Today I get to put together small sheds. I need somewhere for bicycles to be put so they do not get destroyed by weather damage and it just isn’t going to work in the house. So, sheds. Our spiffy new mother’s helper is coming over today for her first trial. Cross your fingers.

One of the shed things is for tools. So that kids can store their tools in a protected device (it’s small–more a box than a shed) outside of my bloody pantry. The pantry is mine. Mine. MINE! I will not share it with lots of children storing their tools. No, ma’am. Get out. So. I have to have another place to send them to and I will get that done today. (“I will get that done today” always contains an implicit “I hope” tagged on.)

I think I should also build a containment corral for spare lumber bits next to the concrete slab and toss all the little pieces in there so kids can find them without going into the side yard. Which is kind of a health hazard. Err, I’m not explaining why. But it’s best for kids to not go over there. (The side yard that is fenced off. Not the one that is commonly walked upon obviously.)

I have always been made happy by access to wood I can just play with. I’m trying to provide that experience to kids. I’m asked what I will “call the days” because one of our organizer moms loves catchy names for activities.

I said “Building Day.” She did not look impressed. Ha. I’m not so good at catchy titles.

I had a good therapy session yesterday. She thinks I’m doing pretty well. It is important to keep in mind that she probably on some level compares me to other patients. I happen to know at least four of her other patients. No wonder she thinks I’m doing so well.

Incest and repeated early trauma have serious lifelong impact. That I can cry and have my feelings and then get up and get moving and do something else… is a big deal. I need to give myself credit for accomplishing something hard. Yes, my emotions are big. That happens after formative trauma. I’m not much more emotionally advanced than a lot of preschoolers. That is how trauma works. You get stuck in places.

I’m not perfect. I do things wrong all the time. I make so many mistakes. I am too loud. I am too harsh.

But I do make improvements. There is clear growth. I have changed. I have grown up.

Mostly this is because I have a lot of very good people in my life who have acted as mirrors and models and they have helped me. I am not a self-made woman. I am the product of a lot of time and effort on the part of professional therapists, teachers, friends, and my family.

This network didn’t come easy. It was slowly and painfully constructed over many years. Well, not all of it was painful. But it has been luck and privilege as much as anything.

My therapy was paid for by the state of California for many years. That’s a privilege that doesn’t get offered to every victim. You have to enter into the court system and be officially recognized as a victim of violent crime. Many people are rebuffed from prosecuting and they are never offered services. I’m lucky.

Sometimes it is overwhelming to think about just how much luck has come together to create me. I tend to inspire strong reactions from people–good and bad. Over time I have learned how to protect myself from a lot of the bad, but it’s been complicated. I am very lucky that I manage to inspire love in people, even though I’m a pain in the ass. That doesn’t work out for everyone.

I have spent the last decade of my life consciously spinning a wide web. I am very pleased with what and whom I have encountered.

My editor gave me a little feedback. “More logic issues than I expected. You free associate a lot between different topics and I’m having to build a lot of bridges.”

Oh dear woman. That is why I am paying you. I know I have logical issues and that sometimes it is hard for people to understand the leaps I make. I am entirely blind to why that is so. I know what I know. I don’t know what other people don’t know.

So I totally believe you that you are having to do work to make this more clear, especially for a younger audience. If you believe your original estimation of work was low, feel free to raise what you expect me to pay.

I understand that being difficult comes with cost.

I want to be less difficult. And I don’t always know how to go about that. Paying for help usually ensures that you have more control over the size and shape of help you get. I am so fucking grateful for being able to pay for help at this stage of my life. That’s privilege.

My life is so fucking awesome.

Oh, I finally ordered the $10 part that will allow me to install the punching bag appropriately without doing damage to the ceiling joists. I procrastinate on things. I have needed to do this for over a year.

The garage is a very different shape than it was. The swing is gone. The furniture moved and it isn’t currently safe. But I have three kid swings and two grown-up sized chair/swings outside so I don’t feel too guilty.

I didn’t take the overhead pieces down though. I keep thinking about self suspension. If I’m not going to play with anyone other than Noah ever again I had best replace my rope kit and teach him how to do it. I can show him how I like it done as many times as necessary. Ha. I have very different patience now than I did when we started dating.

I have been very bad at teaching Noah bdsm stuff. I have kind of sort of knocked him with a stick towards learning on other people. But we don’t do that now. So uhm, maybe I’d best start asserting my preferences a bit more.

Not that we have time for such shenanigans. I did put a lock on the door.

I’m not sure if I will ever be able to do any sort of bdsm with my kids in the house. Somehow I doubt it. Even with a lock. Even if a grown up is with them distracting them. I’m not sure I want to be that kind of person that close to them.

I don’t think I will stop being that kind of person. I’m not sure I want to try. Noah is not going to object real hard. He’s a patient guy and he likes me a lot and if this would result in more sex for him, uhm that’s a no-brainer. The problem has never been on Noah’s end. I have not historically been good at teaching Noah to do what I want. I think I need to get better.

Mostly he just tries shit and pays attention to my reaction and discards options when I blow up at him. I won the husband lottery. I don’t deserve him. I’m keeping him anyway.

I told the kids we would go over to Aqua Adventure early enough to have lunch today. They beg for food every time we go. They are ecstatic. I’ll only do it once or twice this summer. It’s over priced and not that high on the quality scale. It means I won’t have to think about food after building the sheds.

I’m not very good at doing All The Things when that includes making food. Making food is what will send me over the edge into being hysterical and crying and sometimes screaming… for the stupidest questions. I just… I flip out if someone interrupts my concentration when I am trying to prepare food while I am tired and hungry.

So building in ways to avoid that means that we have a better day. I feel very grateful that I am rich enough that I can just eat out when it will make the day better. That has not always been true in my life and I appreciate it so much.

I feel very lucky that I get to shape my days with very few limitations. My financial restrictions are mostly self-imposed. If I want something I can have it. I don’t have to go to a job so I don’t have very many time restrictions. I create all the ones I have.

I can’t drink carbonation on a regular basis. (I do have rare sodas. God I miss them.) It causes a lot of pain.

Other than that… our food restrictions are entirely preference based and cost and allergies are not a factor. I am very lucky. That does not happen for everyone.

I feel really good about the fact that I’m really sore right now because I have been exercising so much this summer. Someone at the park said, “Well you are doing multiple sports in a day, right?” and I stopped cold and stared at her.

Holy shit. I’m doing multiple sports in a day.

I hadn’t thought about it that way before.

Uhm, is it ok if I kind of strut like a peacock for a few minutes? That’s… a change in self perception. Whoa. Me? Sports? Multiple? Wha?

I’m not saying I’m good. Or fast.

But is that really the point? Does everyone have to be the Best in order to be allowed to exist?

Not so much. I’m getting off my ass and doing things instead of watching other people do things.

I don’t watch sports but I do them. I don’t watch cooking shows but I cook and bake. I don’t watch home improvement shows but I do a lot of home improvement.

Today I feel like I am doing what I want to be doing. I am the person I want to be. I am very lucky that I get to make the choices I get to make that land me in this position. Other people have different options and different goals and different potential. I don’t need to try hard to be like them.

Even if I use them as a model. I’m very capable of taking a tiny thread out of a warp and using just that to follow. I don’t need the whole tapestry. That’s not for me. Just this little color here. Surely you won’t notice one thread being borrowed.

It is ok for me to do the things I want to do. I am not a bad person. Truly.

I want to go run. Bye.

Since the kids were born I have been mostly avoiding men. I have only been alone with them a handful of times in the past six years. I just… don’t. Men are more complicated than women in a variety of ways.

Only in the past few weeks I’ve been alone with a man more than once. I’m having feelings about this. One of the men I’ve spent time with lately came into my life during my last hunting period. He was prey and I was reeling him in when the monogamy standard slammed into place. Now he’s becoming a friend. (I’d be very cool with pimping him out to my friends–he’s a really nice guy so far.) But when I hang out with him there’s a little tension there. Like I feel around interesting people.

And when I went dancing this weekend one of Noah’s male friends asked to come along. I was surprised. I’ve barely been in a crowded room with this guy let alone riding in a car with him alone. Luckily the car ride was the only alone time. Luckily? What was I going to do to him?

I don’t know. But being around men is always fraught. I of course have no idea what they are thinking or feeling. But being around men makes me want to have sex. That’s just how I make friends. Only I can’t any more. It’s weird. I don’t allow myself to get into full fledged fantasies at this point. I don’t theorize the best approach. But there are noticeable signs in my body. Controlling my physical actions is conscious.

I default into seductive physical mannerisms unconsciously. Being “friendly” but not too friendly takes conscious effort. I’m going through the effort. Maybe some day it will even feel natural.

For now I miss falling into bed with everyone. I miss the adrenaline and excitement and bonding. I miss that oxytocin rush. Yes, I bond with Noah but it’s different. It isn’t new and exciting. I like Noah. He’s still my favorite.

My shrink doesn’t seem to think that monogamy is a necessary or useful goal for me. Which I have feelings about.

I think I kind of have to prove to myself that I am physically capable of keeping it in my pants. It takes effort. There are so many interesting people in the world. It’s funny how it is easier to notice that women are attractive and that I’d be happy to have sex with them but I have less physical urge to pounce. Women are much harder to approach and I have a much lower success rate.

If I had been more successful in my early efforts with girls I kind of wonder if I would be so male focused. I like girls. I like girls a lot. Not so many are willing to let me touch their sticky bits. Boys have lower standards. So I respond to them more quickly.

I am not assuming that either of the men I spent alone time with were feeling tension. I’m talking about my experience. Given how often I have been turned down for sex I feel like I am not the best judge of someone else’s interest or not. I have to just ask and wait for the yes or no.

So when I’m around interesting men I want to ask. I want to pretty fiercely. I was totally appropriate.

One of the guys asked if I wanted to go running with him and his dog. He’s happy to slow down for me. It would be impetus for me to work on speed. He regularly runs in the 9 min/mile range. The fastest I’ve consistently managed is in the 11 min/mile range. I would kind of like to have the ability to go faster. It just takes practice. I’m competitive and I have a very hard time with feeling like I’m crippling other people with my lack of ability. I tend to progress very quickly when I start trying to catch up to someone.

But we are in a range of physical fitness I’ve never dreamed of before. I’m intimidated and intrigued at the same time.

I have also spent time with another male friend in the past few months. But he is an older friend. Also a former play partner. The tension is there but diffused. How to explain it. We both like one another and if it were ok we would play more. But since it isn’t ok we don’t have that new-shiny-burning-to-try-a-new-toy feeling. It’s more yes, “Ah yes. I remember you and your canes. Mmmmm canes. Tell them hello for me!” Much more civilized feeling.

New-shiny is harder to resist. I don’t know how good that is yet. I like knowing.

Dancing was interesting. Three of us chicks and the dude friend. It was like junior high dancing where you are mostly all in a group circle but occasionally there is barely flirty interactions. Mostly the flirty interactions happen when someone outside the group makes interest known so we pull into the circle and make it fucking clear that this bitch is taken. It’s rather fun. I pretty much always get to do the dominant ownership grab. I walked out of that club full of adrenaline. Noah totally got jumped.

One random woman grabbed my ass by mistake. I got angry. Her male companion told me it was ok because it was a mistake. I said it wasn’t ok and he’s lucky I didn’t hit someone. There was also a party of drunken women falling on me for a while. When I locked my elbow behind me and bent my knees such that when anyone fell on me they got a very sharp jab they left me alone. I heard multiple “OW!” exclamations and I felt savage glee.

I actually thought the music mostly sucked. It was good enough to dance to after a while but I wasn’t impressed. Next time we will try a different location.

If I can go dancing and the music is that bad and I have that much fun… it must be the company. Pretty much everyone walked out saying, “When can we go again?” At least that is what all the moms said.

I had a 2-3 hour nap before I went and I slept 3-ish hours when I got home. Then I had a very full Sunday full of physical chores I’ve been putting off.

My house is almost clean again. My house hasn’t been fully clean since the last time I invited people over. Several projects have been exploding all over me in obnoxious and messy ways. Whine whine whine. Yesterday, almost as some karmic payback for being allowed to have fun I got a ton of cleaning done.

Today during my babysitting time I am going to work on the recommended reading list. I don’t know that I will finish it but I will get it started. Mostly finished.

Perfection is the enemy of the good. Am I remembering that right? Internet says sure.

Just start. Just do it.

This morning one of my neighbors is coming over to look at my collection of trellis options that I’m not using. She got a blackberry bush and she stuck it in the center of her yard with a tomato cage. Oh man. That’s some excitement waiting to happen. I have a few things that work well for spreading the vines well so you can get more fruit without it spreading on the ground.

I nearly accosted one of the neighborhood kids yesterday. The kid who wore all the clothes my kids inherited. I yelled at her, “Hey, is there any chance you want a job?” She looked shocked. Turns out she’s only twelve so no wonder she was surprised.

She and I talked and negotiated for over an hour. I talked to both of her parents. They apparently live across the street from one another, which seems very useful for split custody. Her mom, of course, already knows me. We’ve talked a fair bit over the years.

She’s not ready to be a babysitter but she’s interested in mother’s helper work. I told her that we could start with two, two-hour sessions a week and see if we like it. I offered her a starting rate of $5/hour with the idea that she would slowly increase up to $10/hour when she’s ready for real babysitting. I told her that part of the process for getting ready for babysitting is saving up money for a CPR class. Her eyes went wide but she nodded.

Her mother is emphatic that she doesn’t want to be involved in this process. Both of her parents seem kind of afraid of teaching her responsibility steps. I’ve learned a fair bit from my previous hiring-people experiences.

This one is a kid. I’m finding a twelve year old.

A twelve year old kid who has a living situation I’m going to have feelings about. I can tell. But I can’t write about it.

My other neighbor had a brilliant suggestion for Shanna’s sales stand and he offered to do manual labor to build it with me. I laughed at him and told him he doesn’t have time. He grinned and looked sheepish and said it was probably true. He is massively overbooked. He’s a giver. He volunteers to help a lot of people. He sounds like a lot of people I know. So I’m not going to let him help, but he did give great advice. I’m grateful.

I am pretty sure my next door neighbor is moving. Would one of my friends like to move in next door? I can bat my eye lashes at you. I can cook you dinner and share vegetables with you and grow things in your yard that are nice to look at and to eat. (I only offered dinner once although it would probably happen more than that over time. Don’t expect every night or anything.)

Sometimes I am perplexed by the mixture of introvert and extrovert that I am. I clearly gain energy by going out and feeling exciting. I don’t even have to get laid. That’s a false equivalency in my brain. I don’t require anonymous sex to have fun. Clearly. But being around people can be very hard for me and I require a lot of time alone so that I don’t get bitchy and mean and explosively angry over the stupidest things.

My shrink tells me that the Eastern world has a lot more respect for that kind of balance. She has spent some time living in Thailand so of course she considers herself an expert. I always feel a little weird about white people “explaining” other cultures. It always comes from a place of judgment and evaluation in comparison with the culture of origin.

Pam mocks herself for being self absorbed, but one of the things I like about her is that she spends a lot of time talking about herself and her family and how things work and why. She doesn’t spend as much time analyzing Australians, even though she lived there for a while. She explains what she knows. She talks about the differences she experienced. But she doesn’t try to …. what’s the word… mystify them? She treats them like differences in people.

I feel weird when white people tell me, “Eastern cultures understand alone time versus social time better than Western cultures.” It makes me feel squiggly in my insides. What the fuck does that mean? It feels like fetishization.

The East and the West are big places. I hesitate to compare them except to say one is on the east side and one is on the west side. I mean, really… otherwise they vary so dramatically within themselves that you can’t talk about them that way.

I understand why white/Western thought wants to have the convenience of us and them but everyone always seems to want to leave South America out of that conversation. We can’t just have East/West conversations unless we ignore Africa. In those conversations we are saying only the Eurasian continent matters anyway.

Err, no.

So… I’m not sure I need to fetishize “Eastern cultures” in order to figure out alone time and public life balance. I’m pretty sure this problem is more universal than that.

Today, right in this minute, I feel ok about the fact that life has ups and downs. For the rest of my life this is going to be the most golden era. The work I want will be hard. Right now, with my kids I get to have the most safety and security and ease I’ve ever had.

Ok, maybe it will get better but I doubt it. Things will change. I will miss my children terribly when they are grown and not with me as much. I am so very spoiled by their daily company now. I like them so much. We have so much fun.

I can’t go back and change my past. All I can do is make new memories full of joy.

What do I wish I had known when I was twelve?

I’m going to have the opportunity over and over to help other people have a different journey. That thought makes me cry. I feel really glad right now that I didn’t die. There is something I can do. It is important. It doesn’t have to fit into the lives of everyone in the whole world.

That’s ok. I don’t need to be that big. I don’t have that much to give.

You have to know your limits. Otherwise you will make promises you can’t keep. Then you let people down.

I like my neighborhood. I like my friends. I feel very lucky. I have, if anything, too many wonderful options.

I spent seven hours with friends yesterday morning. Six of them cleaning. The basement came a long way. I think it will take one more days to do the rough and ready reorganizing on the second half of the basement AND cleaning up the tool bench. We just did the big rough and ready work today. Their entire garage area is packed to the roof with stuff that is going. I took a van load away with me.

I think that the cleaning/sorting/organizing/labeling part that we will have to do for every box, bag, and bucket in the space will take about twenty hours. I always feel a little cynical when people are so excited that we got all the big stuff moved and took out so much trash!

Ha. It’s going to get a lot harder before we are done. This is the bitchy, evil part. (insert evil cackle) I once spent a summer sorting hardware. Like nails and screws and washers and bolts. I worked in theatre during college. During every strike after a play people dropped all the hardware into a box. No one had sorted the box in many many years. Probably more than a decade. There was almost eighty pounds of hardware. My boss at the time (who is still a friend) says that since they have thrown them away. No one will ever be willing to go through that again. My hands were ripped to shreds by the end of the summer.

I find this kind of work stimulating, and deeply satisfying. Order Muppet for the win. So I’m not scared of doing this. But it will take about twenty hours. We will break it up. I won’t do all of it on my own. We put in 18 (wo)man hours today. I think being about halfway through the work is awesome. That’s something to be proud of when you have had a hard time dealing with this mess for many years.

I get the cool lumber. Some of them will be used in projects very soon. I think it is funny how much of a scavenger I am given how hostile I am to having too much stuff around.

I’ll use it! And soon!

I’m going to bring kids to my house and give them hand tools and wood. It will be awesome.

I had a great time cleaning. I ascribe this partially to being heavily medicated. I mixed my drugs for once. Pot, caffeine, and ibuprofen. It was awesome. (I didn’t drive stoned. But I was stoned in the middle there. By the end I was getting twitchy from the medication fade.) Mostly we bopped along to Ke$ha and had silly grown up conversation in between slaving away. We were a little crew. Several times I was really bossy bordering on rude but I kept it to log-jam moments and they both said it was ok.

“No go deal with ___. No don’t tell me the history. I don’t care. Just move it.”

So I guess that’s not over the line.

On the other side of that, when I come back to sort I do want to hear the history. Because hearing the history is what helps me sort the keeping stuff. The history does not help me in sorting “go” from “stay”. It’s just a distraction.

But was super fun. I’m glad I went. I am also glad I decided to *not* come back today. I’m fucking tired. And I’m supposed to go dancing tonight. I predict a nap in my near future.

Tonight I’ll be at the DNA Lounge if anyone wants to come see me. If I know any people who go out at night. Caffeine, oh my dear dear friend. And I will have to lay off the pot this afternoon even if I am bitchy. Or I’ll fall asleep.

Later this evening we are having dinner with my friend and his family. Then I go out. I should also find time to run four miles today. Maybe when I finish writing. Then I can come home and take a nap.

Yesterday’s party was a little weird. It was a high school reunion on accident. It makes sense. The school isn’t that far away physically. I’m not surprised that some of stayed close by. There was also a huge college contingent for Noah. One key host is the reason for the overlap. He’s in my first book. He’s the only person who gets a pseudonym. Preserving this ongoing friendship may be one of the reasons why. He committed a crime. And he would be easy to trace from the book. So I made it at least a little harder.

Mostly I don’t try to protect people from the consequences of their actions. In that case… I totally initiated everything and I like him so much and I know what his life has done. He’s not a pedophile and he’s not a serial rapist. It’s ok that he got seduced by someone too young. Even if it was illegal.

Man I’m a two faced son of a bitch on the legality and illegality of actions.

Anyway. I like this man a lot. I like his wife. I like their new son. I had a great time. I got to see lots of people I’ve known for a long time. It is hard hearing about difficulties in friends lives. I hope I listened respectfully. I have no answers. Life is hard sometimes.

I’m always willing to listen.

The kids had a blast. My kids are developing multiple distinct occasionally overlapping friends circles. I feel good about that. They can play with anyone. I like watching them.

Now that our kids aren’t babies we parents stand together and go, “I try not to hover. But they are doing ___!” And compatriots say, “Stay strong!” “Let them fuck up!”

It’s hilarious and wonderful.

I like this side of my friends. Seeing them as parents changes them quite a bit.

Really I’m just enjoying the passage of time. No one stays down forever. No one is all bad. No one is all good. Cycles.

When you’re going through hell, keep on moving. Don’t slow down and you might get out before the Devil knows you are there.

I wonder what that really means. When you live in shitty neighborhoods, stay at home and hide and read and avoid all the bad influences around you?

I don’t know. But it’s time for today to start.

So I did some crying. Not as much as usual. When I came out to do my sob fest in the garage at 1am, freaking Pam was STILL AWAKE so we talked until 4:30 instead of me crying the whole time. It was good to talk to her.

I still brace myself for her disapproval after almost everything I say. Even though we’ve been close friends for 17 years. I’m still afraid that this harsh, angry comment will be the straw that breaks the camels back. (I’m not being harsh/angry at/about her. Just in the same room. About other situations.) I’m worried that I will “run out of chances”.

I’m really bad about having people run out of chances when they didn’t know they were using them up. I’m like everyone else. I’m an asshole too.

I have trouble believing that it is ok for me to have a hard time with other people and express that I’m having a hard time in my house where they can’t hear me. I’m not talking shit behind their back, I’m having feelings about them. I don’t call up a list of people to shit talk. I don’t write out diatribes about how awful people are for not being convenient for me.

I stay in my house and I talk to my husband or a small number of very close friends who come visit. I don’t trash talk people. I raise my voice and say I’m so mad. I say I feel used or rejected or unloved.

I stomp my feet and I cry. Sometimes I kind of shriek/yell. I don’t do it AT people. Sometimes other people are in the room but mostly not. I try not to do it in front of the kids very much.

My kids already know that when I’m really angry–when it is bad I will stand very still and clench my fists and start crying. I can’t talk. I can’t yell. When I’m THAT mad… I have to just breathe and cry until some of the edge is taken off.

It isn’t anyone else’s fault that I have such strong emotional reactions at this stage in my life. Arguably it is the fault of my early childhood caregivers or my abusers, but really that’s kind of irrelevant now.

I’m responsible for my actions. Only me. Only me.

Part of the problem is I feel so ashamed of myself for wanting things from people that they can’t give me. For wanting too much attention or affection or help. I feel like I am still a dirty unwanted kid. And I react like it. Even though it isn’t fair of me.

The last two days I’ve been an asshole with the kids. Even on fairly no-big-deal stuff my voice is too loud. I sound really harsh. I keep telling the kids that I’m sorry I sound so angry–it isn’t their fault. I’m having big feelings and I’m sorry I’m not more in control of my mouth.

I feel so ashamed. I’m not mad at my kids. Even though Shanna is dumping salt all over the floor. Whatever. Clean it up. It doesn’t need shouting.

But I shouted. I cut myself off. I tried again. But I feel like a fucking pathetic loser for screwing up so much. My kids deserve so much better than I am. I’m so sorry.

I am all that I am. I’m trying. I’m working as hard as I can. I’m straining as hard as I can. I’m so sorry that I sound mean sometimes. You never ever deserve me being mean to you. Ever. Never. That’s just not how the world works. I’m sorry that sometimes I am an asshole when you don’t deserve it.

To be fair, when my kids lash out at me inappropriately, they apologize. I’m not sure this is a good cycle though. I don’t know. I don’t know if I am good enough.

We don’t call names. We don’t put people don’t. We aren’t denigrating. But sometimes I am way too fucking loud when I say “Shanna. Stop dumping salt on the floor.” And I growl. I sound like a fucking asshole.

I know that I don’t cross the line into what is technically termed “abuse”. But I don’t really want to be technically correct and wrong in spirit.

Today I was a nice mom. I helped Calli pick up the toys in the play room (it’s a big job for a three year old alone–Pam helped her with the living room) and she can have the iPad for a bit. The battery was only at 50% when she gets it so she can have it till it dies.

I think that after lunch we are going to walk to our neighbor’s house. A different neighbor than the one we visited this morning after signing up for another round of Hindi class. This one has teenage daughters. I’m going to walk right over and say, “Lovely ladies. Would you like a job?” I think I need to look around my neighborhood a bit more.

Ideally I would like to have four or five babysitters. In my perfect world I will find an Indian grandmother who is happy to babysit once or twice a month. I’d like to have three or four teenagers to call.

If I want to be supportive of my friends and their health I have to pick up and move on from the set back of losing the childcare trade. I like the mom a lot. I love the kids. I don’t want to lose the connection. My cat won’t live 15 more years. Things will work out down the road.

But I’m going to have to find the energy to go out and hunt for connections. And right this minute that feels so hard and so scary.

I’m struggling with the GU problem. It isn’t that I have a dearth of wonderful, amazing people in my life. It is that my friends are Geographically Undesirable. I used to tell people that I would love to date them only they were GU. It was one of the primary ways I disqualified people.

I don’t love the commuter lifestyle. And I talk about that. So it makes for interesting tension with my friends. On one hand, they’d like to invite me to things. On the other hand they don’t want to impose driving on me. Dilemma.

I ain’t the only one who would prefer to not-ask over being rejected.

Then we run into the lesbian sheep problem. WHY DIDN’T YOU SEE ME AGGRESSIVELY STANDING STILL NEXT TO YOU. WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO JUMP ME ALREADY?!

I have a really fucking hard time inviting myself over to peoples houses. Seriously, do you not understand how difficult it is for me to even call someone let alone say, “Hey why don’t you invite me over for dinner?”

I don’t ask people over more because fear of rejection has me waking up at midnight to cry. Even though I frequently get positive responses.

I get a lot of rejection.

I treat inviting people over very similarly to how I used to treat hunting. Ask enough people and someone will say yes.

People say no for lots of reasons. Most of them aren’t about me. Being told no still hurts really bad.

I like the people who invite themselves over. Those are my favorites. I do have to rarely say “This date won’t work can we do x instead?” and once in a blue moon I flat say no. But… I think it has happened twice since I’ve lived in this house. So eight years.

For all that I’m ok with conflict, and people really think of me as a pro-conflict person with a lot of boundaries, … I don’t say no. I want relationships and I want people so much that I ache with the desire for connection a lot of the time.

My kids are awesome and wonderful and great. The way they love me is healing and important and really soothing. But my kids see only a very small fraction of me. And it needs to stay that way for many many more years. Decades.

That hurts so fucking bad sometimes that I feel like I am choking.

I feel like having a relationship with my kids is giving me a space where I have to learn the kinds of boundaries that “should” exist in polite society because I care so much about the stakes.

But I miss the over-sharing I used to do. (Writing is both more and less revealing. But I don’t get much of a sense of bonding or connecting from spewing my whiny shit on the internet.)

Except for once in a while. Like when Pam will come over and talk for half an hour or more about her perceptions and thoughts while reading my blog. That right there, that’s my fucking happy place.

It has only happened a couple of times. It’s not like I demand that she spend lots of time talking about me every time she visits or anything.

It is very rare for people to talk to me about my writing. Mostly people will ignore it entirely or make oblique references as if it is some giant secret that Shouldn’t Be Discussed. It’s kind of weird sometimes.

Have you noticed the link in the bottom of every email I send? I’m not really “in the closet”.

But I get that very few people write this way and figuring out what to fucking say is kind of weird. And I have a habit of biting peoples heads off. So it’s really my own damn fault.

Like everything else.

And it comes full circle. But I’m crying at a slower rate. That’s good.

Today I learned that we are ten days away from the birthday of one of our crusty old man neighbors. Calli told him, “I want to be invited to your party!”

He said, “I don’t think I’m having one. I’d be surprised if I even got a cake.”

So of course Calli replied, “Oh! Then you need cupcakes! We will make them! We will have a party and it will be wonderful!” Then she danced around him like a little fairy. It was so cute he almost melted. Apparently all his grandbabies are far far away and he rarely sees them.

Ah, no wonder he likes us so much. I thought they were closer than that. My mistake.

So apparently I get to make cupcakes soon. We’ll probably make a picnic and invite him and his lovely bride to enjoy some time on the front lawn with us. (He still always calls her his bride. It’s adorable times a million.)

Just because people have a hard time meeting my needs, that doesn’t mean that they don’t care or that I’m not loved or that there are no people in the world available for relationships.

I suppose tired is better than sad and that is where I’m headed at a quick trot.

Ladies are dropping like flies from the trip out dancing. There is already noise about just not going.

Man I feel whiny and disappointed today. I get why they are making the choice. I don’t think they are wrong. I don’t think they are rejecting me. They have very busy lives and this isn’t shit they do. It doesn’t fit.

I get it.

Waaa. Waaa. Waaaaaaaaa. The Waaaambulance is coming to get me. Oh no!

I am like 80% satisfied with the door to the kitchen. I was tired of baking in the sun so I just stopped after a while. The geese could use more accent coloring but I wasn’t up for dealing with getting out a bunch of different paints again. It was too hot.

OOh! The mortgage is finally below $200,000! Yay! (Not way lower… but it is a milestone.)

I broke for lunch. Now I don’t know what I was really thinking about. Time to go do something else.

I’m not just upset that I’m losing the babysitting. Now this family can’t come to our house. Cat allergy that is keeping the kids up at night with an inhaler. Clearly they can’t come here no matter how cool my house is. It’s not personal but no one invites us over as much I invite other people over. We are only invited to someones house once a month or so (I mean that we make one, maybe two house visits a month. Among all the dozens of people we know). People just don’t ask. So when someone can no longer come here… That’s going to be kind of the end of the friendship. We will see each other at public events and that’s it.

I notice that I can carry a lot of burden for “being the one to contact” in a relationship early on. I can do most of the calling/emailing/inviting… often for years. Then I hit a wall. It is very different timing for different people. But I hit this wall over and over.

If I don’t feel like people seek me out enough… I stop asking after a while. I don’t feel good. I feel like I am pestering. I feel like I am annoying. I should stop bothering people. Clearly if they actually liked me they might return my calls once in a while. They would invite me as often as I invite them. If they liked me as much as I like them.

But no relationship is equal. They are always balanced between people who have differing needs and differing amounts of energy to offer.

People don’t call or email or invite less because they don’t like me enough. They do what they do because that is their comfort level.

I hate that I flipped emotionally today. I had such a string of nice days. Now I’m crying and I feel bad and I feel very scared.

All of a sudden a lot of my “support” feels like it is gone again. I felt so very balanced and ok for at least a week or so. It was awesome.

Now I’m scared.

When I think of my needs and I think of the people in my life I feel very scared and very sad. My needs are too big. It isn’t appropriate for me to dump them on people. I have to figure out a way to cobble together enough from a lot of disparate ever changing sources.

Life is entropy. Everything always changes.

This weekend is booked to be pretty crazy. Of course we were invited to a 4th of July party. It would involve getting to meet the kids of a whole bunch of people I knew in high school. It would probably be a fun party but it would be high anxiety.

On the 5th I am going to have my middle school bestie bring over his new wife and child. I’m very excited to be meeting these people. Last time I saw him… he was pretty sad about where his life was. He felt very hopeless. This change is dramatic and wonderful. Then after that I’m hoping to go dancing with some of the home schoolers, but people are dropping like flies.

And I’m supposed to spend the 4th and 5th cleaning someone else’s house during the morning hours.

I am going to really miss the Thursday baby-sitting energy pick-me-up. That made rough weekends a lot easier. Oh well.

I hate feeling like I’m having a pity party. I hate feeling like I should say fuck everything and pack everything I own and move far far far away so I can stop looking around me for support. I won’t be disappointed if I stop having expectations and hopes.

Life isn’t a fantasy story. No matter how much it seems like it on the really good days.

Have sad news: paint

Whine. Feelings. Don’t get upset about having the feelings. Just have them. It’s ok. Don’t lash out. Don’t do mean things to anyone. Don’t go destroy relationships. Just sit. Feel. Hell, have another hit.

Feel the sadness. Feel the disappointment. Feel the rejection. Won’t kill you.

It’s ok to be sad about communication difficulties. It’s ok to be disappointed when someone can no longer trade child care. It’s ok to feel rejected when someone is not reciprocating on contact.

I don’t need to think I am bad for having the feelings.

I’m not actually hurting anyone by having feelings. I’m just sitting here. Breathe. Calm down. I hate that fucking phrase. It spikes my blood pressure and makes me snarl.

Ok, distraction?

I finished Diana Gabaldon’s newest book. It took me just over 48 hours. It is wonderful and I hate her guts because she ended on a HUGE CLIFF HANGER. WTF?!!?!??

Now I have to wait fucking years to know how it goes next. That sucks. See, this is why I usually don’t buy books when they first come out. I kind of hate Jean Auel with a passion for making me wait so long for her last shitty-ass book. That was how you fucking end that saga? Like that? Oh fucking hell. You should have just not done another book. The story was better before you fucked it up with your new-found prudery. Ugh.

I thought it was kind of funny how sex focused this Diana Gabaldon book was. More than once I found myself rolling my eyes and thinking “Oh great. Another one.” Her sex scenes are cute but not uhm quite the kind of graphic I’m used to so they aren’t wank material. Instead they just feel… kind of voyeuristic in a way that feels actually dirty. I mean, if I were into sweet gentle love making I might find them quite inspiring. Uhm. Yeah. Not so much.

I never really explained why Saturday was so nice. I got rather off track. And when I get off track like that, getting back on task is Herculean and my arms are kind of not Herculean. So it goes.

After having multiple really good babysitting sessions with other peoples kids I then had a fair bit of time off from my kids. The juxtaposition makes me really appreciate my life. I appreciate that I get to go between high-effort-community-building and rest.

I feel very lucky every day that I get to have the choices I have in front of me.

Like today: Noah and I are taking Calli to Tyme for Tea for lunch as a special date without her sister. She’s going to be over the moon. I haven’t even told her yet.

It doesn’t take much for my kids to act really grateful and appreciative. Oh man am I glad. I keep this system in place by NOT spoiling the crap out of them all the time. If my kids whine or demand the answer is a flat NO and so they just don’t whine much. And demanding things from me will result in me giving you a facial expression that will not be friendly. I don’t have to say a word. My kids (ok to be fair Calli hasn’t said this yet–only Shanna) respond with, “Uhm… my tone of voice kind of sucked there–huh? Yeah. And that probably isn’t one I can ‘try again’. Right. Sorry.” Then she looked down and just stopped bugging me.

Wheedling is an art form. Shanna is turning into a master. She has to walk a very fine line because I’m ridiculously sensitive to tone. If you demand, the answer is no. If you whine, the answer is no. If you pester (ask more than three times), the answer is no.

I don’t fucking bluff.

In my view we get along like a house on fire. Shanna responds so well to having a frame work around communication. But I don’t know what my kids will think when they grow up and have independence. Maybe they will say I was a fascist-controlling-psycho. Who the hell knows.

My kids are kids. So by definition they spend a high percentage of their time engaged in behavior that annoys the crap out of me. I think it is in the contract. “All children must irritate their parents.” Otherwise they wouldn’t get to be children any more and they could be immediately drafted into some kind of pacifistic-work-zone.

The *most* irritation I feel is when they remind me the most of me. Of course. Like It Should Be.

I work very well with structure around my relationships. My kids seem to thrive that way too.

They are sooo happy. I have a hard time believing things will turn out that badly because my kids are in a good mood the vast majority of the time. They don’t have a lot of strife in life so things are very smooth sailing for them. I may not spoil them but everyone else sure as fuck does.

My kids believe in a generosity of spirit that blows my mind. My kids really believe that the world is mostly a great place, but unfortunately shitty things happen sometimes to some people. They seem so aware to me. Part of it is that they listen to the things I say way more than I would have imagined before having kids.

I’m pretty sure I never had the respect for my mother that my kids have for me. I had a father in the house from birth telling me that my mother was stupid, weak, unable to handle life, and delusional.

Every day it feels like I’m play acting a role. I’m pretending to be someone of worth and value. Not in the bank balance sense. Lots of shitty people have money.

I want to build my kids up. I want to make them believe that they are capable of enormous amounts of work that can cumulatively have massive effect. If they just go do it. So far, they entirely believe me.

“Gosh this is going to be so hard to master. It’s going to take me a lot of practice. Sigh.” And then they fucking practice.

Having a lot of time to kill in life is transforming. I had a lot of unstructured time as a kid, but I was punished for anything I didn’t master just about instantly. So I did not spend my alone time on new skills. That would just mean more punishment.

My kids are… not me. They don’t have the terror in their belly I live with. I don’t think they are “fearless”. Shanna gets scared. She will talk about being scared. She says, “Ok, right now I’m feeling kind of scared in my belly. So I’m going to have to take a few breaths before I try it.”

I almost explode with pride and joy when she says things like that. All I do is nod though.  I tell them “Only a stupid person is never afraid. Bravery isn’t about never feeling fear. It means you keep working no matter how your body feels.”

I wonder about the long-term impact of hanging out with someone like me. I’m a counter-phobic-six if you believe woo woo shit. The more something scares the shit out of me, the more drawn to it I am.

I’ve spent over a week working in my head on the wording of a letter for Noah’s mom. She sent me a very nice letter last time. I asked her for advice on managing ones temper. Between her first kid and her fifth she went from hitting a lot to not hitting. How did that work? I didn’t quite phrase it that baldly, but nearly. Her response was serious, heartfelt, and semi-useful. She specifically talked about having to learn to work through your aversions even when it feels bad.

I’m trying to figure out how to write her and say that whereas she is right that one should not run from aversions, one should not always focus on over coming them. Balance. Sometimes aversions are healthy. Figuring out when is… something I suck at.

And I get to explain that despite the fact that maybe I should “push through” my aversions in some places…. I shouldn’t in every arena because my body has limitations. No, I should not work through my aversion to handicrafts and force myself to do a lot of them. I type too much. I would end up unable to use my arms at all. That seems… kind of stupid.

The only true one-size-fits-all advice is: keep breathing.

Really I think I am in such a good mood (going on a week now) because I had a high week followed by lots of rest and Noah time. Hanging out with Noah pretty much always makes me feel better about myself. I’m very certain that there isn’t another person on the planet who likes me as much as Noah.

Every night and morning he grabs on to me in bed like I’m his security blanket. Even if we’ve been kind of arguing during the day. He hugs me like he needs me. Year after year of this feels like a balm to my soul.

I’ve spent so much time feeling like an expendable piece of trash. Noah’s love is… I couldn’t have imagined it before I found it. I don’t think I would have pictured someone as basically challenging to my positions needing me so much. I’m hard on Noah sometimes. I argue with him about feminism and racism and class and privilege. We don’t have similar points of view. Sometimes I will be so fucking nasty that I say, “And that is why lots of people think that you and people like you are the enemy. Don’t act surprised later.”

And he still hugs me like I’m a security blanket. He says that I really know him more than anyone ever has. I’m not sure I know what that means.

I don’t sugar coat my version of the truth. (See how I personalized it there? I understand that I don’t possess The Truth.) It is kind of weird being respected for how bluntly I can eviscerate someone. To be fair, I’m not as skilled at it as Noah is. Ha.

I think that it helps that no matter what negative things I can say about Noah, I have far more positive to say. I believe him to be a good man and a good person. Which is kind of funny because I don’t know that I’m a good person and he’s done shitty things too, so why do I give him a pass and not me?

That’s just how the cookie crumbles. For all his lack of gung-ho willingness to jump on bandwagons that have my issues as a focus he really does try to make things better for other people. Not just the stupid streaming video games he is working on right now.

He does it more how I do it. He does it one by one. He told me a long time ago that there are two kinds of people. Some people care very much about the people around them. Some are fairly apathetic about the people around them. If you need help, never go to the first group. They will micromanage the shit out of you and try to control you if you ask for help. If you ask the second group for help they will evaluate how much it inconveniences them to do it and do it or not. There aren’t additional hoops.

I’ve watched Noah be good to people. You know someones character not by watching how they treat those with power, but by watching how they treat the help, and animals, and children. Noah listens to people in a way I deeply respect. He doesn’t usually end up agreeing with their positions, but he really tries to understand. He wants to see someone else’s point of view even if it has no effect on his behavior.

But I’ve watched his behavior change a lot in the last ten years. I respect Noah. And he likes me.

That’s a good reason to be happy, right? I mean–I know I shouldn’t draw my own emotional state based on the justification of someone else having an opinion about me.

I have a lot of complex emotions about Noah. I have feelings about him as an individual and I have more feelings about some of his generic group identifiers. Some of those feelings are intensely negative. I don’t think it is hyperbole to say there are moments of hate. I feel hate towards amorphous groups that unfortunately Noah has a membership in. That kinda blows sometimes. But given that there really are a whole lot of white men… it’s going to be like that sometimes.

I know it isn’t fair. I try very hard to treat each of you (white men) as individuals but I have a lot of reason for my feelings. I’m sorry you walked near that net. It isn’t actually about you. I don’t feel good about having these feelings either, but they exist. Sometimes they flair up and make it difficult to have a conversation with an actual person. I’m sorry. I know this is my problem.

I know it isn’t your fault I’ve dealt with so many shitty white men. Yes, I know I’ve had more positive experiences than negative. Notice how I’m still here trying despite the enormous innate issues?

I’m trying.

Why do I hate white men so much? White men have raped me. White men look at me and see a worthy receptacle for their racism and homophobia and stupidity. They find out they are fucking wrong really fast but… there are a lot of times when they try.

People talk to me. People feel comfortable sharing shit they really shouldn’t share with strangers. I’m just like that. Which means I get a lot of shit.

I get to hear about how “bisexuality never happens among males naturally but of course it is ok in women”. Said jackass didn’t know how to respond when I said, “No I am not bisexual. I do not require my lovers to pick a point on a binary.” Yes, yes you read some scientist and this was his conclusion. Do you know how little I care? Apparently not.

(I had a weird run-in during the weekend at a naked hot tub place. Man I get all the winners.)

Like my neighbors telling me not to put brown people in the mural. Fuck you very much.

I went to Target yesterday, like you do sometimes. When you run out of stuff. I stood in the middle of an aisle for a while and watched people stream past me just because I felt so glad about the composition of people. I was kind of a judgy piece of shit because I made some assumptions about race. I counted people for a while. White people were around 30% of the people who walked by me. I say a wide array of clothing and ages and body types.

I feel very happy that my city is so diverse. I think that my kids are lucky that they get to grow up with people of many faiths all living right next to one another. My kids will not grow up in a white bubble. My kids see skin of every color imaginable every time they go to the store. People vary. We don’t watch tv. Our bookshelves have been very carefully selected to display a wide range of bodies and lives.

I tell my kids a lot that we are very lucky. It isn’t about how we look. That’s an accident and not something that anyone can change. If you like someone or not based on how they look then you are an asshole. We are lucky because we have access to lots of good food. We have a stable home. My kids are very loved by the people around them. Not everyone is born so lucky. When someone is born without these privileges it is never their fault.

It just happens. And it is sad.

My kids are sheltered. They are sheltered from all the scary shit I read about on the internet. My kids are going to get to their teenage years and branch out and discover that everyone else hates their bodies. I hope they will be very confused. So far, Shanna thinks she is hot shit. And she’s right. Calli has expressed fewer opinions but she likes being strong.

Shanna woke up. Now she’s sitting on my desk while I type. I think I’m going to go now. My good fortune wants my attention.

Babysitting was great. The bake sale went really well. Then I came home and I’m instantly in an angry, nasty, pissy mood. Noah made an off-hand comment. A friend took the kids to the park so the kids weren’t at the bake sale the whole time. Noah said, “Oh so you got a break.” No. I was fucking working and dealing with a bunch of fucking people it wasn’t a fucking break.

And I’m having scheduling problems with my babysitter. She didn’t make it into the summer class she wanted. So she wants to change her schedule again. And her mom has already booked things during times we HAD ALREADY BOOKED BABYSITTING FOR so now I either find a time that works for her or I don’t get help.

I’m struggling with my sense of entitlement. I’m angry that she’s fucking around and not making and keeping timing commitments. I understand that she’s a kid and it isn’t really her fault. But I’m not enjoying having my schedule set then disrupted many times in a week. Make a fucking commitment and keep it.

But I’m a flaky bastard  so I really don’t have the right to be bitchy.

So I won’t get time off on Monday or Tuesday. And I’m babysitting for someone else’s kids all day on Monday. Tuesday morning I suppose I do have time off. I have therapy. So I’ll have an hour away from my kids. And then I get to drop whatever emotional state I’m in because I’m supposed to perform happy at the park.

An hour away from the kids for therapy doesn’t really feel like a break. It feels like throwing a gasoline can into the furnace. Therapy is frequently very emotionally disruptive.

I’m a spoiled brat. I actually get a lot of time away from the kids this week. Pam is staying with them Wednesday so we can go to the Carsie Blanton concert. Thursday I leave them with the other stay at home mom in town for a few hours. On Friday we plan to go to the gym for about two hours (they are going to play with homeschool friends in the daycare. Sounds AWESOME to me).

I’m building in time away from them. But almost all of my time away from them is time where I have to work hard. No, that’s not true. That sounds misleading. It’s not that I always have to “work” but it is all stimulation. I am not getting much hide-in-a-dark-room time. I understand that I’m a privileged asshole to want or need as much as I want or need or whatever this is. It is hard for me to be around people all the time. Everyone requires so much emotional effort.

And I still haven’t written up the recommended reading list for the end of the book. So my time off on Thursday will probably be devoted to that.

I’ve been working really hard on the high-energy-kid-teaching interactions lately. I care very much about the relationships I’m forming with kids. I’m babysitting a lot. Four different families in a week seems kind of crazy. But I want these kids in my life. I want to know them. I want to be one example of a functional adult in their head. I want them to hear the things I believe with all my heart and soul while they are still young enough to really imprint.

Your body is yours. No one ever has the right to do things to you without your consent. While you are a minor there are rare medical exceptions. I don’t even force many medical exceptions. Though I am a dickhead about teeth cleaning. I’m brushing those fuckers. I’ve felt the consequences of not doing it. I know I’m pissing you off, but I have to take care of you while you are in my charge.

Your genitals are off limits to people unless you specifically invite them to touch you. A grown up doesn’t get to demand to “check” after you wipe unless you say ok. Even if the grown up doesn’t like the streaks you leave in your underwear.

Learning is a process. We get dignity.

If you screw up the first time you try something, that just means that you have learned the first lesson. You will learn many more before you get good. They are all part of the process. Keep going.

Your preferences and opinions and voice matter. Make sure you understand you. Try to help other people learn how to treat you properly. We need instruction in order to know. We can’t read your mind.

If you don’t like what someone says, it is NEVER ok to hit them. If someone hits you, hit them back really hard so they stop thinking it is a good idea to hit you.

Be careful with your body. You only get one and people are living longer and longer. The food you eat matters. What you drink matters. If you take drugs… be careful. Know your risks. If you choose to take dangerous journeys as an adult, I can’t stop you and I wouldn’t try. But know that you are important. You have to keep yourself safe because you matter. You probably have no idea how or why you matter. Doesn’t effect reality.

Girls can be abusers, just like boys. Don’t decide that someone “is like” anything without getting to know them. Never judge people by how they look. They can’t help that. All they can help is how they act. If I ever hear you be nasty about how someone looks I will think very badly of you. I’m dead serious. You can be curious. Do not be a jerk-face.

I’ve been known to say point blank to older kids/teenagers, “Anyone who would be nasty about how someone else is dressed is a childish piece of shit.” Usually the response is outright shock. I say jerk-face to little kids.

The world isn’t nice. I’m not going to candy coat this shit for you. I’m not going to grease the rails. You are going to have to deal with a lot of harsh. All I can do is tell you as much truth as I can.

Who you know matters almost as much as what you know. You need relationships with people. Lots of kinds of people.

People remember how you make them feel. You should consider how your words and actions are going to impact the people around you.

If you screw up, that’s ok. I love you anyway. We all do. That is the process.

I’m not feeling angry any more. Yes, there are things in this world I want that I can’t have. Cry me a river. Then build a bridge and get the fuck over it you fucking whiner.

I do get down time. Noah is hanging out with the kids right now.

It’s not just the medication. Although the medication does help. It was a long day out.

I had a fun day. I enjoyed talking to people. I am slowly figuring out which moms enjoy my uhh brand of music and I am sharing song titles with them. “Hard Out Here” is one of my favorites to bring up. I’m feeling pretty comfortable overall with this group. Partially because I’ve been there long enough that I would be difficult to oust.

Is secure the same thing as cocky?

Tomorrow will be fun too. It’s our first day alone with these kids. Before mom has always been present. Adventures!

I’m not angry. I’m tired. I feel overwhelmed. Actually, I feel like a whiner. Sigh.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I need to not teach hyper-sexuality.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ahem.

Cool. Plans for the day confirmed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But it’s not my list.

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

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

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

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

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

We don’t do that shit in this house.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fair enough. I am awful sometimes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I understand.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No time like the present to start learning that.

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

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

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

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

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

You can’t miss that something changed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ack. Kid woke up. Time to go.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So many mixed feelings.

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

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

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

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

Time to run.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I feel like I live in this place where I am supposed to pretend that everything is all hunky dory–NO PROBLEMS HERE so that I don’t make other people uncomfortable.

I don’t ever want to be raped again. I’m firm on that in a way I wasn’t earlier in my life. I used to, fairly seriously, just expect that it would happen no matter what–so what.

I think I would rather die. And that’s kind of weird. When I was younger I was very contemptuous of the rape victims who treated it like a good enough reason to die. If you think you should have to die if you lack “honor” as defined as a maidenhead then lets line up all the motherfucking men and shoot them now. Not one of the bastards has a hymen.

Oh wait–it’s ok for them to not have a hymen? Then it’s god damn ok for me to not have one anymore too.

I believed, when I was young and stupid, that having sex–even sex I didn’t want and was saying “no” to–made me an adult. I thought I was just … what’s that gamer phrase? Leveling up?

By the time I was ten years old I could look around a room of adults and guess which ones had less sexual experience than me. I thought that made me better than them.

Now I weep over it and ensure that my daughters will not in any way shape or form have access to the kind of education I had.

It’s not about keeping them “pure”. It has nothing to do with that. Who they (consensually) fuck or don’t fuck won’t be any of my business. Keeping them safe while they are children and sex isn’t appropriate is my job. It’s not about “purity”. I don’t give a shit about their hymen one way or another. It is irrelevant to my experience of them.

However my kids have read enough anatomy books that they have a way above grade level understanding of how bodies work. They know as much at their age as I knew. Only all their knowledge is theoretical with a strong underlining chant “Not till after puberty”.

Ok, they don’t know 1/10 of what I knew.

But they know a lot more than their peers. They have spent a lot of time looking at anatomy drawings and talking about the prostate and how weird it is that girls get a urethra and a vagina and boys only get the urethra for pee and baby making. That’s so weird. (I hear.) Shanna wants to know if pee can start a baby just like sperm does.

I think I kind of coughed no and changed the subject.

My kids are very well versed in “red flag” touches and “tricky people” and they have no knowledge of “stranger danger”. Strangers aren’t the problem. Your friends are the potential problems.

I love watching Shanna do sword play with the little boys. She is learning how to negotiate her boundaries. She is learning that some kinds of bossing work better than others. And a full throated roar is often the fastest way to get a pack of people doing what you want.

That’s my girl.

It doesn’t always work. And sometimes people get mad at you. Tools are like that. Not every problem needs a hammer. Sometimes you use a hammer and you get in big trouble. Doesn’t mean a hammer is a bad tool.

I feel so sad. I’m not sure exactly why.

A lot of people came yesterday. They are all very nice people. If I added up all the hours I have spent with every person at that party individually I think it would be at less than a week.

I know a lot of people. But I don’t spend very much time with anyone in particular. I spread around my time. It’s the only way I have found to ensure I don’t overwhelm people and ask for too much and hurt the friendship.

Manure is a funny thing. A little bit of it is good for your soil–even necessary. But if you plop on too much and it’s too fresh you will kill your plants.

terrible trouble terrible trouble terrible trouble terrible trouble terrible trouble

It’s always coming. If I say the wrong thing they won’t come back. If I am too violent or mean or aggressive they won’t come back. Don’t scare anyone. Don’t be rude. Don’t talk about subject that might bother people. Don’t dominate the conversation. Don’t be too loud. Don’t be too defensive.

If I stay in a world where I make sure I only deal with women then I can kinda sorta follow the rules and tone down enough that they will keep me around because I work like a dog. I take on the man role in a group of women. I do the butch physical labor and I love it.

But when I’m in a mixed environment I have to deal with the fact that my life is populated by men who have raped. And I am not supposed to be defensive or aggressive or anything like that. No matter what has happened to me. I’m supposed to be encouraging and sweetness and light. I’m supposed to make them feel like the big strong men.

But what if I’m raped again? In their rulebook the only option is to close my eyes and wait for it to be over. I disocciate incredibly quickly. I wouldn’t even really feel it until later when the ache set in. Would that even count?

“Oh don’t be so paranoid. Who would rape you?” Want a list?

Yes, it hasn’t happened in 7 years. Have you noticed how that time span overlaps with my marriage and me not being alone with men.. basically at all?

Ok, sometimes I will be alone in a room as long as other people are in the house. Sometimes I will walk alone on a side walk because passers-by happen and there are houses so I could scream. I have risked that kind of “alone time” with men.

The only time I have been alone in a house with a man was when I went and asked the guy to apologize for putting a taser on my cunt. I was shaking like a leaf the whole fucking time.

When someone says, “Get over it” really they mean “stop making this impact me” and it would be far more expedient if they said the second instead of the former. That is a useful bit of feedback. Boundaries.

I would really like to stop having nightmares. I would like to believe I am safe.

I could go down a list of ways I do feel safe. I am a privileged person living in the first world. I am not worried about popular insurrection or genocide suddenly occurring in my neighborhood. No asshole government (Thanks USA) is going to drop a bomb on my house. (I am pretty ashamed of my government.) I have food security. I have secure housing. I have enough money in the bank that I could survive quite a few small to medium financial disasters and come out on top.

I believe that Noah will never rape me again. (Now that’s a long story. I’m still here because consent is a very complicated creature. I will never again promise in advance to do something I may or may not want to do at the time.) But sometimes I know in the deepest part of my heart that every woman who has ever been raped has had a period of time where they believed that about the husband/boyfriend/family member/friend who rapes them.

Noah has worked so hard at gentling his manner. And sometimes that sets me off because it seems like predator behavior to me. It’s the honey moon stage. Only it’s been 99% of our relationship and one huge fuckup that was as much my fault as his. (When you give consent in advance but then change your mind it is a very complicated muddle of blame.) We like to joke about Stockholm Syndrome.

I have never liked how someone treats me as much as I like how Noah treats me. He gets mad at me for saying things but he doesn’t tell me to stop. He will argue for why he thinks it is a shitty thing to do, but he doesn’t boss me. He doesn’t tell me who I have to be.

He married an angry fucking woman. He knows it and he tries to deflect the blasts to prevent scorching and he otherwise tries to be as supportive as he can be.

He makes me fucking breakfast every morning. And he frequently makes dinner when he gets home from work. I don’t have a husband. I have a working wife. (My former therapist was a Berkeley dyke and she liked to talk about Noah being a Berkeley dyke with a dick he unfortunately can’t put in a drawer.)

Noah is a partner.

So it feels really bad when he’s being painted as the enemy. Noah is the only person alive who wants to stand next to me every day and make my life better. When I get stuck and I don’t know to take a next step he helps me work it out.

He built me a sales page for my book. If you want to buy it: here it is. That’s because of Noah. Not because he wants me to hurry up and make money and support him. Ha. Not because he wants me to hurry up and stop stealing his money.

Because he thinks my writing is good and he thinks people should be able to buy it and read it. Because he believes that people should know about the things I talk about. Because instead of silencing me he wants to do what he can to amplify my message.

I can’t construe Noah as the enemy unless I do contortions and backflips and then look through a two way mirror the wrong way. I am more my own enemy in this marriage than Noah is my enemy.

Noah’s a kid who grew up and found a girl he liked and he’s trying as hard as he can to make everyone happy. Once he thought it might make me happy to have him rape me. That turned out to be more complicated than we understood. He is not my enemy. He is not someone I need to punish.

But he’s not the one who can rescue me either. He can do the wife thing, and he’s a fucking good one. But that’s not the same thing. Wives are not white knights.

(If you assume that the title “wife” is assigned after noticing what sets of duties someone does instead of looking at their crotch then it’s a fairly clear role. A knight should function fairly similarly in my opinion.)

Sometimes it is so hard. On one hand: you can tell the story so that no one is the enemy. Everyone is a “victim”. On the other hand: the fact that I was abused so terribly does not give me the right to climb on a bell tower and take a bunch of people out.

I do kind of think that undergoing an extensive many decades long process of becoming more violent … at some point you are going to be to blame for continuing to be that person.

I don’t hit my kids. That is one of the most important rules of our household. I don’t hit my husband. No one else gets to hit either.

If some dude casually gropes me “just as a flirtation” I have the right to break his nose and do pretty much anything else I want to do right in that moment. I have no reason to believe he will stop at a casual thing and I have too much to lose.

Kill first, ask questions later.

No, I don’t need to be less violent to the men who touch me.

I get that I should not be verbally attacking every person who stands near me over nothing. Duh.

I’m actually a very pleasant conversationalist. I can find conversations anywhere with anyone. I will find a way to get them to talk to me. And it’s not through being violent or scary. I can be quite charming. Downright non-threatening. People tell me how calm and safe I make them feel.

I don’t hit kids who touch me in inappropriate ways but I do give them sharp verbal feedback about the boundaries of my body.

The violence I feel seems… ya’ know… warranted.

I’m struggling really hard with how to talk to alllllll the men who ain’t never done nothing to no one and they are so fucking sick of being treated like they are a rapist and a monster and blah blah YOU HURT MY FEELINGS AND YOU OWE ME AN APOLOGY.

Ok, now I feel violent towards you too. Because you expect me to accommodate your feelings while stomping on mine.

I’m sorry my trauma inconveniences you. I will try to do my house keeping better.

You know how you can tell you have a good house keeper? You never see that anything needs to be done. It is invisible behind your back. I am an excellent house keeper.

My mom started working at Ross Dress for Less when I was twelve. I would hang out during her working hours because I had no where else to be. So I helped.

I have always been good at taking a random assortment of “what the fuck is this?” and creating order. When I was older and I worked for Ross I was moved from store to store clearing out the stock backups because I worked faster than crews of 5-7 people all by myself.

Probably what Noah thinks of as a 10x engineer or approaching it.

It “doesn’t matter” only that’s a serious skill. Yes, I used it in department stores–but I also used it in my class room and in my house.

I get a random huge pile of shit and I can figure out what to do with it all in a very short period of time. I don’t have to stop and think and ponder and wonder. Keep/trash/recycle. Kitchen/bedroom/playroom/garage/living room. Move big stacks. Put it ALL AWAY PROPERLY.

This is just how I do things. I go through months of not actually keeping up and then it takes me 30 or so hours to get it back to baseline so I can coast for a while.

It’s harder with kids. They tear things apart so fast.

Yesterday I was bitching to Noah about how defiant Shanna is getting and how annoyed I was. So I went into the garage and picked up the six year old book in the magical series I love. Guess what the title is? Loving and Defiant. hahahahahahahaha

I love these books.

I now have a much better idea of how I need to arrange my spoons over the next few months. I am going to grab the idea of “three chances” and run with it. I am going to have to sit on my yelling no matter what. This is a phase. It will pass. If I scream a lot the thing we will remember from this period is that I was a screaming harpy. We will both forget that she was a gigantic pain in my ass.

I hope all we remember long term is that the Easter parties are ridiculously fun. I will forget how tired I was from all the work. I think I nailed the behavior profile I was shooting for. I’m proud of myself.

I managed to refer to hot tawdry days of yore without making it seem indecent at all. I was proud of myself for that G-rated explanation. *pat self on back*

There were representative samples from the home schooling group, dancing, Noah’s work, Noah’s college life, neighbors, the poly community and former uhh partners-now friends.

Everyone got along great. It was very kid appropriate the whole time.

Then I crash. And want to spend a day crying. There is some part of this trade that isn’t working and I don’t understand yet what it is. I’m not still irritated about the My Little Ponies. We kept hunting till bed time and eventually found two. I can think of myself as some random middle school kid who got similar donations from friends. I can let that one rest.

But man still feelings. Explosions of feelings. Tornadoes of feelings.

My head hurts so much. I have lots of allergies. And I’m physically tired from the twelve mile run on Saturday. But the massage was miraculous.

Dinno. I’m a puzzle.

I have now spoken with three acupuncturists after the less than impressive acupuncture trip. All three have told me that I should write a registered letter of complaint asking for a refund and I should CC the licensing board. They are all very unhappy that their branch of medicine is being represented that way.

My shrink wants me to see an ob/gyn to talk about hormone balance. If my period cycles are 35 days long and I only bleed for three days and at the end of bleeding I am so full of rage that I can barely function for a few days… that may be something that can be fixed.

Like I want to see a fucking doctor.

But I do have a more appropriate ergonomic setup. Baby steps.

I’m even wearing the braces.

I’m still doing that existential exhaustion thing. I wonder how much of it is related to the pills instead of smoking. The pills make me feel far more tired than smoking does.

I feel like I the last few days I have been bouncing between rage (which I don’t act out very much or verbalize to a great degree)  and shame that I am such a bad person that I am capable of feeling such rage and mania where I try to prove that I’m not bad I’m not bad. I’m not bad. I’m not bad.

All of the childrens clothing in my friends house is now organized very nicely except for the stuff I pulled for donation. That’s just a big pile. But if she would permit me I would throw it in a bag and make it disappear like magic. But she has friends she wants to share the clothes with. I can delay my own gratification that much.

Because it’s all about me.

I make myself feel better about existing by being the person who comes over to your house and takes the garbage out without being asked. Clearly it is full and needs to be taken out. Sure I’ll do that. Oh I see dishes. How about if I wash them. Can I take your compost and recycling out while I’m at it? Do you have any laundry I can fold?

Just please don’t make me read to your kids. I’m sick of that shit.

I want to be good. I don’t know what “being good” means. So I try to do the only good I know how to do.

Domestic work is not valued or appreciated but it does genuinely impact peoples lives. I have the physical ability to make someone else’s life better by doing this work so I want to do it.

I still kind of hate myself for the lack of patience I had with my brother Tommy. I couldn’t handle helping him. I wasn’t nice. I wasn’t giving. I wasn’t generous. I was selfish and self absorbed. Sure, if I tried to help him he would hit me, call me names, and sexually assault me but surely that isn’t a good enough excuse for me to be so lazy about helping my disabled brother. What is wrong with me?

Yesterday I cleaned my pantry area. I found a bunch of stuff I’m ready to pass on. I reorganized a whole bunch of stuff. I found out that my former housemate left more than 100 movies in our cd binders. Whoops. I need to get those back to her. I need to send her an email. I wish I could do it right this minute without crying but I can’t. I will be able to do so by morning. That’s my deadline for myself. I can’t just put it off and off. I have to do it.

Even if I feel guilty. Even if I feel ashamed of myself for hurting her. I still have to contact her and say, “Whoops. I found some of your stuff.”

Life is awkward.

Have patience. Life does not have to be fully lived today. Yeah, this mood might be hard. It’s just a mood. It will pass.

I don’t have to already have done everything I imagine doing or I am a fraud. I don’t ever have to do all that I imagine doing. It’s just not required. No one is standing near me with a checklist declaring that my competency rate is only about 40% of what it could be if only I worked harder….

Breathe. Enjoy having the night off. I should probably do some editing. It is April now. I only have two more months. I could pull out the definitions. That would be an easy sub-job.

It is hard to feel the weight of the accomplishments behind me. It is hard to feel accomplished or competent. When I was young I thought that someday I would feel ok. I imagined that when I was a grown up I would feel confident that I knew the right thing to do and I’m doing it gosh darn it.

I don’t feel that way. I feel scared. I feel lost. I feel ashamed of myself in ways big and small.

I have been swearing a lot lately. It really is a fascinating barometer of my stress. I had it pretty well under control for a while. Not so much lately.

Six things I’m proud of:

1. I’ve traveled a lot. By extension I have met a lot of really interesting people.
2. I’m really proud of my yard. This piece of dirt is the result of my blood, sweat and tears. It looked like shit when I got here. Now people drive by and stop and ask to buy my house because of the yard. That feels miraculous.
3. I’m proud of the degrees I earned (BA, teaching credential) and the degree I didn’t get. I didn’t walk away with an MA because I couldn’t handwrite fast enough. Because when I was a child in school learning handwriting I had the misfortune to be in a place where people were beaten for their handwriting. Mine will probably never improve because I have such tremendous issues around the whole subject. But those elitist cock suckers can’t take my education away from me.
4. I am proud of myself for prosecuting my father. Even though it caused so much pain and trouble. It was the right decision. I was worth defending.
5. I’m really proud of the running. I have almost certainly run more than a thousand miles so far. I’m going to run a lot farther and faster before I am done.
6. I’m proud of myself for never feeling like I had to stay in a relationship just for the sake of having a partner. I left people who treated me in ways I didn’t want to be treated. I’m proud of that.

Even if I feel worthless, I don’t think that is a logical conclusion. I know I feel inadequate all the time and I know I feel terrible and bad and like people would hate me if they just knew. And the reality is that some would hate me. Some wouldn’t. Most really don’t give a shit one way or another.

I don’t need to be afraid of what people think of me. That is the freedom and luxury I have now. It is weird.

So the social gaffe I did on Friday? That I felt bad about? Talked to said person again. There seem to be no lingering of discord on her end. She’s anxious to forgive me and move on.

But but… it’s not ok for me to treat people that way. If I don’t think people will hold boundaries with me when I’m a cunt then I overstep. This is why I have so many friends who carry around 2x4s in the form of personalities. I feel safe.

I feel scared about my own impulses toward bullying. I hurt Anna very badly not that many years ago. I hurt Sarah. I could keep going on but my whining gets old.

I’m not a very nice person. I was talking to a friend about that. She said it is an American thing. In Russia they understand that sometimes people are assholes.

I think that basically everyone can be an asshole. Including my wonderful children. They are not monsters. They are not demons. They are not terrible. They are not bad. They are not horrible.

But sometimes… they are assholes.

It happens to the best of us.

I feel like living with them and learning to manage our asshole-self-interest conflicts is my death march toward functionality. And that ties back into my belief that I “owe” people the appearance of happiness.

I’m really kind of an asshole. Ok, no I’m a big asshole. A lot. A terrible one. But I don’t like the social and social-political backlash of being widely seen as an asshole. There are consequences. I don’t like them. So I try, very actively, to be perceived as not-an-asshole.

But then I come along aside a puppy. I see kicked puppies and I’m just like everyone else. I first want to help them. Then I notice that the help I am giving isn’t actually the help that they want or need and they want more than I can give and I feel a rush of shame and… I want to kick them.

I do this with friends. I’ve done this over and over and it is a pattern I need to not continue. Just because I see patterns in peoples lives and behavior that gives me no right to pronounce what I see. I’m not a god damn seer.

Where are the boundaries on fixing things for people? Well my kid just told me at dinner that I was rude for going through our friends dresser and rearranging the clothes. Err… she gave me permission! She wanted me to do it! I was nice! I wasn’t being rude! Oh. Oh…… But if you tried to do the same thing you would get in trouble. Got it.

Yeah, this is a special case. I knew her for a long time and I asked and she gave specific permission and that’s different.

Consent, baby. It’s important.

My pantry really kind of is a thing of beauty these days. I like what I’ve done with it. Ok, I’m proud of that too.

A long time ago, when I spent waaaaaaaay too much time on Mothering.com (before the bad site redesign) and there was a woman I made friends with. Once I asked her what she was proud of doing in her life. She said she didn’t take pride in anything.

I found that inexplicably sad. I could name many things. She had many children. She had left an abusive spouse and remarried someone who has been a fabulous partner. She thinks that because she is poor she has nothing whatsoever to be proud of. I couldn’t talk her out of that view.

Is my worth based on Noah’s paycheque? That’s a sobering thought. When I list off the things I’m proud of… Noah’s job doesn’t hit the list. I have nothing to do with that. I do feel proud of how I have managed the money put in my care. But I don’t feel proud of having the money. I don’t feel like having it says anything good or bad about my character or self-worth.

It just means I’m a lot less likely to ever be homeless again. That’s cool. But I … don’t feel “proud” of it.

I don’t exactly feel shame about having been homeless in the past. It is simply one more adjective that I’ve worn temporarily and then taken off. Kinda like “kid”. I was once.

Why isn’t “bad” like that? Why isn’t “monster” like that? Why isn’t daughter like that?

I don’t know. Maybe when you learn something strong and hard enough when you are young you can’t unlearn it.

So every day my children wake up to me smiling and saying, “Good morning! I am so glad to see you again!” No matter how I feel. Even if I’m crying. They don’t know what I am feeling or thinking they only know that I am mostly very gentle with them and when I am clumsy and I hurt them I apologize immediately.

Am I a monster?

Can a thing done ever be undone?

I don’t know.

This entry might be a little extra disjointed from usual. I’ve come in for three separate sittings and it is hard to keep flow going at that rate. I also go through periods of HAVING to tag and periods where I feel like rereading the entry to know how to tag it is too much work. Hilariously lazy.

Wake up. It’s another day. Today is Wednesday. Today we have swim class and Pam. Pam is still inviting herself over after knowing me for almost 18 years. She can stay as long as she wants.

Pam asked me about crowded cultures versus this American luxury of space. How do people who grew up in a country where boundaries are laughable luxuries not available at any price learn to understand the physical affront it feels like to crowd people who are used to more space? Is either side doing something “wrong”? How do we learn to get along?

I am looking forward to visiting Asia and India in particular so I can feel in my body what people who live there are used to. Hopefully I will be less presumptuous in my discussions. Or maybe I will be worse.

Asia in general (I would like to go to Thailand and Taiwan and a few other Asian countries) has more crowding but my understanding is that their cities will feel like such a different scale of human interaction that I will barely be able to absorb it. India I want because so much of my life involves Indians.

Cultural appropriation is a funny thing. There is some amount of it that is BAD and the internet tells me so. I can’t tell when or if any parts of it are allowed to be done without insult.

There is a store at our local mall that sells the pretty caftans and leggings the Indian ladies wear. I would love to shop there. Is that cultural appropriation? If someone who is Indian wears blue jeans and an American Eagle t-shirt–that’s not cultural appropriation. Is it cultural appropriation if I start wearing traditional Russian peasant clothing? It’s harder to buy in my local area.

Why don’t I just wear the traditional garb of my ancestors? Well… which ones? Mostly because my ancestors weren’t smart enough to wear comfy leggings and a nice A-line caftan that ends mid-calf. They wore much longer dresses and that gets to be a pain the neck.

What are people allowed to do and be without causing pain to the people around them? Must we all stay in our own little same-colored pods doing the same things so we don’t offend anyone? That doesn’t seem better. Cross-cultural contact involves people getting offended. Sometimes because of conscious actions on someones part and sometimes because someone doesn’t observe a taboo you think they should. Sometimes they are just passively not doing something you think they must.

I am going to offend people. I have to be ok with that. I’m an asshole. Most of the people I respect the most can be assholes. By asshole I particularly mean: someone who has very clearly defined boundaries and they are willing to proactively insist on their needs being met.

I know a lot of assholes. Go them.

A spider has the audacity to be slowly lowering itself about six inches in front of my face. Oh thanks a lot.

I am very sad it was raining on April Fools Day. I couldn’t do my painting-the-fence-thing. I also haven’t seen that neighbor outside in weeks. I’m pretty bummed.

But there are no cats in America and the streets are paved with cheese. I live in the time and the place where I can have unlimited dreams. They may not come true. They may be a figment of my imagination but that’s how the American Dream works.

I used to imagine that some day I would have a home and a family and that people would love me. I used to imagine that some day people wouldn’t hit me any more. I used to imagine that some day I wouldn’t be a piece of shit.

There are no cats in America and the streets are paved with cheese. Well, at least some dreams come true.

I got my cleaning done. I got to put together Ikea furniture. Pam continues to teach my husband how to cook Chinese food. (I appreciate this because my guesses make everything about 12 steps too complicated.)

I made a seating area out of split logs. Now I can tell stories under a willow tree to up to eight children at a go. That’ll be fun.

My plants are growing. Every new leaf and bud makes me feel excited.

The kids are being good at expressing their boundaries this week. Which they aren’t always so that’s good. Being told no is part of the process. Being screamed at sucks. We are all much better about it on some days.

I should pay attention to the person who woke up at 5am to see me.

Therapy yesterday was unusual. Therapy involves a lot of anxious feelings for me most of the time. I go in needing validation that I don’t deserve to be burned at the stake for being a dirty whore. (No offense to sex workers. This is a childhood family imprinting issue not a reflection on a career choice that works just fine for many fine individuals.)

My therapist is getting much more comfortable with me. I judge this based on the fact that she is much more specifically directive with me now. For example: I relayed why I have been paying more attention to Fetlife lately and some of the back and forth difficulty I am watching. She told me to unfriend the people on Twitter who are all very upset with one another because I will never know the “truth” and getting in the middle makes me a target and goodness knows I don’t need that. So I unfriended people on Twitter. Both sides of the conflict. Which makes me feel like a heel.

I also installed a website blocker on Chrome. Now I can’t visit Fetlife on my computer and I won’t type on my phone or iPad so I am back to passive observing. Better for my blood pressure.

I don’t usually feel like my therapy sessions are full of bragging. I don’t think I’m that great until I start listing off how many different communities/activities would like it if I spent more time there. Specifically I said, “There is only 100% of me and there are at least fifteen places that want a piece.”

She said, “Fifteen? Oh surely that’s an exaggeration.”

Tick them off on your fingers: theatre crowd, Dickens Fair, Renaissance Faire, dancing, Burning Man, bdsm (which is really subdivided into a variety of factions), home schooling group stuff (which is really subdivided into a variety of factions), my neighborhood, my kids, Noah (yes he is separate from the kids), my yard counts as a community given how much of my effort and time I spend on it, writing, PTSD support stuff, rape/incest support stuff (you would be surprised how much of my time this sometimes takes up), and last but not least I have a really high number of out of town friends who like me to come visit them.

You freakin divide that pie. All of those communities involve five to twenty-fiveish core people I go to see.

At that point her mouth kind of dropped open and she said, “You have to think about that in context of the other clients I see. It is kind of extraordinary that you have so much love in your life.”

I don’t really understand it. I don’t see very much that is lovable. Well, until I see the behavior my children reflect back to me. Then I think I might be pretty nice.

I like being a nexus. Everything I have ever read about resiliency and being a survivor says the people with the most ties win.

Shiny change of topic. (At least I’m warning you for once.)

Elsenet I said that I felt conflicted about screen time and as a result I am inconsistent. A person I don’t know responded that they are also conflicted and so they are consistent. Except when they have a reason they think is good enough.

Before I say more on the topic of screen time I want to say that I have good friends who have screen policies for their children that run the full gamut. I have friends who permit absolutely no screens and I have friends who hand babies iPads. I’m walking a fine line here because I can offend everyone.

Just like with vaccines, I am an honest to goodness moderate. (I vaccinate but I don’t do it on schedule and I don’t do it as early as is typical and we skip some vaccines and I’m happy with my set of choices.) Thus with screen time. I have principles I follow instead of iron clad rules.

I don’t directly limit the number of hours my kids have screens. Instead what I do is say, “You can have a screen if you have cleaned up from all your other projects.” So they don’t get a lot of screen time. Ha. It is self selecting by and large.

But there are times when they get a lot of screen time because I need them occupied and sitting still and not disturbing me. I think it is one of the best forking inventions of all time. I think it is resulting in a lot fewer children being beaten.

However I feel like I am slightly manipulative about screen time because on days when I want a break I am way more cheerful and helpful in cleaning up. Ahem. Most days I’m kind of a hard ass and I stick to the line, “I didn’t throw it on the floor. I am in the middle of ______ chore. Please do it for yourself.” I do a lot of fucking chores just so I can have excuses. I feel sorta guilty about that. It’s how I can excuse my boundaries. I’m not sure it is “healthy” but there it is.

I feel weird having pride in my kids the same way I feel kind of weird having pride in the fact that people like me across diverse communities for very different reasons. Almost none of them like me because I used to be an easy lay. They like me for parts of my personality that I probably could/should take pride in. It probably would be healthy for me to see that I have positive traits and negative traits but mostly on balance I’m neutral to positive. I’m not a huge negative force or I wouldn’t be asked to go so many places.

I don’t understand what a privilege that is until I spend time really talking to someone who has never really been welcome in any community, ever. I have been shunned. But it’s been a long, long time. I could probably drop that paranoia.

I’ve been thinking about the comment my shrink made, “Do you like being this way?”

Yes and no.

I keep coming up with pieces of the hypervigilance I don’t like. I don’t like that I compulsively count the number of people in a room. I’m not in a fucking spy movie. I don’t need to obsessively check for exits. I don’t like that I have a huge chip on my shoulder because I assume everyone is one wrong sentence away from rejecting me and reviling me forever.

People mostly aren’t invested in me enough to be that hurt. I need to get over myself.

That’s kind of shitty to think about, yo.

Those are the kinds of tics an editor will take away. Do I want them to go? Do I want to stop sounding like me?

And now a three year old says I have to go play doctor. All of our clothes will stay on. Keep your mind out of the gutter.

I’m pretty agitated today. Clearly a large amount of this is self-created. I don’t know how much of it is other-created or if I’m just creating this whirlwind.

I’m upset about a lot of things that have no solution. And I’m feeling angry and reactive and like I want to blow up at everyone in the whole world.

I’m struggling with being patient as I explain my point of view on any topic. I just want to yell. I feel so angry.

I’m having a lot of black and white thinking. You are for me or against me. The reality is that people are for themselves. I can’t expect people to take a side with me if it works against their interests. They just won’t do it.

I want to hide under a rock and never talk to anyone again. I want to go find someone to talk to. Someone who will be patient as I babble out my anger and frustration but I am yelling too much if adult-subject-matter comes up.

I’m still doing ok with the kids. My overwhelm today hasn’t lead to screaming or yelling I just started crying. I don’t feel “better” about that than I do yelling. It freaked the kids out and then all of a sudden they started doing their chores without yelling at me about how unreasonable I am. It feels manipulative and awful. I suppose it is.

I am not trying to manipulate. I’m trying to ask for help and when you yell no after I’ve spent an hour doing things for you, sometimes I cry. I’m not trying to get you to do anything. I’m happy to leave the room and take my disappointment out of your eyeshot. It isn’t your problem I’m overloaded and sad and having big feelings.

Just shut your stupid fucking mouth you stupid bitch.

I want to cut. This is what my therapist calls “extreme abreaction”. I’m not really getting upset because my kids don’t want to unload the dishwasher. I’m getting upset because it feels like the men in my life think that it is way more important they be protected from a possible false rape charge than that people talk about their behavior in a way they don’t like. In a way that might help the detection of serial predators. Naw. We shouldn’t talk about shit. Just shut up you stupid whiny bitch.

If it was a real rape you would have gone to the police.

Sometimes I did. They told me that they weren’t going to ruin that nice boy for me.

By the time you are 40 it doesn’t matter that much how you were raised. You are who your genes say you should be. I’m told.

I’m scared of what my genes say I should be.

I’m an asshole. I don’t deny that. The current systems in place are not doing a god damn thing to stop rapists. So something needs to change. And yeah, that probably means that the hurt is going to move around. Given that 98% of rapists are men that probably means that there will be more suspicious gaze at men.

But instead of treating all men as blanket, proto-rapists what is wrong with instead keeping track of the incidents as they come up?

We can’t go to the police. We will be told to shut up so they can put the statistic in that we “rape victims” are really just liars and attention getting whores who had second thoughts.

But if we talk about our experiences we will be slandering those poor men.

I’m not advocating that every done-me-wrong should be treated like a rape.

I’m fine with both sides being heard. Right now we aren’t getting both sides heard. We are getting, “Is there enough evidence to prove physically that this was rape? If not then shut the fuck up you probably enjoyed it.”

The hacker who helped the Stubenville rape victim is doing more jail time than the rapists. That is what we think about the victims side of the story in this country.

Besides–in making sure that no community board has a centralized list to ensure that people are only being black listed after multiple infractions of a serious enough nature you have places individually black listing people based on the opinions of one or two friends who has a problem with the individual.

So you get the negative you are afraid of anyway and I don’t get to have any of the positive that I want. Thanks.

I feel both exhausted and so full of adrenaline I could run straight up a mountain. I want to pick a fight. I guess it’s a good thing I won’t let myself do that with my kids and I’m alone with them till bedtime. Enforced civility.

I’m not willing to force the civil for other people to the same degree. I often can’t when I feel threatened. My kids are inherently non-threatening. At all times I am overwhelmingly aware that I have all the power and they have very little or none. It is different with my kids than with other peoples kids. Other peoples kids feel overwhelming and threatening sometimes. Not like an “actual threat” but I activate on a biological level in a very different way than I do with my kids.

My kids are me-not-me. At all times I have this really conscious frame that this is the only chance I have to see a childhood where children are well treated every day of their childhood. It is up to me to produce it or not. Sometimes I’m less present in the room than they like because it is too high of a bar. But I’m around. They talk to me many times an hour.

Calm down Krissy. Stop calling yourself stupid. All of these feelings have nothing to do with your intelligence. Yes, you have been testy with your friends lately. That doesn’t make you the biggest bitch on the planet. When you check in with them they are not having a big problem with you. Yes, you are snapping–which they aren’t thrilled about–but all of them have specifically said that you aren’t being as inappropriate as you think you are. You aren’t as bad as you think you are.

But I’m bad. I’m really mean and hateful. You just don’t know how much because I don’t usually say it. Noah says it doesn’t count as mean or hateful if I just think it. I think he must be wrong. Surely I deserve to be flogged for all the yelling at my friends I do when they are not around. Usually when no one is around. I yell at them when I’m out running. I say all the mean things I think.

WHY ARE YOU DOING THAT!!!??!?!?!? STOP IT!!!! Variations on that theme. Usually culminating with something along the lines of, “ARE YOU INSANE? HOW CAN YOU POSSIBLY THINK THAT. YOU CLEARLY NEED TO BE WHACKED IN THE HEAD WITH A LARGE TROUT.” (Trout was an IRC thing.)

I feel like I’m drowning in unmet needs. But I don’t know what the needs are and I don’t know how to fill them. I’m anxious and scared and angry. I feel like everything is all my fault even when it has nothing to do with me.

I need to figure out where I need boundaries right now that I don’t have them. I don’t want to hit the eject button in order to deal with my distress. I really don’t want to. I also don’t want to be yelling at all of my friends because I cycle higher and higher week after week getting mad at someone.

How to have boundaries. It’s an issue. The kids say I have to come in.