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16 days…

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16 days and 2 more international trips. First to Bangkok and then on to Inverness. Bangkok is because my partner has a business trip and we are going with him. Inverness is where we get to go home to.

Our visas all came through. We have the legal right to be in the UK for the next 5 years. If we stay in the country for enough days we will have the right to apply for leave to remain (basically a green card). If we stay in the country for enough days during leave to remain we have the right to apply for citizenship.

If Scottish independence succeeds… you bet your buttons that we are applying for citizenship. Hell yeah.

16 days till we get to go home to our big, beautiful house in the Highlands. I am so excited I can barely breathe. Our stuff is on a boat going over there now. (Thanks for the advice about how to label my boxes of porn.)

My wonderful lifelong best friend has been there for 10 years. She is setting aside furniture, dishes, linens, and as many other things as she can spare to help us adjust and find a place.

We are going to be Scottish. I am so excited.

And I have my own bedroom on a separate floor of the house from my kids so I have space for noisy sex. I have a room in the back yard that was sound proofed for a drum kit so I can scream all I want and no one will hear me.

I can’t wait!!

16 days. Just keep swimming. We are in Portland for five more days. I have plans with friends most of those days.

I will miss all the USians. Thank you for the influence you have been on my life. Thank you for your friendship and companionship. Thank you for your teaching and for your love.

Thank you for everything. I will think of you.

Write it down, maybe then I can sleep.

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Objectively I think I am doing better at handling my feelings than in the past. But right now I have about 938,201 feelings. I feel sad and happy and bitter and excited and nervous and proud and ashamed and embarrassed and tired and competent and strong and weak and foolish and brave and stupid and like I am a rat running out on a sinking ship.

“Why are you moving to Scotland?”

“Because I want to put my children in school and have them not suffer through live shooter drills.”

I’m not making friends on my way out the door. And a lot of the old friends who are reaching out to tidy up old ends… I’m leaving them frayed. If I haven’t seen you in person in 5 years despite you living less than an hour away from me? I truly don’t have time to see you one on one for a personal send off. Are you nuts?

I appreciate the kindness of people reaching out to say goodbye. I do. I also feel bitter that it took this for these people to acknowledge me. If you have spent time with me or if you live far away I am probably not talking about you.

I don’t know if I am proud of me yet; I know I feel bursting with pride in my children and my spouse.

Today was complicated. We went to a party at Noah’s bosses house. Me and the kids felt out of place and like we didn’t do all that well socially. I had to talk my kids into not frantically running around tidying up after the party. We are not here to be the help and these aren’t good friends who really need our support. Leave the damn water balloons on the grass. Someone else will handle that problem. But I teach them to pick up litter on the sidewalk?

It’s different. It’s not that I want to say fuck you to Noah’s (very polite and civil and decent) boss but I don’t want my kids arriving at a mansion and immediately going into cleaning mode. No.

The little suburb where this house resides is outside the bubble of poverty growing and simmering in Portland. Right next to the country club.

It’s All Fine Here.

Rome is burning but It’s All Fine Here.

Raise taxes. Massively. Save the fucking country. Save all of the people who are literally not able to save themselves because they were born with the deck stacked against them. That sucks. It’s not fair.

There is no fair.

I’m anxious about this discussion tomorrow. I fear that I inserted myself more than I should have last time. It’s not about me. This is not my space. Just shut up already.

I think that if Jenny were less demonstrative in her glee about us moving there I would be flipping the fuck out. Instead every time I touch base with her a little she talks about another way she has thought up to ease my transition. I have bawled. She wants me that much.

People don’t extend invitations to me much. They expect me to invite myself. And then I either do it for too long or too short and I’m wrong again. She didn’t invite me… but she has greased the rails in ways big and small because she isn’t demonstrative but gosh she wants me there.

I want to be there.

I am nervous about all the changes. This will be a change in lifestyle from top to bottom. We are going to try to live on a very fixed, much lower income. (We have failure routes if that’s a problem.) We are going to put the kids in school for the first time in their lives. I will have my own bedroom where I can go be bitchy and not be bad. I can’t buy pot and I really shouldn’t buy much sugar or alcohol cause shit’s expensive. I’d rather furnish my house. I get to drink the fabulous tasty Scottish water and tea–unsweetened.

Unsweetened tea is going to be a hard jump. I’m just saying.

But I’ve made bigger, harder jumps before. I HAD FUCKING VEGETABLES THREE MEALS TODAY. LIKE A GOD DAMN HEALTHY PERSON.

Ok. I think I am tired enough to sleep. I hope. Ugh.

Tapping toes

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In 4 days my middle child turns 9.

In 6 days we leave the country; Noah has plans to come back for work… the rest of us don’t. Hello Bangkok!

In 9 days we legally own a house in Scotland and my wonderful, sweet, helpful friend will be collecting keys from our solicitor so there is no delay!

In 16 days we arrive in Inverness and the fun truly begins.

Jenny really wants us there. I can tell. She has offered to let us borrow (possibly keep) a very large number of items, including: dishes, a kid bed, an adult mattress, duvets, a crock pot, sheets… It’s like this woman wants me to stay and feel comfortable!

She’s got a 10 year head start on me, but we get to learn how to be Scottish together. This’ll be grand.

I slept meh last night. If I hadn’t missed the night before it would have been plenty, instead I’m still tired.

Ikea then a housewarming. Wake up, Little Susie.

Noah sent out a goodbye email to pretty much everyone we have ever sent an email to. Now folks are coming out of the woodwork wanting to say goodbye. Uh, we left the state already. You missed your window. Where were you all those years we lived there? Busy? Ok. We will take one more possible obligation off your plate.

I want chill. I want green. WHERE IS ALL THE DANG WATER FROM THE SKY!? My body hates this heat wave so much.

Noah and I are making plans. We are going to be living on a much reduced income so we can’t spend money the way we have learned to in the valley. Our food budget is getting cut in half. Really… a bit further than that. It means cakes, cookies, candy, and drinks are going to be very rare treats. Bath stuff and random things can no longer “sneak” into the grocery budget. It’s going to take us a bit to start properly having a tiny savings so that we can make more interesting purchases.

Fitness stuff is going to be a lot of what we do. We are definitely people who like to spend time on our computer but we are also keen walkers. And our house has lots of space for the exercise equipment we favor. I have a TRX set up (it’s a strap system) that helps me through all of my PT and Noah heavily favors kettle bells. We can set these things up in the lounge as a permanent installation and then we won’t have the excuse of “there is no where to do the work”. I’m up a good 25 lbs since we started on this journey and I’d like my clothes to be more comfortable again. Given that I do not intend to waste money on a scale that means I want to start exercising so that I fit my clothes better and I have no idea where I will end up.

Health at every size. Right now I can’t do my exercises (both logistical reasons and strength reasons) and that’s bothering me.

Besides we have more fun fucking each other when we are in better shape. We both hope that with all of the increased access to privacy our sex life might reemerge as a fun hobby we share.

Sex has come a long way. Right now we don’t have sex very often. Like, once or twice a month has been our average for a while. We have no privacy and that’s a big barrier for me. But I’m thinking about sex more than I have for a while. I am not sure it will take a full five years postpartum this time for me to be really interested.

I am 99% certain that my next period will be in my own house. That sounds really wonderful. If it is not too freakishly cold (we’ll see!) I sort of intend to spend several hours on my “Oh my god is that a period or a hemorrhage” day sitting outside with no pants (or trousers!) on. I’m going to bond with the earth, yo. I hope it will be the most relaxing cycle of my life. And less laundry. Bonus.

I am going to get family cloth and a little bucket for every single bathroom in the house. Septic systems are no joke, yo. (With some supplemental paper for getting poop.)

Her Sweetness is absolutely talking up a storm. She tells us “no!” and “stop!” when she doesn’t want something. She says, “Help!” and “please” and “mine”. It’s so funny. She is starting to get colors. She can talk about her getting dressed and clean process in a combination of words and signs. She is super keen to communicate and be part of the pod. She likes carrying a bag when the rest of us are doing so. She loves to laugh.

I am so very grateful I got to have a third child despite the challenges. She is a really wonderful person. It’s so lovely to break the “my kid/your kid” assignation of behaviors and traits and personality bits. She’s like all four of us. She’s completely herself. We all have to work on our petty jealousies and pissiness because she’s a baby and we chose to bring her into this world. We need to be nice about it.

Middle Child has confessed they didn’t know what they were getting into and sometimes it is hard to not be the baby anymore. That makes a lot of sense. They are still so wonderful with their sister. They try hard to be gentle and helpful. They play together. Kiddo is trying so hard and I am so full of love and respect for the efforts.

My kids are growing up and it’s pretty amazing.

The kids are in a funny place with money and chores. They are still doing chores but they keep forgetting to write it down. I tell them that they can work for free or they can get paid for keeping track of their work. Lately I’ve been getting a ton of free work. So they are sad that they are not accumulating more money. Dude! WRITE DOWN YOUR STUFF ON A DAY TO DAY BASIS AND I’LL BLOODY PAY YOU! We sat down yesterday and priced out a basic back-to-school-kit and uniform selection. Now they feel nervous. They kind of slacked off over the last month. They would have been in a great place for all of these purchases but… they stopped writing anything down. Whoops.

It’s a learning experience.

School won’t give you credit for doing your homework if you bring the math worksheet home, do all the work on the separate piece of scratch paper then throw away the scratch sheet and try to turn in the blank worksheet. “But I did the work!” Yeah… that’s not how it works. If you have a job and you neglect to clock in… you can’t just go back at the end of the week and say, “Yeah I was totally ontime every day; you should pay me all the monies!” “But surely I did all of my hygiene this week, pay me.” “I clearly remember you skipping it on day A, B, C, I had to yell at you 7 times on day D…”

Write it down on the day you do it. That’s why you have a day planner. Are you choosing to skip that step? Then you are choosing to make the work free. Cheers and thank you so much for all your hard work. You are definitely working.

It’s a process! Follow through is hard for a bunch of unstable ADHD folk.

Thus Eldest Child is on Pinterest trying to learn about organization systems so she can get one started right when we arrive. It’s glorious.

I am tired and the day is just beginning. That’s ok. I don’t have a lot of proper work to do. I’m day dreaming lists of stuff I will want in the house. Here is a possible list. (We will not show up and buy all of these things instantly, I expect we are going to be Good Customers at the charity shops and we will buy things new as we have to.)

Obviously we have a long way to go.

Kitchen Dining room Family bedroom Bathrooms Noah office Krissy bedroom Shanna bedroom Orion bedroom Lounge Jennabeth bedroom Laundry room Miscellaneous Hall Garden Studio Kitchen stuff
Refrigerator Table and chairs mattresses toilet paper Kettlebells Bed Bed tumbling mats Detergents and soaps Kid school uniforms baby gate Seating? 2 large frying pans
Cleaning tools (sponges, mop, broom) Additional silverware/dishes Blankets soap Monitor clock alarm clock alarm clock couch Shoe rack Lunch boxes Shoe rack Grill 1 small frying pan
Dish soap, dishwasher soap, hand soap Pillows Printer coat rack bars for the wall. chest of drawers chest of drawers Personal water bottles Coat hooks? nanny cam 1 wok
Food storage devices Clock Plungers Caffeine brick Bed Tables and chairs Vacuum Replace fence along burn drafting table 1 large stock pot
child safety locks Sheets Toilet brushes Standing desk Desk w/ ergonoic setup Desk w/ ergonomic setup Desk w/ ergonomic setup Projector bed Replace driveway gate easel 1 medium stock pot
Knives whiteboard for calendar Toilet paper holders? Monitor stand or swing arm WiFi Router etc. paper 1 small sauce pan
tea pot, sugar bowl, milk pitcher Towels whiteboard dresser electric drill art supplies 1 large roasting pan
Clock black out curtains black out curtains black out curtains black out curtains black out curtains 4 cookie sheets
shampoo/conditioner 2 bread pans
rice maker?
insta pot?
eggcarton and curtain soundproofing cutting boards
Crock pot Lighting for video potato masher
Big soup/stock pot grater
Roasting pan for turkey veggie peeler
collander
KitchenAid Mixer mixing bowls
Ice cream machine measuring spoons/cups/pitchers
Deep-dish pizza pan

Obviously I have not accounted for everything. It is going to take many years to accumulate this stuff at the rate we plan to spend money.

It’ll be ok. We have time and patience. In my experience it is a lot easier to do without if you are living with joy in the meantime.

Just came to say: goodbye, love

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I really am my favorite person to talk to; I feel like a narcissist because I enjoy writing to myself so much. But, oh well. Maybe I just have fleas.

I should be asleep. Two hours ago I took two sleeping pills because I ache in the atoms of my bones from exhaustion. Can’t sleep. Brain will eat me.

Grief. Loneliness. Pettiness. Spite. Greed. Fear. Desire. Frustration. Generosity.

I have all the feelings and then some.

I haven’t heard back from Dad about tomorrow. I assume that means he is blowing me off. (I contacted him twice and he didn’t respond. I am not reaching out again about Saturday.) If I don’t hear from him in a prompt and timely fashion in the morning my plan is to take my crew to Ikea. We had a really successful first trip and I learned a lot of important details about what I don’t want from a few lines but I still don’t know how I am going to solve a few problems and Noah’s opinion matters. Thus Noah has to go. We will be there for a bit talking and debating. Luckily, no actual shopping. Just reconnaissance.

In the afternoon his boss is having a house warming. We need to go and be polite and mannerly and pretend we have et-e-ket.

Sunday I am seeing some of my very strongest influences for who I am as a woman of Leather. This is the Middle Aged Guard who brought me up and I love them so much. I’m glad I made it for one last meeting. It’s a mitzvah.

Monday and Tuesday we got nothing. We have enough food to not need the grocery. We have no social plans or obligations. I think I am out of shopping and errands. I might want to spend a little bit of time on Tuesday working on packing, but we aren’t really unpacking at this point…

Wednesday will be a Middle Child birthday kind of day and we will be letting our little darling set the tone all day long. It will be fun. We won’t work much, I expect. The current plan (that Dad did agree to) was hanging out at the park for an hour or so before going to a restaurant. I know that means he will bring his whips. I’m leaving. I don’t have to face this issue head on.

Thursday I will spend all day packing and cleaning and trying to not stress myself out. We have everything we need to make this all work out. We’re fine. Thursday night my buddy C is going to have dinner with us so she can have a second visit. I’ll tell you plain, internet, that if I had gone to Michfest when I was 18 like I wanted to go… C is the kinda gal I would have tried to hitch my wagon to. It’s not just her looks, it’s her personality and attitude and grit and intensity. That’s a woman who knows how to melt my butter.

Good bye, love.

Folks think I am so pro conflict but I’m not really.I’m a coward.I have up and left so many places and faces and jobs and communities… There’s a problem! And no one cares. Bye.

Hi America, you can keep the guns. I’m out.

It’s not that I think that everything or everyone here is bad. I could start describing the mythical beauty of the Black Hills and go on all day. I could talk about the sheer terror of driving down some of the giant mountains on this continent with an over-loaded minivan and a trailer. I could talk about the jaw dropping awe of seeing Alaska. It’s just bigger than a place has a right to be, and so beautiful! The sunset in Louisiana. The sunrise up over the Florida Keys. The best ice cream in Wisconsin. Going from one corner of Lake Superior to another and finding completely different types of beaches and wondering how the water pattern created that…

There’s a lot of good here.

And I’m not even touching on the people properly. God I love the people. I have had some over the top, amazing relationships here. My dating history was spicy and exciting. I have had excellent friends. I have had a solid community. Hell, I even got a good education. I was raised in California and I worked there. I gave back.

I feel this overwhelming horror that I Must Go. I don’t know if it fear of earthquakes or fires or more concentration camps, or guns, or my mother, or just plain being too hot and having diarrhea for more years as punishment. I don’t know if I can stay here and learn more productive/useful/healthy relationship patterns with my friends. Not because they are incapable of change, because in this environment I can’t even figure out what change is needed let alone how to implement it.

I am overwhelmed. I hurt more than I’ve hurt in months and it is from the driving. I’ve barely been typing so that isn’t it. I know the beds suck, but it’s not that kind of hurt.

This itty bitty house is kind of a microcosm of our problem. I can be a very good mother if I have time to myself to decompress and do things that I don’t want my children seeing. If I have to be “on stage” 24/7 I get bitchy. I run out of ability to see what needs to change and I don’t have the energy to change things.

I need access to more boundaries for me because in this space… I don’t get any. I have not had personal space… really in years.

It was amazing how relaxed I felt during travel in terms of hypervigilance. I mean, I felt stress. I was anxious sometimes but hypervigilance is different. In the bay area I am always on alert because a family member might show up and I might have to react in some way that I don’t want to. I am going to let my half crippled sister die believing she could always kick my ass. I don’t need to show her what I learned in Impact.

I can just leave.

I think that part of the reason I can’t sleep is because my butthole hurts so much. I got more hemorrhoids with each child I birthed. Being on my period makes them worse. And we’ve had terrible toilet paper lately and that stuff is like sand paper. My poor butthole. Now I have Tucks pads and lidocaine. I love me some lidocaine.

I miss anal sex. *sigh*

Bodies. Life.

I can’t even begin to process the ending of this chapter of my life. All the people I will never see again.

Friends come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime.- Bailey

4 hours of sleep feels awful

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I didn’t sleep last night and as a result I feel awful today. I feel sick. I mean, I did also puke night before last. I feel bad. I feel like I want to freak out and scream and rage and throw things and break things and…

Ugh. I’m not doing that. I’m carping to Noah about how cranky I feel. I’m not taking it out on the kids. I just feel bad and I feel like I can’t get away from it because it is my whole body. I can’t tell how much of it is related to leaving California and all of my feelings there. I did not see any family members. I didn’t even see many friends. Just a couple. We saw a whole bunch of neighbors and people in the community we know–that part was nice. We know a lot of business owners and they will miss us. We are good customers.

But my mother. My nephew. My niece. Auntie. I don’t even know how to wrap my mind around the feelings I’m having.

I just know that in 18 days I will arrive at my home far far far away and I will never have to worry about seeing them again. It’s over. My anxiety can plummet, I hope.

I love my extended family. But I brought my children into the world and it is my responsibility to protect them from being abused.

I will run away. I will take my children with me. We will go somewhere new. Somewhere my children can go to school without fear of being shot in school.

The gun stuff is really getting to me. I have come to realize that several of the people I associate with probably have guns in their homes and I feel completely freaked out that I let my children go to their homes. I wish I hadn’t.

I don’t think I believe in “good people” with guns anymore. And that’s so dogmatic and absolute and a complete 180 from what I used to feel. I know people who have good reasons for guns. They have been stalked. Someone threatens their life.

But I don’t know. People deal with stuff like that in other places without having to have loosey goosey gun laws that result in more than 3,000 children dying from gun violence every year. Almost twice as many children die from being shot than die from cancer.

We choose this. We want to live in this system. We want these results. If we didn’t want this we would change our actions and we are absolutely unwilling to… which means we as a nation are totally ok with thousands of children dying every year so adults can play with their violent toys.

I feel sick. You want to feel super powerful. You want to feel like the “good guy/gal with the gun”. Only you are more likely to kill yourself or a kid than to ever effectively use the gun for protection.

Oh well.

I need to leave. I really do. This didn’t use to bother me the way it does now. But when I look at my children…

I can’t subject them to this.

Golly. So much.

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Noah is driving up to San Francisco to pick up our passports and hopefully our visas. My stomach is going to hurt for the next hour until he tells me the results. My stomach hurt so much from anxiety last night that I vomited.

My body sucks.

I’m probably only 95% packed, but we are tossing everything in the car so it feels less important to be at 100%? Also: my family has learned how to pack! I don’t have to pack for everyone anymore! THAT’S SO COOL! Of course they finally figure it all out when we have less than three weeks of travel left. It’s ok. They will take these skills forward in life and I will feel good about myself.

30 minutes till Noah calls me with results. I feel like I may puke between now and then again. Ugh.

It’s a great day!

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We got an email telling us to come get our passports because the decision is made. Did they tell us the decision? No they did not. Our solicitor says that the way they are giving us the results is promising but we won’t find out until we can make it to the office during business hours tomorrow.

Today is full of appointments: my last massage ever with awesome/racist/she is trying to be less shitty massage therapist lady, kid dentist, dry cleaning pick up, and a manicure because the manicures suck in the UK. Tomorrow I have a follow up appointment with my GP. She removed a mole a week ago and she will give me the results of the toxicology tomorrow. I assume I am fine because I genuinely have no other signs of anything like cancer. It’ll be no big deal.

Tomorrow we will drive back to Portland. We will find out if Dad wants to see us this weekend or not. He ignored my last email. I don’t blame him. He thought we would be spending the whole summer with him and… yeah no. For lots of good reasons. It’s ok if he feels rejected or upset. But I am not going to change my behavior.

We have 9 days till we get on a plane for Bangkok. We will hopefully spend 8 days in Bangkok. Then we will go home.

Fremont is not home anymore. It’s kind of interesting how being here for a week solidifies that for me in my heart. This is not my home. It’s brown. It’s dry. I heard on the radio that California is 40/50 among the states for being friendly. That was slightly worse than I expected after driving all over the country… but not much? I think Alaska is one of the friendliest states. Alaska really is amazing.

I am moving somewhere where I don’t have to feel like my presence is a colonization. I have spent my entire life being aware that I am the descendant of colonizers and that’s a problem. Well, maybe not my entire life but certainly a very high percentage of it.

What will it be like to be white in a place where that doesn’t make me evil? Frankly it’s fucking awesome.

Not long ago a Black woman I am blessed to learn with said she only travels to places where people want to see a face like hers. I understand why she said that. I am not saying that all of Scotland wants me. But… I get why she said that.

Silicon Valley is like the ocean.

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Silicon Valley is vast and engulfing.

Silicon Valley is a place where you can die of thirst floating in water.

Silicon Valley is a place where you must work constantly to stay alive.

Silicon Valley will crush your bones into fine sand.

Silicon Valley contains multitudes and varieties not yet understood.

Silicon Valley produces both great wealth and great devastation.

Silicon Valley does not have a heart of its own despite containing many.

chrysalis

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Sometimes you need to withdraw in order to change. We are approaching a new life. A new approach to almost everything.

You can either change or you can wither and die.

One of my friends told me that having children right now seems stupid because the future is so bleak. I said that having children is one of the greatest acts of hope that a person can engage in. Will the future have big problems? Yes. But I think that I can help make people who can help solve problems.

Hubris? Maybe.

Defiance? Absolutely.

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If you are a sensitive person, the whole rest of my website is probably not a good place for you to poke around. Consider this your trigger warning.

I have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Attention-Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD) and recently I was told I am Autistic and my adult-only blog is my attempt to document as much as I can about what it means to try and live in a brain like mine. I have had an unusual life and my blog tends to reflect a lot of extreme changes in emotions. I write stream of conscious and only rarely edit which means that it isn’t the highest writing quality I am capable of producing. I write such quantity at such speed that I do not have time to edit my blog given the other time constraints of my life. Sorry about that.

Since I was a little girl I have been aware that the things I felt compelled to write down did not really resemble what I was told I should write. Telling me how I should be is pretty much a guarantee I will run in the opposite direction. I have been told to be less abrasive, less hostile, less jolting. Well I decided it was time for me to have a space where I really don’t have to give a shit what other people think about what I am writing. If they don’t like it they don’t have to come read it.  I don’t tend to get along well with forum moderators.

Hello to the people who have never heard of me before. I’m not as mean as that paragraph indicates. But I talk about rape and incest as casually as other people talk about sports or computers. If that is something that you have a problem with then you might not like reading anything I write. If you are under the age of 18 you probably shouldn’t read my writing. Legally I am supposed to tell you to go somewhere else. This is a great place! Or, go read my kid-friendly writing!

I talk about extremely graphic sexuality regularly and I don’t give ongoing trigger warnings. I’m a walking trigger warning. You should assume that I might say something upsetting in my writing at any point and read only when you are up to dealing with the fact that there are people like me in the world. My existence and my words about my life are not actually about you even if you suspect I might be writing about you. I probably am not.

I write because I have a lot of things in my head that need to get out. I need them to exist and be real in the universe somehow and the only real outlet I have is to write them down. I want it to be known that I am here. That I am thinking. That I have been. Not everyone needs that in the same way. But incest and rape will come up constantly. I write about being white trash. I write about being suicidal. I write about depression and anxiety and PTSD. And parenting. I write graphically about sex and sexuality and bdsm. I write about being queer but appearing entirely heteronormative. I try to consciously examine my privilege as a (currently) upper middle class white woman. I try to look at the weird behaviors I developed as a child living in extreme poverty.

My husband wooed me by telling me that if you can’t look back on yourself eighteen months ago and say, “Man I really sucked then you aren’t trying hard enough.” I have been homeless and starving. I have been to graduate school. I taught high school. I was a stage manager and theatre rigger. I ran a marathon. I spent 5.5 months traveling around the US with my kids.

I don’t know what I’ll do next. But there is a lot left to learn. I have two kids. We are home schooling. I have a husband. He’s really nice to me. I kind of do the dirty hippy thing; so weird eco-focused stuff randomly comes up.

I have written two books so far. I’m absolutely convinced there will be more.

So welcome to my sandbox. Be civil or go away. Avoid using the word “should” if you want me to listen to your advice. Just sayin’. I like hearing stories from other people about what they have done. Blogging is a strange beast. I do like comments. I understand that my writing is very hard to comment on in a neutral fashion. I get butt hurt over the smallest things and that makes people feel like they should walk on egg shells. I get it. But I like knowing you are out there.

Or not.

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After a bit more examination the shed construction will require pieces I don’t have and I should have help. The manual and the website say over and over not to try it alone. Ok. I’ll listen for once.

Hm. What to do with today then?

Last quicky practice.

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When I was a high school teacher I had a phrase written above the top of my white board. “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.” The kids thought I did that to inspire them and they were only partly right. Mostly I wanted to remind myself that no one in that room had previous knowledge of me. I was allowed to reinvent myself over and over to fit any shape I needed to fit.

When you grow up in an incestuous family you know there is something wrong with you, with your whole family, by the time you are in high school. You know that people aren’t going to react to you the