I asked for help in cutting boards because it hurt. I asked for help in moving the skylight because it was too heavy for me. I said yes when my babysitter asked to carry all the bags of donation stuff.

See, that’s like being moderate in work.

I have done a lot of laundry and dishes. I put putty on the hallway ceiling and walls. I went to the bank and the dispensary and Home Depot.

Have I adulted enough for today?

But the best part? I started bleeding. Now I can go have another chance at pregnancy this month.

With the sudden spike in hits I assume that opposing lawyer is still checking my blog. Hey dude. You know, as rude as you were… you could have been worse. I get that you were doing your job. I just regret that you picked a job that wants you to be a soul sucking toad weasel.

Today is hopefully going to result in a massive drop in pain for me. Massage, chiro, acupuncture. Bring me allll the treatment. Pleeeeeeeeeeease.

Medical care is magical. Everyone should have access to this shit.

After medical care we get to go to a neighbor kid’s birthday party. Then go over the hill to drop off tile. Then hang out with friends who live over there who are kind enough to visit us regularly so we really have to make an effort. No shirking on folks who put that much effort into you.

I haven’t said this in writing yet. There’s trouble with the Bonus Family. Specifically with the Bonus Mama. I don’t know that I will be mentioning their family in connection to mine anymore.

Of course I have terrible guilt over this. I don’t think I did anything wrong and I would repeat my actions again. People have different opinions and needs and evaluations of stuff. Life is hard.

I think frequently of the relationships that have ended in the last few years. Godmamas. A. My shaman. Now the Bonus Family.

With the Godmamas I actively asked to help over and over; I was told no. Then I was told I was not deserving of a relationship with them because I didn’t help. Ok then. A… I drew him diagrams detailing why I needed help instead of to have an adult man show up and expect me to baby him. He was used to our friendship where he made almost $100,000/year and I made $14,000/year and I should pay to take care of him because he’s special or some shit. I don’t feel bad about telling him I was done being used. I had no more to give. My shaman told me that my children had to be submissive to him and he would ask them if they wanted sex when they were 18. I made the right damn choice. The Bonus Family… well… in a few years I’ll talk about what went down. For now I can’t.

I don’t regret my behavior or word choice. I think I said and did what I needed to. Life involves evolution of relationships and friendships. It’s true for everyone, not just me. What is weird about me is that I write all this shit down. It’s not that weird that it happens.

Yesterday I scrubbed the walls and ceiling in the hallway. I didn’t putty because I think I let the construction workers borrow my tub of putty and now it is gone (they only needed a tiny bit to dab on a hole). They also stole my ladder. This is irritating. Oh well. Another trip to Home Depot.

Sigh.

I also did laundry and dishes.

I took the kids on a bike ride to REI (Eldest Child needed a new helmet because her previous helmet was purchased when she was three. Her head has grown a bit) and Home Depot. It was surprisingly fun. I think the kids are close to being capable of doing bikes as transportation in town. Squee!

I’ve worked hard over the past few years to carve out a life for us within a radius of 3 miles from our house. My kids will be able to ride bikes to access all their classes and most of their fun in a few months. We just need a tiny bit more practice. How much longer until Eldest Child rides her bike all over town going to classes and camps? I think not long. She’s reaching for independence. More and more often I ask the kids if I can drop them off or if I need to sit at their class and they leap from the car waving. “I’m independent! Go away!”

This is fascinating from children who declare loudly and insistently that they do not want to go to school because it would mean they spent less time with me. We are all unsure what we actually want. We want to be together; we want space. We don’t know what we want. We want to be together while having space. Frankly that’s a lot of how our days go. We scatter to different rooms of the house to each have a little bit of space and we rotate around who is in which room. Sometimes we all converge on a room. Then we meander off to do something else again. But none of us want to leave the house very often.

I spend a lot of time feeling incredulous that I have managed to become part of a group. We are tight. We like each other and enjoy one another’s company and we talk all fucking day long. I mean, we have wonky moments too… but overall this is the most compatible group I’ve ever stood next to in my life.

No one else has ever had an interest in normalizing off of me.

That’s not true. But no one else has ever spent this kind of time and energy trying to normalize off of me. Ok, that is true. This is my one shot for being part of a group like this. I never had the group identity thing from hobbies or schools or my family. Now I do.

It feels a lot more ok that I don’t need to be liked by other people. I am liked enough by my family.

My kids can say, and believe it, that no one pleases everyone. They have a strong internalized belief that it is ok for people to like or dislike them and they should carry on as they are.

Please yourself. Everyone else has to worry about pleasing themselves. It is not your job to make sure other people are pleased. That’s their business. Don’t be a dick, but don’t bend over backwards either. Be. Don’t worry about pleasing.

You please me enough to make up for hundreds of millions of people disliking you. Cause really, do you have to interact with them or me?

It is the strangest god damn thing in the universe to teach these kinds of perspectives and beliefs when I have crushing mental illness issues that has me sobbing for weeks at a time because somebody doesn’t like me.

Oh good fucking grief.

I’m getting better. I’m learning from me over time. I’m getting to the point where if I have a problem in an area I turn to reframe it from a different point of view in my life.

I can’t possibly express how big of a deal it is that Sarah is still in my life and touching base with me frequently to help me find equilibrium. Sarah has been one of the people I speak to the most often for 13 years and counting. We’ve had big, difficult problems and worked them out. Like magic. No, like people who love each other very much and who desperately want to figure out how to treat one another right so we can have a healthy and loving and supportive relationship. We do a lot better than we used to. I do better than I used to.

I am going to spend the rest of my life working on behavior patterns. I have to not bully people. I have to not railroad people. It will take conscious effort… probably forever. I have a fucktastically strong personality. I have to work at being respectful. It doesn’t come naturally. But I want it. I want to be respectful so bad that I ache with it. I improve with time but I’m still not where I want to be.

And there will always be a big gap between my idea of acceptable (Hey, if I’m hurting my kids I bloody well expect my friends to call me on it) and what other people want to hear. I have to live with that. It’s ok. People are allowed to have different beliefs. I don’t have to interact with them. There are seven fucking billion people on this planet. If connection with you isn’t working out: next.

It’s not nice. But it is real.

Life goes on. We keep breathing and moving and doing stuff. We build new connections and relationships or we wither.

I want to grow.

Eldest Child is plowing through the Life of Fred math books. They are kind of weird. They don’t teach math in a linear fashion in the manner of school. Instead it teaches math through weird stories and many levels of conceptual math all at once. They talk about advanced concepts very early on with ideas instead of numbers. How do you put this list of stuffed animals together like a mathematical figure sort of stuff. I’m surprised by how much she likes it and how fast she’s progressing.

I was starting to really worry that I was fucking my kid up by not forcing academics before she was ready. Because she was pretty behind. She’s not behind anymore. She really did have to mature into this. I’m glad I gave her space. I’m so happy I didn’t allow my control-freak-nature drive this part of our relationship. I let her decide and now she’s ready. So she’s taking off like a shot and she’s really excited about everything she’s learning. She is super enthusiastic about how much she loves math and science and history and reading and art and writing and…

Because she got here when she was ready with the amount and kind of support she needed. I remember being convinced already at that age that I was too stupid to do art or math and I was “bad” at science and…

I’m not a stupid person. As an adult I’m fairly god damn conscious that I’m anything but stupid. Hell, around the time I was 8 was when I finally was given an IQ test. That should have convinced me that I was smart, right? The numbers were pretty damn flattering. But no, maybe I had a brain that started out with potential but I just happened to not be able to learn all of these subjects. The only thing I could do was read fast.

For so many years I cried and cried and cried because I believed that literally the only thing in the world I could do well was read fast. My mom spent a fair bit of time trying to convince me that it was in fact a positive trait. It was a good thing. It would pay off. Thank you, mama.

It really has paid off.

I no longer believe I have one talent. I’m a Jill of All Trades. I can do a lot of shit. I’m pretty damn handy.

But my children have never been told they are bad at art or science or math or… I say, “You are where you are today. If you don’t know something yet, you will.” When my kids hit a period where they are frustrated with themselves for lacking the finesse they wish they already have I say, “The thing standing between where you are right now and this thing you want is hundreds of hours of practice. Now, you can complain while you do the practice and still get there and we’ll all be miserable; or you can chill the fuck out and realize that you are doing great for your age and you will be better with time. Your choice.”

And you know what? I honestly accept that sometimes you have to bitch a lot while you practice because the practice step sucks so much ass. I get that. There are days when a kid has to bitch. On those days I wear ear plugs and I separate the kids. We muddle through and do ok with that.

There are days when life is totally fucking frustrating. We try to give one another space for that. It isn’t personal. There is nothing that other people can do to save you from the fact that some days just kinda suck. Yup. Get through it. We will forgive you and let it go. Tomorrow is another day and all that rot.

Sometimes I look at my relationship with my children and I feel utterly confident that we will still want to have a relationship in 40 years. Then I think that my mother was probably equally confident 10 years into her 15 year marriage.

Shit. I can’t get complaisant. There is still room for everything to blow up sky high. My mom’s life looked like it would be pretty damn stable 10 years into marriage. How did that turn out?

I don’t know if my mom is ok or not and I may never know again.

Build up my kids. Give them the confidence to choose relationships that make them feel good about themselves. Teach them how to evaluate how people treat them.

Teach them that if someone says they want space you don’t come back and knock on the door and say, “Was that enough space yet? Are you over it?” No. You give people god damn space. It’s respectful.

I do want to be respectful. I don’t want to always say what you want to hear…. but that’s different. Sometimes being respectful of a larger situation means saying things that aren’t fun to hear.

I get called on my shit. I totally fuck up. I’m not trying to sit on a high horse or throw stones from my glass house or be a pot calling a kettle black or whatever. Metaphor, simile, trite cliche, whatever.

I don’t even know. Rawr. I’m on day 48 of my cycle. I’m not pregnant. I’m just… not bleeding. This is getting annoying. This knowledge is hanging over my head and bothering me more and more. In previous skipping-a-period months I’ve had 53 or 58 day cycles. So I’ll make an ob/gyn appt if I’m not bleeding by day 60. Cause come on body. I’m too young for the change. But my period tracker says that my cycle range isn’t normal. Meh. Stress will do this to a body. One more week until we get arbitration results. Wheeeee.

I appreciate the friends who are thanking me for writing again. I’m glad you missed me.

(I’m going to have to go back and tag all these damn journal entries one of these days. The very thought makes me weep.)

The first time I had an x-ray done to try and see why I was in constant pain I was 8 years old. When I was 18 I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia. Other diagnoses have arrived over the years. I haven’t started seriously trying to treat my physical issues until my 30’s.

Now I’m fucking expensive. Lately every Friday I see: a massage therapist, a chiropractor, and an acupuncturist. That’s to keep me *moving*; I’m trying to slow the rate of damage right now. It isn’t possible to heal while working the hours I’m working. I’m doing more damage every day.

I saw my massage therapist for an extra hour yesterday. She spent an hour putting one side of my clavicle into place and mostly digging the nerves back into place on one elbow. There wasn’t time to touch my hand let alone the other arm. Because it took her so long to unlock the joint around the clavicle to put it back in place.

I have to stop lifting. Like, for real.

My body is crumbling and I believe I have so little worth that I have to keep working until I completely collapse.

This is not positive.

I follow a bunch of African women on Twitter. Today one of them said something like how the world isn’t going to cut you a cheque for being a good person; the world doesn’t care. I interpreted this as meaning: do what you do because it feeds you and not because you hope for a pay off in the end.

Sometimes I wonder about the wisdom of working at such a rate that I am going to kill myself early and I won’t get to enjoy the payoff of the beauty of this house.

Then I think that the resale value is going to be pretty fantastic and my kids will be safe whether I’m dead or alive.

Yesterday I had a chat with my daughter. She was the first one up. She asked me what I’ve learned from her. I said that I learned that snuggling really and truly is mandatory for happiness because I’ve gotten to see concretely in her behavior what happens if we snuggle or don’t on a given day. Her behavior is so different. She needs to snuggle or she has a hard time managing her feelings. If she gets in a snuggle in the morning she does better for the whole rest of the day. She’s more calm. It’s like someone handed her a bonus 20 spoons.

I didn’t understand how physiologically important contact was before that. I knew I always felt like I had a deficit of 20 spoons when I started every day but I didn’t know to connect it to the fact that I was touch hungry.

I wouldn’t have been raped so many times if I hadn’t been so desperate to have someone, anyone touch me in any way they were willing to. I know that I bear a lot of responsibility for being in places I shouldn’t have been. But I was a little kid and I didn’t know and I was so fucking lonely.

So I guess I got what I deserved.

My fingertips burn like fire and they will until the skin grows back. Using a razor blade without a handle for hours a day for months… did bad things to my hands.

I’m struggling with feeling like I’ve abruptly stopped working so now I’m a useless cow. I haven’t even really stopped working; I’ve just slowed the pace and I’m doing stuff I’ve been putting off for months. I’m not doing tile/painting. I’m seriously dreading painting right now. My arms and shoulders hurt so much that the very idea makes me want to cry.

I’m not painting this week. Next week. This week is fucking busy. Mondays and Wednesdays are the easiest days for painting due to babysitting plus class schedules and I missed them this week because I was doing other work.

I’m angry with myself for feeling like taxes are procrastinating. No, they aren’t. That is mandatory work. I am not wasting energy by putting things in storage in the shed now that it is moved into a more permanent location. I’m not being lazy if I go outside and weed; yes it brings me joy–that doesn’t change the fact that it is work.

I hurt. I’m cranky. I don’t like me all that much. Ok. I’m done whining for the day.

This remodel has eaten my brain, my spoons, and my time for a very long time now. It’s been over a year of solid physical work and it isn’t over. But I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Yesterday the kids and I spent an hour and a half filling the green waste bin with weeds from the back yard. We are prepping for Easter. I talked to the kids about which plants to defend and why; we looked at examples of choking out. We did our best to recite the names of the plants we know we are keeping and why. (I need to look up some stuff again because I forget.

I’m putting things away in the shed that can live there for a very long time. The pantry is almost organized again. The garage is coming along.

I found a tile artist who wants the tile! I’m going to drive stuff down to Santa Cruz to her because that’s way more awesome than hoping someone will find a way to use it in an industrial setting.

The living room is downright livable. The kid rooms are easy to pick up and organize and the kids are enjoying that. They can find their stuff for the first time in almost two years. It’s been a long road.

Physically I’m still in a rough spot. I’m trying to slow down my rate of work so I can maybe stop inflicting damage and work on healing. We’ll see how well this goes.

Mood wise: gardening was smart. I felt so much better when I was done. Gardening is fun and satisfying. You don’t have to do 15 months on a project, you can set an hour as work time and be satisfied with the progress. Sure there’s more to weed (there’s always more to weed) but I’m out of green waste bin space so there is no point in picking any more plants this week. Done. And the plants are coming back to life so beautifully.

At Pantheacon I participated in a conversation that was fun for me. It was talking about the overlap of mental issues and existing in the world. In this case it was about bugs and pests and little creatures that want to live in our houses with us. I said that over the last few years I’ve been getting weirder with every passing year. I don’t like to kill pests or bugs anymore. (My only exception is spiders on the floor of the bathtub. That’s just a dumb place to hang out.) I carry them outside. We have critters who hang out in our yard from the neighborhood. We see opossums. Opossums are good because they eat fallen fruit and keep rats away. But the poop is kinda gross. So anyway, in the conversation I was talking to someone who says they have trouble exerting boundaries with these critters because the critters need to live too.

I said that I have lots of conversations with the bugs and critters and I encourage them to live in my yard, but not my house. You don’t want me in your house because I would mess stuff up and I don’t want you in my house. We can each maintain respectful space. I have corners of my yard that are very devoted to critters and I don’t clean up and there are wood piles and bugs and… that’s good.

It’s funny how the pagan thing is going to hang over my head. I’m woo. I can claim being woo without anyone in the whole world telling me that I don’t “count” because I’m not “pure” enough or I don’t have the right teacher or whatever. Being into woo woo shit is highly unregulated. No one really calls woo woo appropriation: they stick with weird. I’m fine with weird.

I like helping other creatures stay alive. I like that the birds and the bees hang out in my yard now. I like the explosion of beetles and spiders in the yard. I like the ants I see digging in my beds. That’s where they belong. The opossums are wonderful and when I had to evict them from one housing spot (they were damaging my house–I need their house to not be directly touching mine) I did it very gently and I didn’t harm them and I scared them as little as I possibly could. I don’t want to be mean. I just need you to move because we want to paint that wall there. I’m really sorry.

I made some spots further out in the corners where the kids don’t play. That’s a great spot to keep an opossum safe.

I used to ridicule bird watching. Now I spend a fair bit of time getting to know my neighborhood birds. I can’t get the hummingbirds to eat out of a feeder (I’ve moved it, tried different fluids… they hate my feeder) so instead I have flowers everywhere that they love. I can’t wait till they come back in a few weeks. Right now all the flowers are just barely emerging.

It makes me happy when I walk out in the back yard with a bag of bird seed. All the birds explode into conversation. They know me and they know what that means.

It’s kind of funny how much this means to me.

I sent out my monthly donations this morning. I believe with all my heart and soul that we need to #GiveYourMoneyToWomen because that’s the way to correct a lot of problems. As long as wealth concentrates in the hands of men we are in trouble. Which erases non-binary people entirely.

Shit.

Lately I’ve been noticing how much my language is binary and it is bugging the shit out of me.

I can’t say that men don’t menstruate. That’s bullshit. I can’t say that only women menstruate. That’s complete and utter fucking horse shit. But I’ve said it. Recently. I’m a piece of shit. I’m sloppy and lazy and reductionist in how I speak.

This shit hurts people I love. I gotta stop.

I think I had managed to completely ignore how much of it I did until recently. I’m done ignoring that shoddy behavior. It has to move up the list to “actively working on change”.

My child deserves this from me. My friends deserve this from me. Hell, strangers who mean nothing to me personally deserve this from me. I don’t have the right to erase people casually. That’s fucked up.

There are people who have uteruses and people who don’t. It’s not about being male or female. These are separate distinctions.

And male or female aren’t the only options so what the fuck.

I need more words for this. Luckily I have a backlog of books to go through that talk about trans issues. I need to start reading. That’s also waiting on the remodel.

Oh I’m tired. So much to learn. So much to think about. And now I have a lovely daughter who wants to snuggle up with me. ttyl

I think I should start tracking how my sleep changes during the year. Because I think it’s on a big cycle and I am just too myopic to see it. I’m back to falling asleep around 7pm and waking up absurdly early to use the toilet. This morning I’m also feeling a strong need to stretch and do a little exercising before climbing back in bed. My body hurts.

I think that I finished lay out yesterday. That’s pretty exciting. I’ve been working on lay out intermittently for a year now. I finished. Squee.

Now I get to start trying to get rid of the darn tiles. I sent out messages to tile artists in the bay area before I started looking into recycling locations. Because wouldn’t it be lovely to donate to other artists? I’ve sent out emails and now I’m waiting on response.

I need to schedule a pick up for the other parts I need to get rid of. The skylight that is the wrong size and can’t be returned. The faucets were the wrong kind of installation and can’t be returned. (Slight discounts on the internet aren’t really worth it in the long run. I’m sticking with Home Depot in the future so that if I don’t use something I’m not stuck with it.)

I’ve learned a lot from this project. Now I hope I never have to use any of this frustrating knowledge again.

I’m still seriously on edge. I’m brittle and shaky. Anxiety hurts now in a way it didn’t used to. I spend a fair bit of time feeling ok these days. Contrasting that with a full on high anxiety day..

I have come so far. I used to feel like that on a regular basis. On some level, having a day of that is a fantastic shell to remind me how different my life is now. I’m so very lucky that I don’t live in that state of anxiety full time any more.

I am so very blessed.

I am lucky and privileged and blessed because these days… I very rarely have anxiety so bad it impacts my body for a week. I can’t recall the last time I had a hangover this bad. It’s kind of funny, I want alcohol but I know it would make me throw up like there is no tomorrow. Noah used just a little bit of rum as a step of making soup and I gagged. I can’t handle alcohol even though I feel like I want it in the tiny little cells in my body.

Is this what alcoholism feels like? I don’t usually want alcohol like this. I want that feeling of slightly distant and cheerful and I don’t know how to get there. Pot is different. But I just can’t drink right now or I’ll pay. The last two or three times I had wine I threw up. Whiskey is slightly better but it burns so…

I have such a fascinating body. I’m layers of sensitivity and fuss on top of sturdy. I may be in a lot of god damn pain and I may get sick and I may have to twist in odd directions to get things done… but I just keep on working.

Workaholic. That may be the best word. I don’t need to be obsessed with video games or drugs. I can lose myself in work.

If you do something long past the point when it is hurting you…. you may have a problem.

I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I need a break so bad. I am so exhausted it is bone deep. But what do I long for in my exhaustion?

Time to go pull weeds. The garden is calling to my soul.

There is something fucking wrong with me. I just can’t stop working.

I have this weird little thing in my head with this work: I’m not going to be able to work like this forever. I’m going to collapse into infirmity and disability. It’s incredibly likely given all the signs and all the congenital stuff. My family doesn’t live long, healthy lives. We die young and in pain.

I’m paying future me dividends. I’m building this art and this garden so that when I am literally incapable of doing anything but sitting and looking around me… I will feel lucky for what I get to look at. I will feel blessed. I will feel inspired to think about fanciful stories. I will feel encouraged to grow and change and try even though all of us will end in death.

When I was a kid living with Auntie in the canyon I had to walk a mile to the bus stop. I walked past this lovely garden that this elderly woman made over many many years. Really I would walk through the garden because she didn’t mind if I detoured off the road and went a spell through her yard enjoying the plants. I think she was glad that she wasn’t the only one to love her garden. I was so sad when she died.

When I was in high school a different family moved in. They wrecked the garden to make more room for parking cars.

Now I’m making my own garden. It takes years and years and years of effort. I didn’t understand that when I was younger. Gardening is a passion that takes root in your soul and demands years of dedicated service. Sometimes I feel like gardening is part of how I practice whatever religion it is that I have.

Oh religion. This one is near the surface and so painful lately. My therapist’s position can be summarized by her statement, “Spirituality is for everyone. No one gets to tell you that you don’t belong.”

But the thing is, my spirituality is very wrapped up in the communion of community. Even with people who really don’t want to be part of a community with me. You are my religion. Even when I quite frankly don’t like you very much. Even all you white men I spend so much time bitching about.

You are my religion.

That doesn’t mean I will try to conform to being like you. That doesn’t mean I will blindly support you. It means I will try to think about you. It means I think you are important and I struggle to reflect that in my behavior all the time. I’m so sorry when I fuck up.

It doesn’t actually matter if you are a stranger. You are a person. I believe in you. I believe you can do more than you ever dreamed you could. I believe you are going to fuck up and make bad choices and sometimes I will want to lecture you about those but mostly I’ll keep it to myself. Even with your fuck ups I still believe in you. I believe you can overcome difficulty even as you say can’t. You did. You will.

I believe that I should do something to help you in this life. Maybe not a lot, but something. Even if that something is choosing to walk instead of drive when I’m not going far because we all need to breathe in 50 years.

We are all connected through our choices and our experiences. I can find connection with anyone. We won’t be “the same” because I’m not the same as anyone. I’m weird. But I can connect on some axis.

I believe that Gods are the inventions of human beings because human beings need ways to understand and influence behavior. I believe humans invent Gods because they need to externalize the sense of connection they feel.

I wouldn’t say you are my God. I would just say you are my religion. Religion can mean a few different things, like: “a pursuit or interest to which someone ascribes supreme importance” or “a particular system of faith and worship”. It can be about superhumans but it doesn’t have to be.

I have faith in you. Even if you feel valueless. You haven’t learned how to look at yourself how I look at you. You have value. You have strengths. I can tell you all about them after I get to know you a bit. There are ways and skills you possess that make you talented. No matter how stupid you feel.

Do you know what I completely suck at? Repetitive work. I go bonkers. I can’t pay attention to detail and do the same damn thing thousands of times. I can’t. I’ll break something. There are lots of people in the world who can though.

It’s a good thing that we are different. We can all do different work. I’m real serious about the idea that work doesn’t have to be for pay. I do a lot of work. I haven’t been paid except for what I get as my “legal share” of Noah’s money in a long time. I’m not doing the work in exchange for pay.

Hell, I think that’s one of the most fucked up thing we’ve done in this country. Why do we say that work must be compensated or it isn’t worth doing? I pick up garbage because my neighborhood is nicer if I do. Not because I’m getting paid. For goodness sake.

Anyway.

I wish my stomach would stop hurting. I wish I could get more than six hours of sleep in a row.

At least I’m done laying out tile! Now I get to transition back to painting. I need to fix the hallway because it looks pretty scuffed up and bad after this process. I don’t think I’m going to bother fixing the garage spots. They had to cut through the drywall to install some stuff. So there is a white patch in the middle of my brown background and brightly colored stripes. I don’t even care at this point. I’m so fucking exhausted.

But I will fix the hallway because vanity.

Tile guy was complaining yesterday that we have made so many mistakes in this project. He feels bad and would kind of like me to go buy some new tile and we can rip out the funky bits and redo it.

Uhhhh…. no. It’s ok. There are mistakes. It is true. That is a sentiment that fits neatly with my life and attitude. We learned a lot. This was a learning experience and yes we made mistakes. I will live with them and use them as focus points for thinking about mistakes I am making later in other life situations. I’m going to keep learning how to talk to people and how to grow up. I’m going to fuck up. I can think about whether I’m making the kind of mistake where I went too fast and was sloppy so everything came out uneven or if I wasn’t seriously looking at what I was doing so I grabbed something that was totally out of place for an area.

This shit’ll come up again as themes. Trust me.

I find it funny how often people tell me I’m a perfectionist. Sort of. Kind of. Maybe. But I accept an awful lot of imperfection and I just roll with it. I don’t sit and labor over something a long time trying to perfect it. I do what I do and I set it down and I move on.

So maybe kinda a perfectionist… but not entirely. Only sorta in some ways.

I’m also sloppy as shit and I can’t be bothered to care. People have been trying to get me to be less sloppy all my damn life. I sometimes think I prefer things to be scuffed up and kind of shitty so people don’t have the expectation that I’ll be able to put everything into proper place.

I ain’t proper and I ain’t never gonna be so go bark up some other tree.

I sort of wonder how much my difficulty identifying as an artist or a dancer or a writer or whatever is less about perfectionism and more about wanting to set expectations. I’m not interested in being critiqued as an artist or a dancer or a writer. I don’t put myself out there to be judged. I mean, I’ve been blogging forever but that isn’t the same thing as submitting a novel to publishing houses or entering contests or some shit. I don’t put myself in positions to be judged. I know I’m shitty and that’s fine leave me the fuck alone. I don’t need to participate in your contest so I can lose so I can know I’m shitty. I already know. I’m good.

Is that perfectionism? Really?

The trouble with dancing was I kept being told that I have to work on my footwork so I can be a better stage performer, so I can join a contest.

Fuck you and your judgment. I’m not here for your entertainment.

And I sure as mother fuck don’t want a participant trophy. Shove it in your fucking ear.

I love to dance. I can semi-competently dance: waltz, tango, fox trot, salsa, merengue, swing (east and west coast but I strongly prefer east),… I could go on for a while. I know a lot of different kinds of dances. I could easily come up with a dozen and maybe two dozen specific dances I know.

But I’m not interested in being evaluated for how “good” I am and as a result I do not identify as a dancer.

This is all weirdly tied in with the religion stuff.

I’m not worthy to be part of anything. I will never be judged and found acceptable. I will always be told I’m doing it wrong and I’m not very good.

So I just can’t risk judgment at all. It takes all I have to get out of bed and go about my shitty little mistake filled life. I’m doing the best I can. I know it isn’t as good as other people. Leave me alone.

I mean, I want feedback on some aspects of my life. It is important that I be a less shitty parent with every year. I want feedback on my behavior and choices because the impact of me making bad choices is huge and I’m not the one who pays the price. So in that area I want and need to be judged and I seek out sources of judgment.

But not as a dancer or a writer or an artist. Not when it comes to my California Woo religion either. I’m not part of your community, not really. I don’t conform to being what you want from a human being. But I drop in now and then because you are part of my community. Because I don’t need to judge you and decide you are good enough to be whatever it is. I don’t need to decide if you are good enough to be on stage. I just want to know you.

The fun thing about the painting is I told Noah I would let him get rid of my paint by his birthday. I’m not allowed to keep any after this project to tempt me towards more painting in the next few years. I need a break. Which means that I have a trailing deadline on a lot of the painting. I don’t have to get it done super fast. The tile laying had to happen with a fire under my butt because other folks need the results of my work. This is slower paced.

Because I have to go back to hanging out with the kids more. They need me. So I’m probably not going to be painting 40-60 hours/week.

Oh I’m so relieved.

I’m getting to the end of this horrible remodel and looking around my life. I am lucky. I am blessed. An awful lot of friends have shown up for me. They kept in contact. They came over, semi-regularly of their own volition because they missed me. I have friends who are happy to come over and walk with me. My kids are fantastic life companions. Noah works from home now and when I stop ignoring him all the time I think his depression funk will go away. I’m not ignoring him out of malice or spite. I’m fucking working. I’m exhausted and I have nothing more to give. This is not personal.

Things are going to be very different in June than they are now.

I didn’t get my shit together enough to add more classes at the next round of kid classes starting. I’m not yet back in the zone of being on-duty for them all day every day. Classes start this week at a neat home school program in San Jose. Ok. We’ll have to start next school year then because this remodel ate my life.

I have nothing more to give. Eldest Child is making steady academic progress because she’s self directed and feisty. Youngest Child decided that since academics do not currently involve a bunch of mom time that shit can wait until they turn seven. Seems legit.

I have been very impressed with how well they have handled all this. Ok, they bicker a fair bit lately and there have been a couple of screaming matches… but that happens anyway. We have not had a descent into Lord of the Flies and they still by and large like each other and get along most of the time. Schweet.

It is almost over. It took too damn long. Almost to fourteen months of fuss in the house with another year of mental planning before that. I worry that I lack follow through. You know what? I am awesome at follow through. Sticktoittivity.

I’ve been awake for two hours. I think I can go back to sleep now.

I haven’t titled this yet because I don’t know how much I can type. My hands are hurting a lot. Twitter-storms are so much less effort.

The arbitration process is basically over. We don’t get results for a few weeks but there isn’t much more for me to do. I can stop thinking about it.

“Isn’t it true that you have issues with all men?”

No. That isn’t exactly true. I have this buddy, T, and you know what? I’ve never had a problem with him.

I’m sure there are more men I don’t have problems with. But the thing is, even though I have problems with a wide variety of men… I also deal with a lot of men. I don’t think that my problems are all because of me.

The arbitrator looked pretty upset at having to read about me wanting to stick my head through windows. She didn’t want to know I am a masochist.

Thanks, opposing council, you are so classy. To be fair… he was a little classy. He really wanted to bring up me cheating on Noah and he didn’t go there. He hinted around it a lot but he didn’t outright bring up our marital problems in the case. So… even though I don’t like him even a little bit… he did have a small amount of tact.

But now I’ve had a new life experience: ridiculed in court for being crazy, check.

It was kind of funny, as I went to sleep last night I had a thought: I’m queer. I attempted suicide as a youth. Oh shit. That means I’m part of those queer-youth-try-to-kill-themselves statistic. I’m not sure why that popped into my head but it was weirdly hilarious in the moment.

He spent a lot of time talking about how he was doing a trial of impeachment. Basically I am not a trustworthy witness about anything because I’m crazy.

I’m a lot less upset than I was yesterday. My stomach is settling down. I think I’ll be able to eat today. Yesterday I didn’t eat much. It wasn’t physically possible. But I stayed hella calm during the entire procedure. I was definitely not one of the more outbursty people.

I can dissociate like whoa.

Strangely enough I don’t feel like I care as much about being shamed as he would really like me to feel. I suppose that is progress.

Speaking of shame, here’s a neat blog about shame and male sexuality.

My heart feels heavy and sad. I’m really glad I have a massage and a chiropractic appointment today. That’s a serious blessing.

I’m 2/3 of the way through the final wall. Hopefully I’ll finish it today. We’ll see how I feel. Maybe.

And the White House is threatening to crack down on marijuana use. Oh fuck the whole world and all the people too.

I will hit post on this after the day is over. Because my lawyer doesn’t want me hitting post this morning. She would prefer that I take my entire blog down but I don’t think that is going to happen.

Apparently when a construction puts a substandard roof on my house the rebuttal should be, “Yeah well… but she’s crazy. See how much she writes?”

1,100 pages from my blog instead of a shred of evidence about the roof quality. Oh that sounds like a solid defense on y’alls end.

I haven’t been writing partially because it is hard not to rant about how frustrated I am with the legal process and I am under strict instructions to shut my pie hole and I suck at filtering.

I’m sad, tired, in pain, and very frustrated. But in positive news: tiling is almost done! I’m halfway done with the final wall. This is a big deal. I’m so happy with this progress and I love the lay out of this wall. It’s beautiful. I think we have about two weeks of tile application left to do. I will be painting once I finish this wall. That’s so thrilling. I get to go through and finish painting the hallway and the bathroom.

The tile guy is going to morph into general-construction-guy and do a few finishing up details for us when tiling is over:

• check the drywall in our bedroom to see where the leak is by the window because we are having mold problems
• probably replace drywall in our room & add insulation
• leak under the sink
• attach all the towel bars, toilet paper holders, candle holders, hooks for plants
• reattach all kitchen cabinets (I suck at doing this and they end up not hanging straight)
• clean up the edge of the badly poured concrete

I thought I would come home and work on this. The arbitration was a nightmare. I feel so sick. Maybe I’ll write later.

I’m done working. 8am-12am is god damn long enough. Now I’m medicating for bed. The pot helps and hurts my sleep. It interrupts my dream cycle and prevents me from getting as deep of sleep. It helps with the pain and allows me to lie in bed that long. It’s a mixed bag.

This tile work is fucking awful. My fingers hurt. They hurt like pushing on the back of a razor blade for hours and hours for days and days hurt. Cause I’ve been doing that. The scissors just ain’t sharp enough.

I feel like I drive everyone away. I’m glad Noah is here to validate how hard the cognitive plus physical load of this job is. I’m feeling insecure and whiny and impatient with myself. I can’t tell if the tile guy is complaining as much as I think he is or if I am just being neurotic. We have this weird dynamic where technically I’m the boss but mostly he treats me like a flunkie.

So he constantly interrupts my work flow for questions and requests. Things like asking me to explain the lay out of an area he doesn’t want to do for weeks. Which… is complex and requires switching gears in my brain to explain. Then I get back to work. Then he interrupts to ask me to go get him a pen. Then I get back to work. Then he interrupts my train of thought to ask why I haven’t finished some area I haven’t started already.

I’m going bananas.

He asked me to go get him a phone charger; it was in the car so I had to get the key from Noah then go outside then get the adapter from the living room. Then he didn’t use it.

Shit like that.

I am not amused. Sixteen days in. The progress is coming right along. The tree is growing in huge chunks. Today I prepared approximately 10 sq ft of tree trunk and bower. Tomorrow they are also going to start work on the snow wall so they can go back and forth between the tree and the snow wall when I’m gone at medical appointments. Whee.

Strategizing what they are going to do when is a constantly moving target because his mood shifts. Sometimes he is adamant and fussy that all pieces must be x shape and y dimensions and then the next day he yells at me that I’m stupid for doing it that way because look, this new area he’s working in wants this other configuration. Why didn’t I see that?

I’m struggling to be nice.

I mean, I get it. This really is a bitchy job. He’s taken to chanting puta madre all day long. He’s struggling and this is super hard and he’s not used to jobs taking this kind of cognitive load and this was dumped in his lap with no actual negotiation. The other real tile guy has bailed on him because he thinks this job sucks.

Sigh. And still we struggle on.

I need this guy. So I have to figure out how to deal with his mouth for a while all strategic like. Thus typing to myself. I don’t think as well any other way.

Also! There is always Spanish music playing and they speak to me more and more in Spanish. So my brain is working in god damn triple time.

Good golly I need a break. Luckily we are going to be able to sneak off to that upcoming Saturday event. You know the one. Or you don’t and that’s ok too. I’m not going to be doing the hot tub part because we are going out to dinner after. We will be there by about 4:30 if you want to see us…

I may be frisky.

We’ll see.

I’m feeling pent up and overworked as fuck. I want to play and rest and I don’t know which I want more. One of my buddies sent me an email telling me she wants to go dancing in a club again soon. Oh man. That sounds so late at night and so tiring and so fun.

I don’t have the spoons. Shit shit double shit.

Someday. I hope.

Fuck this work shit. I could slack off and only work when they are here. Ha. “Slack off” by working 40 hour weeks. That’s me in a nut shell. That’s why my family all harshly argue with anyone who calls me lazy. They don’t need me hearing that word. It’s Pavlovian. I’ll work until I sit down on the floor for a “little rest” then wake up 4 hours later because I passed out unconscious and then I’ll get up and work again. It’s easier to work when the kids are sleeping. Then I’m not ignoring them.

I couldn’t go without sleep like this before I had children. I wasn’t physically capable. Parenting has taught me a lot about what I’m capable of doing.

Do you know what I’ve been thinking about lately?

I keep thinking about Jenny telling me that the story of me is what I do with my agency and not about what happened to me. I’ve been talking to tile guy about developmental trauma, brain plasticity, different stages of development and the various processes for healing different problems, going through different therapeutic styles and talking about why they are useful…

I’m telling you. I’m under cognitive load here. These are hard concepts to explain to someone who is mostly functional but not at all educated in English while you are concentrating on fidgety, fussy, particular work.

I god damn MOTHER FUCKING HATE FIDGETY, FUSSY, PARTICULAR WORK. OH SWEET CHRIST I HATE THIS SHIT.

I can’t ever sell this house.

I have poured my heart, soul, dreams, blood, and children into it.

It’s going to turn out that only one of my children will be born here. That’s ok. It wasn’t really a fun experience at home. I uhhh did better at the hospital so that’s plan a. Next to find a doctor as cool as the person who was randomly on duty at Valley Med. Well. Next is get pregnant. Yo. We are doing what we need to do in that department. Sometimes bodies say, “You know how you are working obscene hours? No. Not yet.” I am ok with that. I’ll get knocked up soon enough. Nine months of trying for four pregnancies is still an average I can’t complain about. Ok, ok, only two full term pregnancies. Miscarriage has been on my mind too. I feel like I keep seeing references to it every where lately. Mostly I don’t think about it because if those pregnancies had worked I wouldn’t have Youngest Child and I really like them. I think they are a neat person. I’m glad I get to watch them grow up.

I can accept that I mess things up as I learn how to do them right.

Yeah. I do that.

I showed the owner of the construction company the mold in our bedroom. He uhhh was concerned. Apparently they are going to do a bit more work to determine the extent of the leak in our bedroom. Wood is warping and the primary reason that would happen is a leak. So they need to open the drywall and replace it and I think we’ll just go ahead and have them insulate the walls cause good golly.

Oh fuck money. Money. Money. Burn it all.

Oh yeah. Pay that bill.

The internet is so damn useful. Organize your thoughts, bitch to your friends, strategize, flirt, read all the news, stream movies, and pay all your bills. I didn’t even mention porn yet. But there I go. See, the internet is awesome.

Thanks Al Gore.

Politics are scaring the absolute shit out of me. I’m feeling self absorbed and horrible for being as selfish as I am. I couldn’t do this project like this if Noah weren’t here doing food and a lot of kid wrangling and taking them to classes and…

Good golly I’m in a weird spot. When the country was doing better and most people were having it pretty good I had it shitty. Then everyone else got in a bad spot and I’m not any more. I don’t think it happened because I’m more deserving. Life is complicated.

I’m spending a lot of time listening to the problems in their large families.

I just listen. I don’t speak unless they ask me a question. It seems kinda… rude. But luckily they ask a bunch of questions. They think I’m something else. I’m given the elaborate praise from the assistant, “I don’t think I would have slept through your class.” No kid, you wouldn’t. No one did. If they tried, I helped them wake up. I get one hour out of your day. I won’t burden you with undue homework. Give me your attention for one gosh bleepin hour.

I’m feeling a bit scattered you might say. I really wanted to put a k in scattered. Sigh.

Krissy with a god damn K.

I should go to bed. I’ve been medicating and talking to myself for an hour (I take breaks between sections right now because my arms hurt fiercely). I’ve been missing talking to myself. I’m allowed to segue straight back into talking about my siblings again if I’m talking to myself.

It’s hard listening to them talk. Sometimes when the older guy is coaching the younger guy through how to be a better family member I have to put my ear phones in and drown out the sound. I listen to loud female singers in English and bop around.

We can’t all have what you have. It sounds truly wonderful. No. I can’t just “get over it” and go back to my siblings and act like we are a family. We have never been a family. We are relations; si is la verdad. Pero no familia.

They are asking me fewer questions about me and more questions about wide ranging topics that they are curious about. I’m playing rent-an-encyclopedia. I read a lot of shit. I go a lot of places. I talk to a lot of people. I know shit.

Sometimes when I strop and start making a list of the topics that we cover: government, developmental psychology, trauma recovery, addiction mechanisms, vivid descriptions of various places and stories about my adventures (carefully sanitized to a degree–I mean… I specifically said that I’m queer but I’m leaving kinky out), educational theories around the damn world, and world religions.

I know some god damn shit. And I can talk about it on request for about as long as you have patience to listen because I have more patience than you and I study this shit.

Why shit? Because I’m shivering and pissy about it. But I don’t want to stop smoking. Whine. I know I need to stop smoking again. For the duration of this project I need to just medicate a lot on edibles and deal with paying for it. I’m all up in my feelings about money and health and fork and erk and

I HAVE TOO MUCH TO THINK ABOUT.

And every few minutes the kids wander in to talk to me and ask me questions.

Sometimes Noah comes in to tell me he thoughtfully bought me chocolate. Thank you, dear.

This right here is why I like working in the middle of the god damn night when everyone is sleeping.

Deep breath. I am grateful for all the blessings in my life. I am so glad I am not alone. But learning to work with such constant interruption + pain + everyone expecting me to be patient and sunny in disposition at every moment = holy tomato I’m overloaded right this minute.

I’m wearing my cranky pants.

I’m really enjoying the new Lady Gaga album Joanne. The very first time I heard some of the songs I wasn’t sure…. then I listened a second time and I was hooked.

I have privileges. I have parts of my life that are hard. I have parts of my past that were downright shitty. Ok.

Lots of other people are having a hard time right this minute. If I’m doing really ok in a time when people aren’t that is a moral obligation.

I wasn’t exactly raised with the expectations that I would have to learn how to manage a lot of money. This feels really stressed about money right now. Not because we are doing poorly. All I have to do is go look at our net worth and I can’t believe that I’m doing poorly. But I feel like I’m fucking up and up and up and up and up.

Life is costly. I have some very particular expensive tastes.

Like… corset dresses… ooooh. If I’m not going in the hot tub I can wear the dress at the party… That sounds potentially fun. Maybe.

Maybe. It’s work. Ha. I’m feeling like pudding. Maybe that’s the sign to go to sleep.

This is a test of my project management skills. If I am correct, we have 85 days of tiling to go. (We have done 13 days, two of them with serious professionals laying tile and I think it’ll be 100 days of work.) I’ve done 47 hours of painting (with help) out of the 200 I estimate needing for the house.

It’s coming along. I’m weary because last week I felt the fanatical need to get through a stage of the project and I spent several nights working till 12:30, 1:30, 2:30 in the morning. When you start working at 8:30 in the morning that’s a long day. But that was scraping all the stupid little tiles so I could hurry up and finish gridding the sections for the shower. Now all the teeny tiny tiles have been scraped and I’m up to spacing and tiling sections. Ok, I’ve been spacing and tiling sections for a couple weeks now.

Hey folks: remember that taping we did of tiny tiles to the carboard boxes? That was maybe kinda a little stupid. Because now getting it off there and spaced and into configuration for the mosaic tape is kinda a pain in the ass. So we put a lot of labor into making my life harder later. Hahahahahaha. Cheers.

I didn’t know.

Oh well!

I’ve learned a lot from this process. A lot I may never use again.

The playroom is back in service! This is a huge deal. I’m super excited. We finished the painting in there (though I noticed after I said that and moved toys that I forgot to edge one side of the door framing. Whoops) and moved toys and the kids promptly threw everything on the floor and exclaimed with glee that they would not be picking anything up. Ok then.

We are now in negotiation about what screen rules look like going forward. I sorta anticipate a decline in youtube in the house because nope you don’t get to make a huge mess then go watch obnoxious rude assholes. Nope. I’m that flavor of asshole. If you want to watch shit I hate… you get to do all your chores first. That includes making it so I can do basic cleaning like vacuuming in the whole house. Because the bug problem didn’t improve with the remodel. We still have ants in the new area. Sigh. We live on a swamp. We can’t escape bugs. It isn’t about me being fussy and particular… it’s just life. We have to clean if we don’t want infestations. Believe me in the last year I’ve pushed these limits to see how gross we can let the house get without problems. It’s pretty bad. Just sayin’.

The living room isn’t clean and tidy but it only has stuff in it that belong in the living room. I’m thrilled. The kid bedroom isn’t clean and tidy but it mostly only has stuff in there that belongs. My bedroom… still has lingering bathroom stuff because the last cabinets haven’t arrived yet.

The garage is the last hold out of troublesome storage. We can’t have an Easter party until the garage is in service again so I feel like I’m racing the clock. I don’t want to miss the third year in a row because of a fucking remodel. That’s ridiculous. I’m ready to move on with my life. Seriously.

The tree of life is on my spacing board. That center area of the tree trunk is what I’m spacing/taping right now. So that’s kind of exciting. The other 2/3 of the shower are nearly done. There is less than 1′ sq of tile left to add to those to walls. They will be finished today. Then they want to start the tree so that the whole shower can be finished before they move on to another area of the bathroom. Personally I think things would move faster if they worked on multiple walls at once because we can only add 3-5″ of tile up a wall on a given day. Any more than that and it gets heavy and starts sliding down the wall and squishing the spacing out. That’s not good. So I feel like multiple walls would give more area to cover. So far no one agrees with me.

But it’s coming along. I love it a lot. The waterfall is finished. It didn’t turn out exactly like I designed to start with for a variety of reasons. I like it. There are more random pieces here and there than I intended so it looks kind of chunky in places. I like looking at it and coming up with reasons in my head why a natural environment would have a random area be different. That’s a lot of fun for me.

The wall I’m working on for the bathtub area (I’ve finished one quadrant of one of the three walls) has a volcano. I figured it out after I’d done most of the spacing out. I looked at it and turned my head and was like, “Hey! I know why there are a bunch of bright colorful rocks at the base of this mountain!” I don’t think it’s been active recently, but there are still neat mineral pockets.

It’s kinda a funny process.

I have laid out and ready for the tile guy to get started: the front tiles for the bathtub/shower facing areas that are outside the water zone. Does that make sense? They are what you see from the walkway. They are going to be a fairly easy layout. Those are 4″ tiles and they will go likety-split compared to the teeny tiles. Those are mean and vicious. Also the tiles for the dividing wall between the shower and the bathroom. I’ve laid out and gridded and taped part of inside the bath tub. I’ve laid out and taped the bottom 5″ tall by about 4′ wide of the tree. That’s enough prep for at least three days of tile laying. And he still complains that I’m not going fast enough to get things ready for him.

I love my tile guy. I will remember him forever. I asked him if he will sign the wall when we are done so I never forget that he was my partner in art. He laughed and said sure. He complains a lot and I absolutely love him for it. He is particular and fussy. It’s great. He does beautiful work. The areas in my bathroom where the tile isn’t that great? Yeah those were the two days he had a helper. Ha.

Now we have a helper, a less skilled guy, and every day is turning into a lecture series for me. The guy (I’m struggling to not call this 24 year old man with a child a kid because he reads as innocent to me) found out I was a former teacher and has been quizzing me since then. “What do you think about ______?” We talk about politics a lot. We talk about the intricacies of fighting the government and who needs to do what. Yesterday we talked about religion and death and the afterlife. We talk about parenting–the tile guys kids are older than me so he has opinions.

Know what I love? A person with opinions. Tell me allllll your opinions. Provided you aren’t a white supremacist. Then I don’t want to hear them. I want to hear the other opinions.

They are schooling me on my Spanish. Which is fun.

All in all, except for wanting my garage back this is a fun process for me at this point. I’m still damaging my body, of course. Noah’s getting sort of out of patience with me having all these hobbies that damage me. He gets stuck picking up the pieces and he’s pretty tired of it. I get it. I do. But I don’t really think I’ll ever be good at being idle.

I’m exercising more. I’m doing sit ups and push ups and stretching other random floor exercises most days. I’m trying to get folks to go running with me. It’s fun. Our sleep schedule has been all over the place.

Something that I should pay more attention to and care about more: Not a single person in my house sleeps well when I work all night long. They all stay up hours and hours past bed time.

I was talking to my shrink about friendships and the concept of chosen family. I think I’m done with the concept of “best friend”. Throughout my life I’ve had a series of people I’ve thrown myself upon. I needed a lot back from my friends. I needed them to be my family because I didn’t really have one. Brittney, Grant, Anna, Alex, and I could go on but it starts hurting a lot.

I wear friends out. I am too much. I need to stop looking for my friends to fill these holes in me because doing so hurts them and makes them have to reject me entirely.

I think this is part of the reason I want more children. I’m allowed, even encouraged, to focus on my children in a way that is desperately unhealthy in every other capacity in my life. I have a lot to give and most people really don’t want to get it from me. So kids.

My kids and I live in a strange little world of our own creation. It’s a fairly happy world as we acknowledge that our larger frame is being part of a sick society we have to work to change. Noah is increasingly included now that he works from home. In the past he felt… honestly less a part of the whole thing. I really like having him around all the time. We are learning a lot about each other and giving space and allowing room for growth.

I feel like a plant that had withered down to almost nothing that is suddenly deeply watered. I grow so fast.

I need to learn how to love my friends with distance even as it is ok for me to enjoy the closeness I have with my family. I understand more why other people have always rejected me to go back to the place where they are normal and ok and their way is right. I feel like I created such a place for myself through brute force. But it wasn’t actually brute force. It was manual labor and inspiration.

I have so many people I love so much. I feel like an asshole because I want to clarify these things in my head. I’ve spent a lot of years around polyamorous folks who believe you shouldn’t categorize relationships you shouldn’t define things you should just accept. That path will lead to me losing my cotton picking mind.

That’s a phrase my mom used all the time. I feel like a racist every time I think or say it. I’m about to lose my cotton picking mind. It’s one of the phrases that feels most natural to me in avoiding cursing. (I am trying to curse less.) But the things I have in my mind I’m supposed to know the entire origin of every word and phrase in order to find out if someone like me is allowed to use it or if it is meant for someone else and I should keep my dirty white hands off it.

I understand how POC can get to the point of internalizing self-hatred because they are internalizing things that are projected by society. I spend a lot of time reading about the atrocities of white people.

I think it is funny when I’m ranting about how white people suck that there is often a fucking white guy who has to tell me “Uhhhh, I hate to break it to you… but your white.” (Misspelling is usually included in their message. *I* know the difference.) HOLY SHIT! REALLY!! WHY HASN’T ANYONE ELSE EVER TOLD ME?!?!!?! Oh wait. This is the 90,432 time someone has. Never mind.

It is as if people believe that being white means I am not allowed to critique whiteness or the actions of people who are white.

I think you better have another think coming.

What countries have white people ruined? Define ruin. The Native Americans have a strong argument. Let’s look at South Africa. Let’s look at… you know what… let’s not.

You haven’t read any books about history and you don’t care. So I’m not going to waste my breath or typing spoons on that kind of lecture today.

Something that is hard for me is, lots of times people I learn from–specifically women of color–say things about white people and I desperately want to believe I am an exception. I want to #NotAllWhitePeople them. I don’t. I sit on my damn fingers. Sometimes I type a response then I delete it without sending it.

It doesn’t matter if there are exceptions. There is a larger pattern and they are right to complain about it and centering myself as the exception only illustrates their point that they are being ignored and erased. If I want to be an exception to invalidating their reality… I need to not fucking argue. I need to accept and listen and shut my god damn mouth.

Recently a white man I had previously respected said, “I have a voice and I want to use it” in a conversation about how it is unfair that women of color want to have conversations he isn’t invited into. Bitch you are a college professor. You have a lot of rooms where your voice is wanted and the voice of marginalized women of color is not. How dare you come into spaces where they finally get to have a voice and complain that your voice is not being heard. GET OVER YOURSELF.

I was feeling bad about losing contact with a corner of a social group. Now I remember why I stopped talking to them.

Clearly I like having a voice as much or more as any other person. There are a whole lot of spaces where the only way my participation is welcome is if I am silent.

I accept that deal in a lot of places when I go out into the world. Even when I go out on to the internet. I don’t get to control the narrative everywhere.

Just in my house and in my blog. I don’t get control of god damn anything else.

Even in my house I’m in a long term negotiation with the other people who live here. I am not a fascist dictator setting terms. I am very clear at all times that my goal is long-term relationships with psychologically healthy adults; I have to carefully negotiate the terms of my house. My family is full of strong opinions and desire for control. I don’t get to run the whole show. Noah now even has a man cave in the garage. See, I give up space as negotiated.

*I* don’t have dedicated space in this house. There isn’t enough room. But I’m carving it out for other people. I kinda fit in around the cracks. Maybe it’s my damn bath tub. Ha.

Setting up this bathroom feels like creating worship space. I’m going to spend a lot of time in this room thinking about my life and my choices and my future. I want the setting to be right.

Set and setting. My time in the theatre shaped my thinking quite a bit. I didn’t understand how I was shaping my brain as a young person. Now that I’m in my 30’s and I have perspective it is interesting to me how I sought out experiences and sensory experiences and chances to do things.

Oh, the other thing I’m talking about a lot with the tile guys is travel. They are both from small villages in Mexico and they came here a long time ago and they’ve never been anywhere else at all.

Oh let me tell you about the country and the world. They have questions about climate and plants and culture. I have my skewed opinions. Ha.

I didn’t know I knew so many things. I know a lot of people who are far more educated than me. They had rich parents and started their educations at more like the ages when my children are starting theirs.

Privilege. Experiences. Options. What do these things mean? What does it mean to want a better future for your children? Why is it so important to me that each of my children travel out of the country before they are a year old.

Most Americans never leave the country. More than 60% of Americans never have a passport.

More than half the country has less than $1,000 in savings.

My kids are privileged mother fuckers. Ok, so I haven’t stopped swearing entirely.

What is that going to mean? How do I create little people who are not entitled to go along with the good luck of being privileged? This is so complicated.

And I’m not going to figure it out today. Noah asked me if I want to go running. Yup. I do.

We knew this was coming. We’ve been given warning for a few years now but it is still going to hurt. Our babysitter is moving. Cue sobbing and rending of garments. This is not going to be easy for me. We had a horrible time finding any other childcare. Having a home schooled teenager three doors down just can’t be beat. Now they are moving to Hawaii. The upside is they have a guest room and we can visit whenever we want because they adore us.

So this is going to change our life. I’m really glad that is happening a year after Noah finally gets to work from home. This is less difficult than it could be. Given that we want to have more kids… this is going to be difficult. But it isn’t as difficult as it could be. Take comfort from wherever you can.

I’m not even going to try and replace her this year. We have another neighborhood teenager babysitter (she lives a whole block away) and we will try to schedule dates a couple of nights a month with her and that’s going to be childcare for a while. I could use the time to save up some money. I love our babysitter but we pay her a lot and my budget will breathe a sigh of relief to not pay anyone for a while.

Like, we paid her over $9,000 last year. I’ll be ok with having breathing room in that area. I’ll spend the money on health care instead. Sigh.

My body is in a really bad place. I’m hurting myself. I hope I’m not causing permanent damage.

May. Our babysitter leaves in May. I’m excited for them and sad for myself. That’s an ok balance.

She will be here to help through the end of the remodel at least. Phew.

This week I have a socializing visit with a homeschooling mom, an Ikea date with Sarah, and I’m helping P finish packing up her apartment. On top of all the tiling I’m going to do that sounds exhausting already.

I’m tired. I’m sore. I need to go lay out tile so this week can go fast. Sigh.

I’m still reading this post about poverty and education. I wish I had seen something like this when I was teaching. I feel this would benefit absolutely anyone who has to interact with teaching humans. It isn’t just about financial poverty. There are other kinds of poverty (from the article):

I’ll be honest and say… I feel kinda awesome about how often I read this article and think, “YES! THAT’S EXACTLY HOW I HANDLE THAT PROBLEM!! GO TEAM ME!” I always feel excited when I find anything that looks like validation for my approach.

How do we teach children to choose and control emotional responses without engaging in self destructive behavior? That’s a mouth full. That’s a many decades long process in my experience. When someone did not learn these skills during the appropriate developmental windows (Know why I harp on the first seven years so often? RESEARCH. They are important. If you miss that window it isn’t impossible to catch up on areas of deficiency [I present your humble author as an example] but it is exponentially harder) it takes structure, form, and conscious teaching to undermine the bad training that the kid got.

I’ve worked with kids who had severe problems from one thing or another. They were all warm, loving people who had not been given the opportunities in life they need to have. I can’t think poorly of them for it even as I acknowledge how hard it can be to teach them more functional behaviors in a classroom.

I miss the classroom. I’ve been rewatching The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo of course I watch the Swedish miniseries.

Sometimes I reflect that I watch shows in a pretty interesting variety of languages: Swedish, Portuguese, Spanish, Hindi, Korean… there are more. I watch a lot of sub titles so I can try to feel the way the language works. I sincerely believe that Korean would be dead easy to learn. It sounds so blessedly consistent. I can pick up phrases from a soap opera series. Also, I continue to feel embarrassed by how poor my spoken Spanish is. I really need to find ways to practice so I can feel less stupid.

Anyway. TGWTDT makes me think about the ways we come into one another’s lives. How do we manage to intersect with new people? In that story/movie/book Lisbeth mostly came into contact with people through the social welfare system. That doesn’t exist in my country the way it does in Sweden. Sure, we have a system but it isn’t well thought out or comprehensive in quite the same way. Many more people fall through the cracks. Sure Lisbeth was caught because she threw a fire bomb on her father but still.

I came into contact with an awful high number of people because of teaching. I have leveled off that number like whoa since I stopped reaching out to the world in that manner.

Where is my place now? I have no role in societies like those pictures. I’m kind of… irrelevant. So how do people like me get to being able to help kids who aren’t theirs?

It’s complicated.

Everything is complicated.

A kiddo woke up. I should go do the breakfast thing since we don’t have a Noah today. Oh Noah. We miss you so. Not because you provide us with food, though that is lovely. I do regulate off of you. I need you to remind me when I’m hungry I should eat and when I’m tired I should sleep. When I’m exhausted but too anxious too sleep you help me calm down. I’m trying to not be super stoned in this pre-pregnancy period of hopefully reduced pot usage. I want my tolerance to stay low.

Ok. Gotta go.

I’m up and no one else is. I’m trying to distract myself from working because I hear I should rest one of these days. So I’m looking up how far baby carriers have come in the last half a decade. Hm. There are new options. I’m not sure I like them better than what I had though.

I am thinking about how I’m going to hold a baby with my fucked up hands. I’ve done a lot of damage since I last had a baby.

It’s funny considering all the angles here. Different carriers put a different amount of strain on my body. Some days I can handle pressure in Areas A & B, sometimes mainly in Area C… so how many carriers should one have? But they cost money.

Noah would like me to stop worrying about money one of these days. He earns enough. I shouldn’t fret. It bothers him that I’m so fretful about money. He works himself ragged trying to get me to stop fretting about money.

Sweetheart, know how it is my job to make your old age comfortable? I will always fret about money. Every dollar I spend now feels like I am robbing Future You.

It’s not about how much you make now. You will not make this forever. I have to make it last.

Anyway. Baby carriers. There are advantages to soft structured carriers (like the Ergo but there are other brands), wraps (like a Moby or a woven wrap–big differences between those two types), ring slings (a strip of cloth that you wrap around your body and tie into a bag using rings–like it sounds), or Mei Tais. Those are like a soft structured carrier but with less shape.

Why do I care about this shit so much? Why is it worth thinking about?

Well lets start with my hand damage and move up my arms to the fucked up elbows and the wrecked shoulders then down to the fucked up lower back.

Why do I think about these things? Because the more I think about how to manage my pain now the less anxiety I will have later because I will be in pain and unable to figure out how to fix it because I will be mentally overwhelmed.

Right now I’m just chillin’.

I can think about how to manage things. Like: a ring sling is awesome and I’ve used the hell out of the one I had… but I’m desperately worried about my shoulders standing up to that kind of strain at this stage of my life.

I’d get myself in a position where it was the only carrier with me on a day when I’m already doing poorly and… that’s a recipe for me being almost blind from pain and lashing out at everyone near me all day. Maybe skip having the temptation in the house.

Which means opting in to more mass/complication every.single.time. Ring slings are lovely. They are quick and convenient and they are super easy to nurse in…

But fucked up shoulders. Like, seriously fucked up. Like every medical practitioner I have spends most sessions lately working on my shoulders because the pain is making it so I can’t sleep much at nights.

Painting sucks. I need to stop.

Less anxiety. Baby carriers. Distraction. Sweet, fluffy, screaming/flailing/puking distraction.

What am I god damn thinking? I’m thinking I like my kids so much that I really really really want to meet more of them. This is the first group of humans I have had this kind of success with. I want more. I like how snuggly and loving and attached we are. We support one another in separate adventures too, but we really prefer to be together. We all get a bit cranky at separations.

The stretchy woven wraps are really comfortable and adjustable for the first 4-6 months depending on how big the baby is. They are really ideal for all the newborn positions but then they stop being useful at all because they are dangerous. Woven wraps are great from birth through early toddler weight and they are entirely adjustable for kid-size… but they are rather hard on the adult’s body. The weight is questionably distributed. They are small and easy to always have with you as a back up, but as a primary one… they leave me sore and aching. They are also not as perfectly awesomely forgiving with a new born.

That leaves Mei Tais and structured carriers. The advantages of Mei Tais lies in how adjustable they are for body size of both kids and grown ups. I’ve shared these carriers successfully with folks from a grown up size XS to grown up size 3X. They are gloriously adjustable. But they don’t distribute weight quite as well as a structured carriers. Structured carriers are the most ergonomic for me and allow me to do the most wearing with the least pain. They kinda suck for nursing or carrying around with you places where the kid won’t be in the carrier all the time. I am an expert at putting a kid in a back carry alone in any kind of carrier, but most folks can’t for a long long time. (I practiced. Over and over and over in my house. Putting kids into and out of carries to see how it works. I’m… kind of boring.)

In my experience the most shareable carriers are the Mei Tais followed by ring slings followed by structured carriers. Woven/stretchy wraps usually scare folks who don’t use them on a regular basis.

I have a lot of wonderful friends who like to snuggle my babies and I think feeling love from lots of people is a big deal for healthy social development so the shareability of my carriers ranks kinda high for me.

I know other people say they nurse in an Ergo without a problem, but I always struggle with the angle. My boobs are kinda big and they get pretty huge when I’m nursing. I find that I need a carrier that allows me to drop the baby down several inches from the normal comfortable carrying height in order to nurse with ease while doing other work. That’s why ring slings are the most awesome for nursing in my experience. Eldest Child spent a lot of her babyhood in a ring sling nursing.

Someday-Not-The-Youngest-Child didn’t nurse all the time so they spent a lot of time in the structured carrier.

After browsing through videos for a structured carrier I noticed that this brand recommends nursing… in the stretchy wrap.

The stretchy wrap is probably as good for nursing as a ring sling for the first few months. Maybe even better in many ways. It gives a bunch of position options that the ring sling doesn’t allow for.

Oh the factors to consider. See, I’m not just a one trick pony.

I don’t really want to just buy one of each. That seems ridiculous.

But I know women who bought more than twenty carriers because they wanted different ones to match their outfits. So I’m not sure why I’m so worried about it.

Every dollar I spend where I don’t have to is money I can’t spend on my mortgage or travel.

I don’t want to rob me either. But I want to minimize pain, frustration, and fussing in the future. It’s a balancing act.

After spending a while watching videos on youtube (we live in a magical time) I’m interested in the Boba. Hm.