseed poppy, larkspur: Sublime Blend, zinnia: Fireball Blend, variety pack of butterfly inducing flowers including more than 20 kinds–I didn’t write them down, climbing nasturtiums: Moonlight, wild Mexican currant tomato, catnip, Rocky Mt. Blue colombines, more four’o’clocks, Shirley poppy, Nigra hollyhock, forget-me-not, marigolds, foxglove (in one secluded corner because they are poisonous), bachelor’s button, calendula, black eyed Susan, heliotrope of assorted colors.

Still to add to back yard: cornichon cucumber, bush peas, and pea: progress #9.

Shanna also asked for an Icelandic poppy plant and it was pretty and $5 so I said yes.

Already in the back yard: orange tree, plum tree, cherry tree, grapes, blackberry, tons of strawberries, lemon grass, artichoke, Joseph’s Coat roses, chocolate mint, spearmint, celery, brussels sprouts aren’t gone, butter lettuce, actual catnip plant, four’o’clocks, and some kind of green I haven’t brought myself to eat. I’m lame.

I counted up and if I only “corrected” two essays a day I would finish by the end of the month. I’ve been doing three or four instead. I’m excited to get to the combining chapters part of editing.

Calli is massively struggling with not being the boss of the world. Poor kid. I’m trying to be patient and tolerant and shit. Like I do. And a kid is up. Dangit.

I need to go run nine miles. Oof.

The early stages of unschooling

Leave a reply

Before I move on to editing there are a few things I want to get out. I know that this journal is very focused on my anxiety expression. That’s why it exists. I need an outlet.

I’m actually very good at what I’m doing. I’ve been practicing for a long time. What I am doing is trying to train how they handle conflict and difficulty in life. I believe (based on reading a lot about child development and brain development) that the first seven years of life are when you create your personality. It is when you create the coping methods that will be your defaults for the rest of your life.

I spend my time teaching emotional self-regulation and how to learn. I teach very little directly.

“Hunh. How do you think you would go about learning more about that?”

Youtube is one of the favorite responses these days. I have created monsters.

I schedule anywhere from 1-6 hours per day for the kids. The 1 hour is doing chores. Chores are part of life. Everyone must do them. I know that it is not an “unschooling” attitude and I can live with that. Chores are part of life.

Otherwise they do free play. That’s their life. I don’t schedule when they do stuff. They do art or play dress up or build or cook or whatever. They do a lot of shit. Some of it is joining in with me and some of it is them just deciding to do stuff.

I am teaching my children to walk into places and notice that there is a sink of dishes–offer to help out. Find ways to be useful. Offer to hold the door open for people. Offer to help carry unweildly packages. Notice the people around you and interact with them.

My kids talk to any and every one. They can talk to kids and adults. My kids can walk into almost any playground and find someone to play with. They don’t care if someone looks different. When the kids can’t speak English Shanna plays non-verbal games.

My kids can approach anyone. My kids can go into a wide variety of different environments and look around for cues to tell them what kind of behavior is appropriate. We practice. I take them to antique stores to practice being around delicate things so that when we go to a grown-up house it isn’t a complete shock.

My children are learning to advocate for themselves and they are learning how to wait their turn. Think of bank lines. Shanna has a bank account. She has to deal with going in and waiting patiently through the whole process. We scout in advance. “See how the grown ups are waiting patiently and quietly? If you talk at the person who is working it makes it harder for them to think about their work.” Then wait a day and talk about it. Then Shanna can do whatever it is she needs to do. Like a forkin’ grown up.

At this point I’m fairly used to seeing peoples jaw drop when they hear her. She sounds like a miniature adult. But she really isn’t adult-like. It’s weird. She speaks well. She has an understanding of process. But she is repetitive and juvenile in her topics. That’s totally ok. She’s five. She can’t discuss foreign politics yet. So we talk about My Little Pony instead. Holy crap do I know a lot about that show.

“These are the things you will need to know how to do when you are an adult. Now go fill the rest of your time.”

Shanna is starting to feel insecure about not being able to read. “Will I be able to do ____ if I can’t read?” Some things I read the directions. Some things I tell her to look at the pictures. Some things I tell her, “I guess this is over your head for now. It will still be here when you can read.”

We talk about what things she will need to learn some day. We talk about how math plays into different jobs. We talk about how reading plays into every aspect of modern life. We talk about all the fascinating different kinds of careers in science.

This part of your life is for feeling safe and loved and encouraged to work hard and fail. If you never fail you won’t learn how things really work. Yeah, some things will break. Try to learn how to be careful. Be aware of the people around you. How do you decide who to approach and who to leave alone?

I talk about body language. I talk about how to have boundaries with different parts of your body. Partially I model those behaviors in how I react to my children and partially I talk about how to have them with others.

I put them in a wide variety of circumstances where they can make a wide variety of little mistakes. None of which matter long term. She gets to explore. But she will absolutely be kept safe from predators. I’m standing there watching.

I don’t comment on what I see. I don’t evaluate her “performance”. I ask her, “Did you have fun?” Sometimes I will say, “Did you notice how he was turning his body to try to walk away?” or something similar. But I don’t comment on what she does most of the time. I will say, “So, sometimes when you talk about _____ it makes people think about this big huge thing you aren’t aware of. Let me tell you about it.”

I am doing my best to help her understand that she was born kind of late in the history of a complicated world. There are a lot of big problems in the world. She doesn’t neat the nitty gritty yet but she knows that people have a lot of different life experiences. We look at maps and talk about which countries have been at war recently.

I make a point to find out what people in different countries tend to eat for breakfast. We all are the same when it comes down to it. We eat. We love. We have friendships and romantic relationships and families. We all poop. We all want to feel good more than we feel bad.

Beyond that it’s just kind of a matter of settling on each person’s preferences.

People learn how to be care-taken or they learn how to care-take. I don’t want adult children who expect me to take care of them forever. That is not a dynamic I’m looking for in my old age. I don’t want a codependent companion. I get them for twenty years. I do hope I will be nice enough that they will want to live down the street or something. That would be nice. Shanna keeps telling me I will home school her kids while she works. It sounds more appealing by the year. We’ll see how I feel in 25-30 years.

Time’s up. I should go in.

So much for the schedule.

2 Replies

Yesterday Calli was sick. (Only a mild cold but you don’t bring a mild cold to a nursing home–that’s fucked up.) So I cancelled the five hours of stuff we had scheduled. We stayed home and read and played Lego’s and GoldieBlox and cuddled. It was a nice day.

I feel grateful that I can ride the waves of the day with my kids.

Last night there was lots of fussing and upset at bed time so we slept one grown up per kid per bed and I think it was one of the better night sleeps we’ve all had in a bit. I feel good. I think the futon will be ok to sleep on for a few months.

I’m looking at cell phones. Mine is rather broken. I uhm, am not careful enough. I’m going to get rid of a smart phone and turn off data. I’m going down to a basic phone. It will be lovely. No more long sms conversations because I won’t have a keyboard! My thumbs thank me already. (Apparently if I add the iPad to the plan right before we travel that will be a $10/month upgrade whereas owning a smart phone is a $40/month upgrade. Yeah, I want a basic phone. A basic phone is still $30/month. It’s a lot less than I’ve been paying.)

I’ve been editing. Slowly. This is hard. Ugh. I want to finish the first read through of all the chapters by the end of February. In March I need to combine the chapters that are kind of duplicated. In April put together the definitions and resources section. In May go through everything with a fine toothed comb to see if it flows. Oh goodness. That’s sounding hard right now. Ew. Make a plan and follow it.

See, I don’t have standard schedules that carry me through lots of times but I make schedules for brief periods and I’m good at following them.

I feel really guilty and bad for not being more scheduled overall. Even if K says it is unusual to be really rigid.

Ugh.

Scheduling, guilt, and other things.

3 Replies

I had a great chat with one of the Godmamas yesterday about schedule stuff. They keep a really rigid schedule. They get up at the same time, eat the same foods daily, exercise on a rigid schedule, etc. I admire that and can’t do it.

The only food I have ever had that I can eat day after day without feeling stabby is ramen. And I shouldn’t eat that every day. It is down to 1-3 times a week and I feel a lot of pride in myself for weening my addiction down that far. I supplement my lunches on other days with “real food” involving vegetables and meat.

From month to month our schedule is dramatically different. The only consistent point is “busy”. It doesn’t matter if it is a month where we are busy at home with gardening and language stuff or if we are going out a lot or if I’m doing painting. From month to month our lives look so different.

I wonder if I am breaking my children. An awful lot of what public school has to offer children is stability and consistency. I do not underrate how important these are for child development and I concede that public schools are very good at stability.

I worry. I worry that I am not consistent enough to teach stability.

Most days I wake up between 3 and 5. I spend time in the garage until I come out around 6:30. Except for the days when the kids need me at more like 5. Those days I don’t get time off.

We eat breakfast every day but the time varies based on a lot of factors. We can eat as early as 5:45 and as late as 9. If we eat early we have second breakfast at 9:30 or 10. If we eat a late breakfast we don’t eat until lunch.

Our dinner can start anywhere between 4:45pm and 7pm depending on what is happening. Usually we start between 5 and 5:30.

We usually go to park days on Tuesdays but we skip one or two a month for a variety of reasons.

For some months of the year we have swim class. That is a once a week thing for the months we do the class. But we don’t take swim class in the summer and we sometimes have one or two other months in the year where Shanna says, “I’m ready for a break.” So we probably have been doing swim class for 6-8 months out of the year for the last few years.

Our diet is hugely variable. We eat a lot of different kinds of meat and a wide variety of vegetables. They rotate through because we get bored.

Our diet is partially so variable because I want my kids to be able to walk into any restaurant or any home and find something to eat. Everyone I have talked to who grew up with a really consistent diet struggles with that. They can eat a narrow range of “familiar” foods.

I want children who are freakishly adaptable. Kind of like me, without the trauma and anger. We’ll see.

My kids will eat ethnic food of absolutely any stripe. They will try anything once to see if they like it and usually they do. They are starting to not be into shrimp (like Noah and I–I think it is a group identification thing as much as a preference because it was abrupt) and they don’t like bell peppers. Past that, Shanna will absolutely eat everything and Calli probably will.

I run four days a week. Mostly. During the ~ 13 months of my life I have been a runner. (Those are non-consecutive and there was a gap of ~14 months in the middle.) Mostly my exercise is weird and sporadic.

Gardening is so inconsistent. Many months I spend less than two hours all month. Some months I spend 40-60 hours in the yard. Depends on what season it is.

I know that daycare babies often are on a strict napping schedule by the clock. I’ve heard of a couple of stay at home moms who manage similar schedules. I never did. My kids had random naps at random times, usually on me. We slept out of necessity and with great resistance. That’s not true. Naps were easy and awesome. I read and the kids slept on me. I miss naps. Lots of enforced sitting for me. My kids have never slept well alone.

Every morning I tell my kids what is going on during the day. I usually tell them three or four days in a row of what is happening. Unless it involves socializing with a flakey person. Then I tell them, “We might see a friend and I will tell you when confirmation happens.” Sometimes they hear that someone is coming over an hour before it happens because that is when I get confirmation. I feel guilty about running interference in this way with flakey people and I feel like I was seriously fucked up by being flaked on over and over. Better to just skip that early on.

I don’t even write/edit/make “writing people” progress every day.

I don’t even clean my house once a week. Sometimes I do. Then I skip doing it for weeks in a row. Luckily Noah never bitches.

The uncle has been showing up once a week (occasionally twice) for a while. That’s consistent.

I try to go see home schoolers at least once a week, sometimes twice a week. Some freakish weekends it happens three times in a week. It’s hard to predict.

Am I going to be able to teach them how to be functional grown ups? Do you have to be able to follow lock-step-predictable schedules for months or years in order to be functional?

With moving around so much as a child I think the only time I was “consistent” was the 2.5 years I was a public school teacher. And I wasn’t consistent the first year because I was part-time. Even when I was teaching full time for that 1.5 years my weeks varied from 50 hours to 70 hours long. That’s not very consistent. Of course I had summers off. I loved that job pace.

When you look at how trauma impacts the brain you see that it kinda sorta changes your DNA. Sorta, not really. The Godmama gave me a great metaphor (thanks!): Your DNA stays your DNA but if your DNA was a large bookshelf full of books, then your life experiences often decide which books you can fully access and read. Some books are not available to you because stuff happened.

That’s not just trauma related, actually. It’s part of the whole nature/nurture debate. We have our inherent traits and potential (good and bad) and how we are treated and what we experience activates different part of our DNA strand.

I think that is accurately stated.

So I have many generations of abuse behind me. I was probably going to be a repeated rape victim given my family background and tumultuous early life even if things had kinda improved by age ten. Things do run in families. How do I change that for my kids? What do I have to do to overcome the basic programming and instincts they have inherited?

I’m kinda terrified that the scheduling stuff plays into it somehow and I am Doing It All Wrong. I have a lot of stuff to fix in my kids. It isn’t true for every parent. My kids have a genetic legacy of alcoholism, drug addiction, sexual dysfunction, depression, suicide, anxiety, bipolar disorder, learning disabilities and potentially schizophrenia. That’s a long list of problems to have in your DNA.

How I treat them during their childhood goes a lot of the way to deciding which parts of their DNA will be activated or not. How they are treated by other people matters too.

I think my children are very sheltered. But apparently I mean something different by the term than other people do. My children are not kept ignorant. They are educated to the degree their little brains can hold the material. I’m not quite as bad as Rick Moranis is in Parenthood but I’m not that far behind either. Ahem.

I think my children are sheltered because they don’t have to find out how the world works yet. They don’t have to have many broken promises experiences. They don’t have to develop the kind of “patience” that kids develop in day care or school while they wait for other people to do their thing. My kids are sheltered from boredom.

Shanna has told me she was bored about four times. Each time resulted in me getting her up and forcing her to start cleaning. About 20 seconds later she said, “Hey I figured out what I would rather be doing so I’m not bored!” Ha.

I don’t want to be more scheduled because if we were more scheduled we would miss out on the days when I read for three hours. That just wouldn’t be in the schedule, let-me-tell-you. I could “commit” to 30-60 minutes per day. But it would have to be at some random time or I would have to choose to not do other things that day including turning down socializing opportunities. I could not agree to 30 minutes of reading right before bedtime. I fall asleep. I could not agree to 30 minutes right after breakfast because we frequently walk out the door immediately following eating.

There isn’t a time of day I could pick without impacting other parts of our life.

I’m very conscious to average more than seven hours in a week. But no, it isn’t regularly timed.

My patterns are more macro than daily. I look for averages over weeks and months. 7-8 homeschooling events in a month–I don’t care if there are three in one week it will balance for the month. I try to not drive more than three days a week. Dinner with three adult friends other than the uncle. (There is a very long list of people I slowly rotate through.)

I feel ashamed of myself for not being able to keep up more of a treadmill. I do what I can do in a day. I hope it all balances out in the long run.

I’m having some intense feelings of guilt because… err… actually Shanna is behind on standards because uhhh she can’t read. If she were in public school I would already be having chats with an upset teacher because my daughter is “behind”.

I didn’t start reading till 6.5. There are many schools of thought that believe that pushing reading before 7 or 8 years old is damaging. If a child spontaneously learns to read early–great. But forcing it isn’t a good idea.

So I have these conflicting forces. I feel guilty and like I should “push” harder in order to make it easier for her to potentially enter a classroom and be perfectly grade level. Even if she never enters school she should be the minimum level of competent to not get push back from teachers for being an ignorant homeschooled kid. I know she will be walking into stigma anyway. She can at least not be too far behind.

But I actually believe it would be silly and kind of damaging for me to push harder. It is really hard to not push. I’m kind of glad right now that I didn’t train in early childhood education. If I had acclimated to that curriculum I would be slipping shit in.

I don’t want to be coercive about learning right now. It’s a choice in principles.

I tried to have my kids even closer together. I knew that I am a lazy bastard and I am unlikely to want to do two full separate ways of teaching. I suspect I will be laissez faire (with a dash of authoritarian when it comes to safety rules) until Shanna hits 8 and Calli is 6. I will try to go gentler on Calli as I transition into more direct teaching in the first few years. Differentiated instruction is a complicated beast. But I doubt Calli will get the 8 years of soft living Shanna will get. Sorry younger sibling. That’s how it goes. But I don’t bother to push one without semi-dragging the other. That’s too hard.

Will I ever direct more? I don’t know. I know that I “could” have Shanna in music already. She doesn’t ask about those classes though. I’m waiting until she cares.

I don’t see a lot of benefit towards pushing her towards doing things or being things yet. She’s playing. She’s figuring out who and what she wants to be. She’ll let me know when she’s more sure of her interests and then I can nudge her along. Then I can help build the structure and scaffolding she will need to develop the necessary schema. Until I have a better idea I’m pretty scatter shot with what I talk about.

Hey Pam! The term is strewing. It is a method unschoolers employ. It generally means consciously having materials around and in front of your kids as a potential inducement to playing with it but you don’t schedule time. Like, we have tons of art supplies. I don’t ever schedule art projects. They just happen.

My kids are going to grow up and find out that I have no interest in science shit and be shocked. I certainly talk about it all the god damn time. I’m still drawing from the stores of what I was taught in the public system (thank you for existing) and supplementing with resources. We have several cubes of science books; I’m working on expanding what we have. (I love Ikea bookshelves and that love infects my writing–sorry.)

I know other people are good at using the library. My kids are reasonably decent with their own books and rip every library book we get. I don’t think that is nice of us so we don’t use the library. I try again every so often.  This is an ongoing thing I work on. I’m grateful I have the privilege to buy so many really interesting books.

I just read to them. Noah does too.

We live in a time and a place with infinite opportunities. If you tie yourself down to one rigid schedule then you narrowly limit what opportunities you can follow. That’s ok. It allows you to be more focused on specific goals. But maybe that’s not an all the time way of life for everyone.

I whole-heartedly agree that it is probably the best lifestyle approach for someone going into medicine. You need consistency and body memory in every part of your day. I don’t though.

I feel bad about that. I feel broken and like I’m going to hurt my kids.

I don’t know. They can follow a routine for a set period of time. They are responsive to just about anything I throw at them. We do have periods of time where we eat a monotonous diet. Then I get fussy and change it.

We are planning to travel and intermingle in local, regional cultures–not just hit the tourist spots. We won’t be in a Made-Western-Person-Safe hotel.  We can’t be rigid about our approach to the day and handle that well. It just wouldn’t go well.

I want my kids to be good at finding a new normal. Not focused on keeping their normal normal, damnit.

I don’t think I know what is right and other people are wrong. I think I have a very particular priority list that doesn’t look much like other peoples priorities and I worry about that. I am scared that I am doing it wrong.

Paper work.

Leave a reply

I need to work on editing the book. Due by June 1st. (In progress but this will use as many hours as I’m willing to put into it.)

I need to work on a design layout. (No firm due date. Soon would be helpful and shit.)

I want to put together outlines for a couple of speaking presentations and hand them off to people who would like me to speak. (One deadline is flexible the other is soon. I should look up when. That one may need to be project the first because it expires soonest.)

Should write letters to relatives. Been procrastinating.

Because I said I wouldn’t do arm intensive projects this year, right?