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THIS IS WHY IT IS SO HARD

I went in my room for a little packing reshuffling (looked at temperatures expected for the trips… errr… maybe the pants need to move around a little) and zoning out…

GUESS WHO FOLLOWS ME IN HERE BECAUSE SHE WANTS TO DO HER MATH NEXT TO ME BECAUSE BEING WITH ME IS ALWAYS BETTER THAN NOT BEING WITH ME.

The desire for enmeshment doesn’t just come from me, yo.

I love her so much. I think she is wonderful and kind and thoughtful and sometimes lazy and obnoxious as shit and absolutely perfect. I like knowing that she is alive. Even though she gets on my nerves. I have to keep trying to be a better person so I can deserve her.

I wanted these people so much that I feel like I am going to explode.

I get to have three children.

I’m going to go cry with joy now.

Even as I’m also irritated. Because that is life.

Disengaging is not my strong suit.

Today I need to just… back off. I can’t hound Eldest Child about math any more. She will catch up when she catches up. Is she going to Disneyland? No. Will she get to explore Malaysia? Errrrrr, maybe a little. Will she be caught up by Christmas? Yes.

This is hard because when I have to go do fun things without her because she hasn’t done her bit… I feel… pain. It’s physical pain. I don’t want to be away from her. I feel like I am doing something wrong and bad and terrible and I never deserve love again because I am enjoying not being with her.

I’ve got some serious enmeshment shit going on.

This is part of why I say it is healthier for me to not have one child. Holy shit the enmeshment would be a real problem.

Having three kids means I need to go have fun with the other two. It needs to be part of life that we are not a pod 100% of the time regardless of the work that needs to be done. We all have work to do. We all have shit that if we don’t finish… we don’t get to go have fun. That’s life.

But it’s hard. It feels like a big nasty punishment when it’s really just a natural consequence.

Allowing my children to experience natural consequences feels like I failed as a parent to encourage/guide/help them be where they need to be. It feels like all my fault. But it isn’t.

If I treat her like she is doing something wrong when she fails to propel me to happiness… oh that’s all kinds of fucked up from top to bottom. I can’t do that. It would be wrong.

I can’t hurt my baby just because I’m sad I don’t get to have fun with her. Hi, fucked up dynamic much? But I am sad. This is hard. I will get over it, but that’s life. Life doesn’t give you what you want. Life is about coping with what you get anyway. I mean, I’m bitching about having to spend a day in Disneyland without my kid.

Shut up already, you fucking hag.

Sigh.

But I don’t like doing anything without her. It sucks. Everything is better when she is there.

Ok. Not everything. But most things!

Stunned

My body can’t tell what time zone I’m in. The photo shoot is done. Given that I slept two hours in the 24 hours before it happened I think it went really well. We had fun and giggled a lot. We do want to remember this phase of our family.

And now… I’m done with serious packing. I won’t be cleaning much more because they are going to come make a mess soon.

Eldest Child is about a week behind on math. This is exciting! She really has busted her butt to catch up. She’s doing great. I know I’ve sounded critical of her progress… I’m feeling like a turkey butt. I should have been more encouraging all along.

I am exhausted and weary and I feel numb. Today I get a massage and fold one load of laundry and pack for Disneyland on Monday. Then this weekend…. I do not work. Fuck work. As a family we are going to sit around. Ok, Eldest Child will do math. sigh but it’s coming along! I plan to sit next to her a lot. She has such a hard time focusing. Well… that’s not true. She can do really well but she’s seriously burned out right now. I do not blame her. After this I am glad that she is going to go back to about 3 hours a week of math. That’s going to feel like a vacation. Other subject will reappear! It’s going to be awesome! And I sincerely hope we don’t have an issue like this again. I won’t fall behind on checking.

The house is pretty much ready for us to go to Malaysia. That’s exciting. I think we have ~2 hours of last minute work (moving the mattresses and clothes to the garage) and the house is cleared for the remodel. Eeek.

When we get back from Malaysia… that’s when I’ll face the yard. That’s going to be a lot.

I wonder what the pace of our life will feel like without home ownership.

 

Processing as a family

Yesterday we saw Noah’s uncle and grandmother for a visit. I… I felt a little stunned by the sheer quantity of bile that was spewed at speed. Hatred of fat people. Hatred of some ethnic groups while promoting rude stereotypes that are meant to be “positive” about other groups. Comments about trying to cause the death of family members because they deserve it.

Just… ugly.

After the bullshit with Noah’s mom and the uncle and the grandmother… we had a conversation with the kids about what they were hearing and being influenced by. We asked them if they are surprised that I’m not blowing up at people left and right. They said they had in fact been expecting me to react to the nastiness they heard and they were surprised…

We are here because of an impending death. I’m not going to start blowing up about social justice shit. But I am going to explain to my children in great detail, “You see why I don’t allow these people to have an impact on your developing mind. My family is worse. Do you now understand why we are alone as a nuclear family every holiday?”

They get it.

EC in particular talked about how sometimes she feels mad at us because we are alone at every holiday… but… being alone is better than A) pretending those things are ok to say or B) exploding at people over and over.

Option C) don’t visit bigots is the winner!

I don’t think I’ll come back for the next death visit Noah feels compelled to do. Depending on how soon it is… the kids might or might not come. Cause holy shit these people are nasty and vile and fuck you no you don’t get to tell my kids what to think or believe. No. No. No. No. No. No.

My kids deserve better than this bullshit. This hatred of people having bodies. This nasty venom about people being lazy and horrible just because of how they look.

The jokes about, “I give my brother in law a knife every year hoping he’ll use it on my sister and he hasn’t gotten the message yet.”

I was shocked into mute horrified silence. These aren’t my people. This is one of those situations where it “isn’t my place to be the problem”. So my kids don’t need to be here being “polite” and shutting up to listen to this disgusting language.

I am torn between wishing Noah would tell them off and understanding why he doesn’t. They wouldn’t change. This is why he just doesn’t come back much.

I am feeling a lot of appreciation for Noah in general. He came from this. They intended for him to turn out like them. And instead he works very hard to not be derogatory towards people. He does not joke about murdering people for fun. He doesn’t sprinkle racist stereotypes through his conversation. He doesn’t talk about people being less than him because he has been more successful in a certain way.

Noah was intended to be a complete piece of shit. Like his relatives. Instead he works hard on being a nice person who helps people. He gives as much as he can.

I suppose if I am looking for the silver lining, this trip is functioning a little bit like talking to Jenny does for me. Oh how far you have come. It is incredible what Noah has done with his brain and his personality and his verbal impulses. That’s a man who has worked to not be a fucker. It would have been so easy and automatic. So… instinctive. But he doesn’t want to be. He wants to be something different. He wants to be better than that. He wants to appreciate people and value them and build them up.

I am consistently impressed that when Noah is out in the world talking to random people and they mention that they are trying to learn programming stuff he never hesitates to give out his email address. “I’ve been working on x for y years. If you run into a problem and you feel stuck and frustrated, send me an email. I’d be happy to help.” He’s tutored a lot of people. He knows he was given an easy window into his profession and he tries to pay that forward.

There are reasons I wanted to marry him. He wants to pay forward the access to privilege. Holy tomato am I all over that.

It was interesting watching the venomous toads squat over their position in life with him sitting on the opposite side of the table representing a whole different set of choices and way of handling choices. It felt like watching the death cries of a dying way of life. Sorry low key white supremacists. The high key white supremacists (who you don’t agree with, partially because you know they are going to ruin your way of life) are out in the streets marching so you are not looking good in comparison. You used to be the moderates. Now you are sitting on the wrong side of the line of “good country people”.

The future is queer. The future is not white. The future is quite possibly going to be fat.

And that’s ok.

You can accept this future gracefully, with eagerness… or you can look like the evil poisonous toads you are.

Your choice.

I know that I will go swim in a different pond to avoid you.

But this is going to be constant. This is going to be everywhere. The flavor and manifestation will vary… but people suck. All over the world people suck. That’s not going to stop. How are we going to be like a willow and bend but not break?

That’s the lesson.

But the food is good.

For dinner (yesterday) and breakfast we had damn good tacos from Torchy’s Tacos. Then we went to a random taco truck for lunch, very tasty and good. El Super Taco #3 I think?

Dinner. Oh man. It was friiiiiied. We went to Cherry Creek Catfish Co. We had fried pickles, fried sweet corn nuggets, fried green tomatoes, and a taco salad. We enjoyed it very very much. And then because our arteries weren’t complaining loudly enough we went to Gourdough’s Donuts where we split two donuts. The kids had a baby rattler and the grown ups had dirty berries.

Exxxxxxxxcellent donuts.

Well, eating in Austin is ok.

This baby is very tiring. Goodness.

We had a new experience at dinner. Someone complimented the behavior of my sweet boys. I thought it was funny. Eldest Child was rather indignant.

Hey, whatever.

anti-climactic

I didn’t blow up. There was never a private moment to talk to her so I just didn’t say a word to her at all. Not hello and not goodbye.

I watched the kids and how they interacted with folks. That was minimally awkward.

I won’t see her again any year soon. Maybe never. I didn’t want to make a dying man’s life harder. So I didn’t.

I’m not sure if I was right or not. But my kids won’t be around her again any year soon.

I spoke too soon.

Well dinner sucked. Fucking grandmother. So grandmother didn’t order enough food. And then grandfather was encouraging everyone to take as much as they wanted! Eat more! And then I realized that everyone who was supposed to eat… was arriving staggered. So I ate the last fucking burrito approximately 3 minutes before the last person arrived.

So I looked like a huge selfish asshole. It was my second burrito. I really would have preferred to eat three because they were small. I’m fucking nursing a baby and the only lunch they had around during the day was cheese, bread, and greens. Oh, and cookies. So by dinner I was fucking hungry.

Then the room mate was helping to clean up after dinner and he and the grandmother stood around and loudly talked about how rude and disrespectful my children were because they didn’t offer to clean up the kitchen and do everyone’s dishes.

Oh, side note: I did everyone’s fucking dishes after lunch.

So I was expected to clean up after lunch and my children were expected to clean up after dinner.

Other fucking note: we had intended to come into town and see the one brother. It turned into a fucking family reunion with alllll the siblings and their entire families expected to show up. Oh. So it was a lot of people in a small space and everyone is super touchy about shit being messed with. But they also encourage the kids to touch things. But then they get mad at the kids.

This is such a head fuck and I am so god damn angry.

My kids do a fuck ton of house work. But no, they don’t show up at other peoples houses for a meal and offer to do all the cleaning. That has not been part of their home training.

That’s not something that most of the people we visit would allow or want. BUT HOW FUCKING DARE MY KIDS NOT SHOW UP AND WAIT ON THEIR FUCKING GRANDMOTHER. DON’T I KNOW THAT THEY NEED TO BE TRAINED TO BE A WOMAN IN THE KITCHEN GETTING ALL THE GOSSIP. THAT’S HOW FAMILIES ARE FORMED. THAT’S HOW CHILDREN LEARN HISTORY. CLEARLY I DON’T CARE ABOUT THEM BEING PART OF A FAMILY.

Fucking woman just pissed me all the way off. I am so tempted to ask her to step outside with me before breakfast and tell her, “If you can’t keep your viper’s tongue quiet for the few hours you see my children you will never see them again. Do you understand me?”

But we are here for someone else’s tragedy.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

I fucking hate this woman and I fucking hate Texas and I am so fucking pissed that I am fucking here.

Oh, and my cousin called me this week. I returned the call yesterday. She asked if she could travel with us to be our au pair. Uhhhhhhh that would blow up. That would explode and go poorly and then I would lose the only tenuous relationship I have with an adult relative. No. No. No. I can’t do that. I’m too fucking old to pretend that something like that has a chance at success.

I can’t see a way for us to recover from that mistake. I couldn’t live with Sarah or Jenny. If I couldn’t get my asshole into check to live with either of them…. I don’t see a way of it working with my cousin. Not with a bunch of international travel. Not when she is flakey and undependable and couldn’t get on a fucking plane to see me for Christmas. No.

So I feel like an asshole for understanding these limits. But holy shit they exist.

I feel so full of rage and hate I want to explode. I want to punch that fucking bitch in the face. We came out here to be nice. And this is your response. Why in the fuck are we nice to you?

I am going to have to say something to her. I am going to have to say, “We will not be back for many years. Because of your mouth. If you open it again, it’ll be forever.”

Find gratitude: Texas edition

My in-laws are being shockingly polite. It’s good to see Noah’s siblings. I like them just fine. The kids did well with the travel, as usual.

EC is having trouble maintaining her self discipline to blow through math. She’s only 18 days behind! I need to stop being a whiny bitch about her not catching up till Christmas. She might not make Disneyland, but she’ll be caught up by Malaysia.

My kids were very happy to play with their grandparents.

I uhhh fucked up packing. I grabbed a bag with Noah’s fancy shoes instead of the one with his clothing for this trip. Fuck. Shit. God damnit all to hell. He had to run to Target this morning and get underwear and a couple of shirts. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. (Although I will say that the shirt he got is a really pretty color and matches his eyes in a lovely way.)

Middle Child read the entire library book he borrowed for the Kindle. I need to teach him how to download this stuff so he can get his own books. I really don’t want to have one more thing to do. I feel guilty. I feel like I’m being lazy.

I feel like I should be reaching out more to Noah’s little sister. She’s my kind of people living in a place where she’s not especially embraced. I like her just fine. That would be healthy for all involved.

And Sarah sent me a list of dessert places in Austin I should try…. donuts……..

The end of energy and time

Well… the house isn’t going to look how I wanted it to look when I scheduled two weeks to get ready. Sad face. But pushing anyone else or myself harder is not going to get it done and we have to be ready to leave the house for the airport in a little less than four hours.

What will be, will be. Sigh.

I am really really really struggling with how upset I am about going to Texas. I don’t want to go to Texas. I hate Texas. I thought I got to break up with Texas. If the baby were no longer nursing… I would not be going.

Fuck cancer. I don’t want to go to Texas.

I’m not going for any of the funerals to come over the next few years. But Noah and the kids want to say goodbye to a nice guy. The baby still needs me. So I’m going to fucking Texas.

I am struggling with how explosively angry I feel about going. I don’t want to go to Texas. I struggle with how much I place the happiness of my family members over my own.

I have a lot of shit to do. I could be here in my own space doing. Instead I get to spend a lot of time and energy on Texas. Which has not been a source of good in my life. So I get to go drain myself dry for a place and people that are just a source of pain for me. Fuck Texas. I hate Texas.

I am really sad for the poor guy who is sick. That’s really not fair.

I’m being a self pitying asshole. I’m trying not to take it out on the people around me. This is hard.

Fuck.

Last day here.

I got a bunch of boxes packed yesterday. I am one tiny thing away from three boxes being ready to ship to Jenny. I think I have 1-3 last boxes in the house of stuff we are using till we move. Today Noah will bring 9-10 boxes to the storage unit.

Today I get to clean the house because the day after we return from Texas… we are having a photo shoot. Wheeeeee. I’m actually really excited about that. The photographer is one we have worked with before and she got fantastic pictures of us and my art. I also need to figure out what we are all wearing because hoo boy I’m not doing that at the last second.

So I’m cleaning the house and setting out clothes today. Oh yeah, Middle Child has his long awaited evaluation at Stanford (like Eldest Child had two years ago). We are going over a bit early to have a date together and talk for a while. Then he has martial arts. Then we are heading north to drop off stuff with a friend in Berkeley and to drop stuff off in San Francisco before going to see Mona Haydar! She’s a really really really cool up and coming musician. I am ridiculously excited that I get to meet her before she is too famous to talk to assholes like me. The kids and I love her music. (If you don’t know it, Hijabi, Dog, and Barbarian are the three songs she has released so far and I’m excited about what is coming next. Here are links: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOX9O_kVPeo, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idMJIEFH_nshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfDQ5REWCu0)

Wonderful Muslim rapper/singer. She’s got a lot to say.

Oh, I also need to pack for Texas. The three kids are packed for their clothes. I haven’t packed mine or Noah’s yet.

It’ll all be fiiiiiiiine. I will get a lot of work done today. I will wake up in the morning tomorrow and finish setting up the house. Then tomorrow morning we go to the airport. Oh shucks. I sure hope my damn global entry card shows up today. We have 4 of them. Not mine. That’s getting irritating. According to the website I was approved… I just haven’t gotten the card yet. Damnit.

Ok. Need to snuggle baby more.

(ETA: last day here before the photo shoot and the house needs to be ready to remodel. Not last day in the house or last day in the country.)

What does balance even mean?

Yesterday I hit the wall. I had 40mg of marijuana in the afternoon and my body went, “Hahahaha. You are done working.” Oh.

could push through. But I would scream. I would be nasty. I would be actively hurting myself. My back and my arms and my neck are doing quite poorly at this point. I only have a few more boxes to pack before I get a break from packing. A few more boxes and… everything is just waiting to be put on a table in the yard. That’s a wee bit terrifying.

We’ve already gotten rid of a lot and we will get rid of the rest.

I am afraid that Eldest Child is not going to be going into Disneyland park this year. I don’t think she will catch up on math. She’s getting real bored of doing so much math. So she’s doing how much in a day she needs to do for maintenance. She uhhhh is less interested in catching up.

That’s fine. You can hang out with whoever is in the hotel room resting. We have a bunch of adults going (5-6 at a time!). We will trade off.

I feel like an ogre. Only I really don’t. This is the natural consequence of your actions. This isn’t a punishment. She still gets to have fun things…. but not much. Dude, you need to catch up. Apparently 4th grade was the Year of History and 5th grade is the Year of Math. I plopped her 5th grade textbook next to her current book and said, “You are finishing both of these this year.”

She’s a bit freaked out. But it would be so manageable! If you didn’t fall behind.

We talked about how after 5th grade…. uhhhh…. then we are getting into pre-algebra, geometry, algebra…. you don’t want to be catching up at that point. Or you will literally never catch up and you will spend the rest of your scholastic career feeling frustrated that people talk down to you because of your math level. This year matters.

It is absolutely irrational the way that we depend on math scores to determine someone’s “smartness” in school… but EC wants to go to high school. She can’t be behind on math. Is it fair? There is no fucking fair in this life.

I mean, she is catching up. Verrrrrrry slowly. At the rate she is catching up she will be fully caught up by the time we come back from Christmas break if she doesn’t take a break.

We aren’t going to do expensive Advent activities if she is still behind on math. Because we will sit around all month doing math. Just…. no.

So this math experience is something she will remember. And let me tell you, Middle Child is keeping up. He doesn’t want to get behind at all. Wise choice.

She was not ready to seriously do math before she was 8. And last year she didn’t want to seriously catch up. Ok. But…. now you have to pay the piper.

I can’t make everything easy for you. If I could I would destroy you. You have to have struggle in this life, kiddo. You have to earn things. That’s life.

I’m doing better with yelling. I pick my authorities carefully and I do my best to comply with orders/directions. Stop yelling. Medicate.

I am less worried about Malaysia because Noah says I did great without medication… until we got to the heavy work part of the cycle. Yeah, I can’t work like this and be nice without medication. It hurts.

And plans with another friend were cancelled because of illness. We can’t risk exposure before going to see a sick person. Which is feeling so bad right now. I miss my friends. And that’s going to accelerate when we move.

Complicated.

I’m trying to not be angry with myself for my limitations. That’s really hard. I feel savagely angry at myself because I am failing and there is so much I want to get done.

I’m feeling a lot of pressure to get the house and yard into a condition where someone will pay me huge bundles of cash. We are not in a bad money position, but I am not being as careful like I would prefer. I do not have the ratio of savings to debt that I want to have. In October or November Noah will get a stock grant from work and then I think I will be able to pay off the small credit card balance, have a bunch in savings, and pay for the remodeling stuff for the house.

And in January all of our debt will go away; I hope.  We’ll see how long it takes to sell the house. Everything near my house is listed for less than $10,000 below a million.  The Trulia current picture for my house is recent and fun. I haven’t even put it up for sale yet with deliberate pictures.

We will definitely not have debt soon.

I keep thinking about IDB stuff. (Incest DataBase) I keep thinking that security is going to be the biggest and most important hurdle. Because the DB will need to be a series of walled gardens. The various sub groups of people will need to have ways to segregate themselves at will.

We need to find a way to get some kinds of metadata out of responses without violating privacy. And we need to find ways to give permission for different levels of disclosure. Like: there will probably need to be a chat room sort of space that is not archived or monitored and it vanishes every 24 hours. So that people feel safe being in there. There need to be layers of “It’s ok to share this data with people in x group” while preserving that security away from other groups.

I need to always be ok with being excluded from a lot of conversations as a white person. I want to help figure out how to make this space. That doesn’t mean I will have full rights to everything there.

How do I help build a system that will partially exist to keep out assholes like me? This is going to be really important.

It cannot exist as a large, multi-ethnic research project unless each group gets to control their own data.

We can’t just automate such roles though. I’m going to have to recruit point people. I am going to have to spend most of my time associated with this program looking for people to promote above me.

It’s interesting learning, through thinking about this, that probably the best character trait I am going to bring to this process is believing that basically every one else is more important than me. That’s not something to eradicate from my base programming package.

That’s usefulComplicated. And useful.

I’m going to find my cohort. I am going to offer up the best of myself and I am going to do everything in my considerable (fuck modesty) power to help us find the best pieces of ourselves. Because we are so different. We have so much to offer the world. Being in the cohort changed us and I want to understand what that means.

I want to help amplify. I do not want to talk over. That’s going to be interesting.

Do you know what is magical about my life? I happen to know some folks who know a fuck ton about security.

I don’t have to know how to do every piece of this work. I have to help make the connections and then get out of the way.

I can do that. I’m good at that.

We have a long way to go and a short time to get there.

I uhhh insisted on help packing this weekend. My family did great. Noah and I took a load to the storage unit. I think we have one more small van load of stuff going into storage and then… we have suitcases and stuff we are giving away. !!!!!!!

Except for the refrigerator (which is going to be a nuisance) like 80% of the kitchen stuff is in the garage where it will stay as the kitchen is ripped apart and remodeled. I can’t sell it in the current condition and get top dollar.

I used 40-60mg of pot per day to keep me from screaming. Very effective. Not enough to make me feel good… but enough that I can clamp my jaw on the screaming. I have to take what I can get.

Eldest Child is now only 62 pages behind on math. But more is being assigned this week. And going to Texas is going to be disruptive and hard. I am becoming afraid she is going to miss out on going into Disneyland. She can stay in the hotel room and work with Noah. Bummer.

Don’t. Lie. To. Me.

I’ve spent the entire weekend working with a tens unit on. My body hurts so badly.

Noah tried to be nice to me and tell me that I could finish the packing *hand wave* later. I almost snarled at him. I already have work booked for all that later time. Work that is going to make me tired and cranky and stressed. (I have to get the fucking yards together.) Saying I can do today’s work while I do tomorrow’s work will not make tomorrow better for me.

I am very certain that the only reason I successfully finish as many of my projects as I do is because I do not kick the can down the road to be a problem for later. If I want something done, do it ASAP. Even if that makes today hurt very badly. Future Me will appreciate the gift even if Current Me thinks I’m a bitch.

And every dollar I spend on paying someone else to do a shitty job of not really following my directions is money I can’t spend on medical care.

Only so much money in the pot.

When I pay people for help 80%+ of the time I end up having to do most of the work myself but then I’m short on money and time. It sucks.

I didn’t blog about Mexico. I should have. I feel like a complete fucking asshole for going to Club Med. But it was nice.

And good golly I need to write about appearance stuff again. This trip was…. a revelation.

I have arrived at being able to pass as upper middle class! Like, I can do it! Guess what?! It didn’t end the verbal abuse based on my looks! It just got passed around the room to other people.

That was super awesome to learn in a completely shitty way.

I cannot do anything to get people to stop verbally abusing me for existing and having a face and appearing female. I exist and people will be nasty to me. That’s just going to stay true.

Well that’s freeing.

I am so tired. Every day but Wednesday involves driving out of town for appointments. Then we go to the airport on Friday to travel. This is why I didn’t wait on the packing until this week. If I were trying to get that done while in and out of the house for appointments…..

Well. Uhm. I made it through the weekend without screaming. I would not be able to do that work *and* drive *and* not scream. I have limits.

This stage is drawing to a close. This frantic work cycle is followed by fewer house/yard chores for years.

All I will have on my plate is parenting, home schooling, travel, and feeding us.

That sounds like a dreamy small load compared to what I am used to.

 

Try to unravel this.

Before I found out that the kids had been lying about math I made an agreement with Noah that his load needs to be lightened. His job requires an intense amount of creativity and learning. That’s hard to do when exhausted and working non-stop. His job will allow us to live in ridiculous comfort forever if he can keep it for just a couple of years.

Then I found out the kids lied and I didn’t get a vacation of rest time.

Then we found out that Noah’s brother is dying and we have to go to Texas. So all of the work I had planned to do over multiple weeks… I now have eight days in which to do it.

I am on a medication break. That sucks and always makes my life harder.

I have a nursing baby. That’s incredibly hard on my body and I don’t sleep much.

So yeah. I’m yelling too much. I have been working so much it is a problem. I am sleeping with a tens unit on.

I also haven’t seen my massage therapist in like a month. No acupuncture either.

We are spending so much money. That means I pull back on medical spending. There’s only so much in the pot. I’m holding my breath till the next stock release because that’ll pay for the remodeling stuff on the house, pay off the (small) balance I’ve been carrying on the credit card for two months because I’m trying to have more liquidity given all the travel, and… pay off the mortgage entirely so they can stop lying and stealing money from us. I hate Bank of America. They are stealing money from me because they claim I don’t have home owners insurance. I do. My broker fights with them all year long. But BofA says I don’t and they take money to put in escrow. It’s robbery and I’m pissed.

So many thoughts, so little time.

Overall the trip to Mexico was nice. Stressful and parts were irritating… but I did have fun.

I’m feeling all the feelings about how I need to support my family through their grief coming up.

A friend reached out to me after a hiatus! This is excellent news!

My neighbor was stalking my mailbox so she noticed that we weren’t picking up our mail and so she brought it to her house. She returned it today. I will miss this neighborhood.

We don’t know where we are moving yet. That’s why it is so unclear. We are wandering.

Math continues to be a struggle in the household.

I have gotten a fuck ton done today. I am being Very Efficient.

So tired. I’d like to stop having graphic nightmares about the men and boys who raped me. I think the Supreme Court nomination process is toxic. I’m flipping out. And I’m unmedicated. Not a great combo.

Given how long I’ve been sober I’m doing really well. That’s pathetic.

The good; the bad.

Today was a fabulous vacation day. I went snorkeling with Middle Child and I went kayaking with Eldest Child and we all played in the pool. It was fun.

Then we found out Noah’s brother has cancer and has been given 1-2 months to live.

We are going to Texas.

Well, this is a preview of traveling without medication.

Ok. I am feeling marginally less hysterical. Let me see if I can be a hair more clear about this.

If you are confused about where we are going and when… that’s because there isn’t a solid plan yet. I would be unable to clarify for you because I don’t know yet. We have a lot of options and possibilities and things we are thinking about and talking about but no decisions have been made. Beyond Malaysia, no apartments have been rented and no airline tickets have been bought.

Malaysia is the final two weeks of October.

Let me try to be a little clear (with very little time) about what has happened and why my emotions are bouncing.

Eldest Child… does extremely well at maths when she tries. I uhhhh don’t check very often because when she makes a mistake I can put the problem in front of her a second time and she does it correctly without noticing that she had ever made a silly error. When she is unclear she asks because we are around all the time. For a long time I was checking frequently and then in the last few months… uhhh I got lazy.

That’s my fault. Absolutely top to bottom my fault.

She noticed I wasn’t checking.

She started saying she did work when she didn’t.

This went on for a while. Ooops.

Now catching up has been a bit painful because it is so much but she has almost halfway caught up the previous three months of assigned work in almost two weeks.

THIS IS WHY IT IS SO INFURIATING THAT SHE WASN’T JUST DOING IT. YOU HAD THREE MONTHS. ALL OF THIS WORK CAN BE COMPLETED IN LESS THAN A MONTH. WHAT THE CHEESE!?!?!?

Why am I pushing maths this way? Because she wants to transfer back into “regular” school for high school. If she is way behind in maths then the school will make a lot of incorrect assumptions about her general intelligence and that will be tremendously shitty for her personally and will will reflect very badly on me as a home schooling parent. I am vain enough (and she is WAY SMART ENOUGH) that I am absolutely not ok with this outcome. She needs to be at grade level or beyond. She just does. She’s a fairly classic 2E kid. (Twice exceptional: she is incredibly gifted in many areas and she has a learning disability [dyslexia] and a non-neurotypical brain [ADHD] so teaching her is not a straight linear path like it is for many kids.)

She will already have a lot of struggles when she transfers in. I can’t let her be massively behind in the only track of education where that will impact her educational experience until she is a college graduate. It would be my fault. I don’t like the idea of damaging her educational experience. That’s not ok.

Why is she behind? Because she was completely and totally not ready to start book work at 5/6/7. She just wasn’t. She didn’t really start sit-down academics till she was 8. She’s been catching up. She will finish catching up this year. By the beginning of sixth grade, she will be perfectly able to walk into a standard sixth grade class and do the maths.

She and I talked a lot last night about her goals for her life and how I should be helping her.

If I am failing to educate her at home, then she has to go to school. I can’t allow her whole childhood to pass by without education. That’s neglect. That’s wrong.

She was a trifle frustrated with me saying it that way when the only area in which she’s lagging is maths and she’s not that far behind. Fair. (Everything feels like an 11 in intensity right now and that’s not about her.)

We talked a lot about trust and discipline. (Self-discipline, not parents forcing you to do shit.) We talked about how over the past few months there have been a couple of places where we tried to add more trust and uhhhhh we uhhhh went too far. She’s not ready. Which doesn’t mean she will never be ready! She’s 10!

She said it as, “Maybe I just don’t deserve any trust yet.” And I said, “Oh yes you do. I trust you to do:………….. (long list of shit)”. She said, “Oh my god. When you list it like that it sounds so exhausting. But yeah, I can do all of that.”

Maybe that long, exhausting list is enough for a ten year old and I need to be providing more scaffolding in new areas for several more years. That uhhhhh seems fair.

She does not want to go to elementary school. She’s pretty sure that she isn’t interested in middle school. (Middle Child feels the same way.) They want to go to high school because they want to go to college and they think that high school will be an important step for them in learning how to be more independent from me.

The fact that they view it that way? That makes my little heart go pitter patter.

Most of the moving around we want to do is seeing if we can find a place where we feel comfortable, where we can make a home, where they can go to high school.

How long will we spend in each place trying it out? It will vary. All of the places we will try out will have appropriate for them high schools. That’s a lot of what we are going to wander around and explore.

What I know for sure is the house is going on the market the first week of January. So Noah can retire at a reasonable age. If I continue to be as good at investing as I have been so far (knock on wood) Noah will be able to basically retire at 45. He will do occasional contract work because it’s fun for him but it won’t be necessary to sustain our life. We will literally be financially independent.

The kids told me that they would like me to stop being so lazy and I need to actually check their progress every single week. Well…. that’s fair. They don’t want to fall behind again and having the self-discipline to keep working without checking isn’t something they are ready to do alone.

Ok. I will make a calendar entry. I will do that for you. Yes. Ok. That’s appropriate and fair.

I’m very sorry I let you down.

Because I did. Then I got mad at you for being a kid. That sucks.

Fuck. I didn’t cause this alone. But I am the grown up. This is part of what I love about home schooling. I don’t get to blame anyone else.

Ok. Middle Child caught up on his maths. So we are going snorkeling together this morning. After lunch Eldest Child will be given a break and we will all go play on the beach together as a family for our last afternoon here. Because we are flying during the day tomorrow… she will be doing maths in the airport and on the plane. Because life is rough. But she wants to be caught up before we go to Disneyland. Oooooooooh boy she wants to be caught up. She is sad she missed so much of this trip. She doesn’t want to miss Disneyland and Malaysia too.

Makes sense. That would suck.

This is a trip, not a vacation.

I am pissed. This has not involved rest for me. I needed rest really badly. But my kids decided that instead I get to spend all day on academics. If I don’t spend all this time on academics they will fall further behind and EC is already in “catch up” mode so falling further behind isn’t ok.

Catching up was the plan. But they lied about their progress for a quarter of a year and that was a time period where they should have been busting ass. They will be caught up soon. But I am going to be on duty until they are caught up. That sucks. I really needed rest. Oh well.

And we are in one of those developmental “disequilibrium” times. Which pretty much means my kids are squirrely as fuck, arguing over everything, and not being good about being responsible for their bodies in general. It is normal, appropriate, and developmental. Honestly it is probably part of why they tried lying like this.

But I told EC that she is now on her third chance. If she ever lies to me about academics again we are done home schooling. This is a privilege, not a right. If I permit her to lie to me and slack off like this… I am harming her. I am neglecting her. I will not neglect my children. If you need to be in school so someone else can ride your ass… fine. We can do that.

But I think Stanford is right that she is going to develop emotional problems. And that’s going to be her burden to bear in life and not mine. I can’t make this easy enough for you that you never have to try and do work. Just…. no.

The food is good. I feel upset and alienated so I can’t tell if people are being work-nice or actually nice so mostly I’m just not talking to anyone. Because I feel bad in myself about myself.

I feel so incredibly disappointed and angry. I feel absolutely devastated that the only way I can have any kind of vacation is if I schedule it without my kids.

That feels so bad.

Because if my kids are included they will find ways to wreck my day.

EC is absolutely capable of doing 6 pages of math in 4 hours. Most of this trip it has been more like 1 page in 3 hours because she is pissy she is being forced to work.

This sucks so much. I am so upset.

And nooooooooooooooooooo medication.

What a great vacation.

It is not helping in any way shape or form that the first flight to get here was full of verbal abuse from strangers. I was called all manner of awful names. A bitch told me I was a moo cow who should be back in my pen. There was this asshole who spent the entire flight going through offensive stereotypes trying to get a reaction. He didn’t shut the fuck up. Noah and the kids slept through it. I had to stay awake to be able to react to the baby stirring instantly. That sucked.

So I’m kinda hating people and feeling hostile and angry.

I have some really big feelings about appearance stuff right now.

And that’s not getting into the group of hispanic men in the airport who spent a lot of time ranting about how people like my family are ruining the world. I can’t say they are wrong.

I feel like dog shit.

Clarity on a point.

I was asked what I mean by this: “I wish that I didn’t feel like part of what I owe her is teaching her not to scream at people when she is in trouble.”

Oh, sure.

This is like when a dude rapes you and then gets upset that you point it out. It’s a DARVO. DARVO means Deny Attack Reverse Victim & Offender.

So. This is like when that little shit head kicked me in the throat years ago and his mom said, “That didn’t happen and if it did it is your fault.”

Wait. Someone kicking me in the throat is my fault?

When my daughter got caught doing something she shouldn’t do and she had to accept the consequences of that her impulse was to try and scream at me and intimidate me into not holding her accountable for her actions.

I 100% owe her the life lesson that such actions are completely wrong and unacceptable.

When you fuck up, you accept the consequences. You don’t fight back and say how unjust it is that someone is holding you accountable. When you fuck up, you take your fucking medicine and you try to learn from the experience. You don’t scream at someone that you are going to humiliate them.

That’s. Not. Ok.

Why do I think I owe her this lesson? So she doesn’t grow up to be an abusive piece of shit, that’s why.

It would be like if I did something terrible and when my kids said, “That’s not ok” I raged at them until they were scared to point out that my behavior was wrong.

When I am wrong I do everything in my power to accept the wrongness and apologize and make amends. I believe that is the ethical way to exist.