I’ve been mad at Noah for a bit. That’s hard. When I’m mad at Noah I don’t know how to deal with it. I don’t want to rant about him in unfinished ways in public. Everything I put on the internet is here forever. I have to be prepared to live with having said everything I say. It keeps me honest.

Sometimes it takes me a while to figure out what I am really mad about. I have to go through multiple layers of pissiness before I get to the bottom of things. I wish I were faster and able to do this process without uhm loudly bitching at him but I am where I am. The best part of being married to someone who is nearly incapable of reading body language and tone of voice is that I get away with sounding like an evil harpy if everything I am saying is true. I have to make god damn sure it is true. No one is fucking quicker to argue with me if I get a god damn detail wrong than Noah.

But sometimes I say true things. Sometimes the things that upset me really should make a person upset. I’m having trouble figuring out how that works.

Right now Noah doesn’t feel very successful or like he is good at life when he is with the kids and I. The three of us are an intense bunch of irrational non-vulcanlike-non-programmer freaks. How in the fuck can he talk to us? Everything that he has spent his life on is uhm weirdly irrelevant to the three of us… only he supports us. It’s kind of weird. As far as the kids are concerned he might as well sit at work and watch youtube all day. That is what computers are for–right? Sometimes when I walk into the garage on his work from home days I certainly wonder.

I feel horrible that I provide so little satisfaction to Noah. Being around me doesn’t seem to provide him with a lot of good feelings. Other than having sex he would rather be working. I know that a lot of it stems from the fact that he feels very pressured to make more money (he has multiple side gigs–he has been making more than $2k/month outside of his dayjob) because uhm… we spend a lot of money. I feel fairly sure that a lot of the spending the kids and I do would change if he was around more. I spend money in order to not sit in the house feeling alone and sad all day. The kids are a weird company/not-company. Uhm and we spend money when things happen like the washing machine flooding my garage and a deer jumping on the car. It’s not like our spending this year has been completely frivolous. And that’s right around $10,000 just with those two things.

I get that Noah feels a lot of pressure. I feel a lot of shame that I am no longer contributing at all to my own maintenance. In order to make money from sale of the book I would hve to a)get the cajones to get into print and then b)do a lot of marketing.

I don’t know about you but I’m having trouble coming up with a marketing angle for “Come read my tale of woe and tragedy. Don’t worry–it has a horrible ending so you can be sure to experience all the angst possible. No I haven’t written part two. You have no idea what happens next beyond, ‘Not dead yet.'” It just doesn’t have zing.

I feel like a burden. I feel like an impediment to success. But Noah wasn’t real motivated towards success until he got married. Not really. He did a lot of coasting.

Yesterday I went down and talk to my neighbor, Ed. We found out recently that Ed is in his 70’s. I would have said early 60’s. He’s an interesting fellow. I talk to him a lot because he spends a lot of time hanging out in his front yard. He likes to talk about his car. I’m not going to tell you about it because I don’t care. What I care about was yesterday I asked him, “How many hours did you work every week when your kids were little?” He said, “Oh I guess it probably came to about 60 hours per week. But there were a lot of weeks when he traveled

and right there is where I have to stop before I beat the shit out of someone. Out of time today. They won’t stop yanking on my arms.

come back later:
I don’t beat the shit out of anyone. I hiss through clenched teeth, “You need to stop touching me for a few minutes.” Then I stand in the corner of the room by myself until I calm down. I wish I didn’t get so angry when they are grabby. God it’s hard.

I hasten to say they aren’t real “voices” properly but be careful what you say to your kids. Your voice will become their inner voice.

Today will be busy. There is a Signing Time concert and then Calli’s birthday dinner. Her birthday isn’t technically until Tuesday. She wanted an orange castle. Sure, no problem. It was kind of nice having to make it. Shanna didn’t want me to make her birthday cake. The godmamas were better. I tried to just feel gratitude. This was fun. The girls and I made a huge mess together and had a blast in the process. Shanna can ice multiple cupcakes without feeling the need to eat them immediately already. That’s big progress. Calli eats more than she ices. I figure it is her birthday. Why not. I bake with an eye towards expected windfall.

Yesterday’s run was good. I ran out to the very edge of town. I passed very few people, mostly elderly Asian couples wandering together. Perfect. When I quickly get passed by male runners most of them take the time to wave and give me a thumbs up and tell me I’m doing great. The hecklers are certainly in the minority. It’s part of why I feel so angry about being told to drive somewhere else. I don’t want to cede ground. This is my home. Near as I can tell I may never leave Fremont. If I don’t get to be here then I don’t get to be anywhere. I’m much more interested in signing up for martial arts. It’s always been on my “some day” agenda. I think right now Plan A is to find somewhere I can go with Shanna when she turns five. A lot is waiting for her to turn five.

I feel kind of weirdly guilty because I have so little interest in “stimulating” my babies. I think they don’t need classes or lessons. I think they need to play with me. So we play. I want to be done with this phase. I want to move outward. I’m bored and out of patience. I’m not sure how I am going to handle reading We’re Going on a Bear Hunt another four hundred times. I refuse to read books more than once a day. House rule. I spend at least an hour reading a day. I could not handle rereading the same books over and over.

I should do scheduling. I have been procrastinating for a week. Don’t wanna. I still don’t feel caught up. I’m not ready to move into the steady phase yet. I’m still running. I’m so tired and it’s hard to predict. I need to get started for the kids. Urg. They like routine. This way they are constantly whining for the iPad and it’s hard to be nice to them. Stop all the gosh darn whining. “Try again.” I say it a lot. Shanna has the hutzpah to remind me if I sound whiny or too loud. I want her to be my inside voice.

Sometimes our interactions remind me of Francesca, my friend who died when I was pregnant. Shanna is not my boss and she is not wise in the ways of the world. What she is, is an individual with strong preferences. She is good at taking up space. I like standing near her. I feel comfortable. I am obviously there because she wants me there. When she doesn’t she either politely asks me to move or she kicks me. Either way I get the point. I feel like I can trust Shanna. I smile a lot during the day. I feel safe.

My bad memories are fleeting things. Ghosts that stand on the periphery. Whispers that pop up when I feel stress. When I suddenly find a huge mess. When I walk in and find out that the next two hours of my day will be devoted to scrubbing something on my knees. I cry. I hear “worthless” over and over in my head.

It’s remarkable to me the degree to which housework is a complex hostile force in my life. Only losers clean. Pissy Krissy. Prissy Krissy. I like finding systems. I like making order out of chaos. It has always seemed to me that other people specifically find joy in fucking up my systems for me. Chaos scares me.  Chaos in the form of a messy house looks like mental illness to me. I’m sure there are a myriad of reasons for it but I can’t see anything else. I’m locked in my experience of the world. All the messy houses I have dealt with a lot have had major mental illness issues. Sometimes alcohol abuse. Sometimes physical or sexual abuse of children. I feel like I live on the fringe of society. I am only invited into the darkness.

Right now I am pretty sure that I don’t always feel like this. I’m having a hard time because Shanna is so like me. I think of how my mother treated me. Hell, I even think of how my mother would treat Shanna. I even feel angry because I know my mother would treat Shanna far better than she treated me.  My mother is telling the truth when she says it would be different. But not different enough. There would still be all those broken promises. And I would still have to keep my mouth shut.

No matter how it worked out for other people my experience would still be different. I would feel like I had no choice but to close my eyes and my mouth and put up with it. I can’t. I can’t. I would rather die. It is that important to me. I can not continue to be who they want me to be.

Why do I feel so unable to exist while people have strong expectations of me that run contrary to my nature? Self-preservation? Most people in my life want nothing from me. In terms of numerical representation in my life. It’s nice to have people out at arms length. They can have what they have and do what they do and it has nothing to do with me. It feels safe.

I feel like a cheater when I let my kids watch the iPad while I take a break. I can hear it through the garage door: an episode of Bo, an episode of Busytown. Then mom has to get off her ass. Usually it happens once a day. Sometimes twice.

Our schedule is out of whack. I’m feeling discombobulated. I’m not used to going out on Mondays. That is almost always a stay at home and rest day for me. I do chores. When I leave the house at 8:15 and don’t come home until 5:30 I feel like I want to lay down and die. Holy crap that wears me out. Don’t wanna.

It’s weird being a pet. Only I’m not. I think that is the part of being a kept woman I never really understood properly. You are not supposed to have to do heavy manual labor along with your sex work. Kept women are not maids. Why do I confuse the two?

Because I don’t know who I want to be when I grow up. I’ve never been sure if I wanted to be a whore or not. It’s a family tradition. Both my father and my brother told me to. Literally. Before I even hit puberty. My mother told me that if you get married you have to be prepared to be a whore for that man. I was verrrrrry careful to check out the sexual abilities of people before I decided if I wanted to get emotionally involved with them. Boring sex forever would be a deal breaker.

Which is part of why I am so confused by the not-orgasming thing. I really like sex with Noah. We have a lot of it. It’s part of the deal. Deliberately and clearly stated. That’s the deal: lots of sex. If I am truly uninterested I am getting better about saying no. It’s still hard for me. In the core of my being I have a hard time believing it is ok to say no. I grew up reading The Clan of the Cave Bear. That was one of my first exposures to a more adult idea of sex. Clearly it was not the civilized view of adult behavior.

But I am Other. In ways large and small. Hell I even have type O blood. I am a bloody Neanderthal. It’s not that no woman gets to say no to sex. It’s that people like me don’t get to say no to sex. I know the other women when I meet them. We have a way of sizing people up. “Would I fuck you?” It’s hard to miss.

I’m kind of hoping that a lot of my response change is due to still breastfeeding. I think I am dry though. I’ve never been able to tell when I am ovulating. I cycle but it is getting farther and father apart with the running so if nothing else the running is probably suppressing ovulation. My body doesn’t think it’s a good idea to make a baby right now. It is so fucking right.

It is weird to discover what other people must get from sex. Most of the sex I have had has not been what you might call loving and bonding. When I hunt I look specifically for highly aggressive men. To wit: I look for rapists. I try to hurry up and say yes in the first few minutes. Then even if I ever change my mind I will keep my stupid mouth shut. Because I’m not entitled to say no.

I have tried to say no a few times. I don’t drink or do heavy drugs like that around people any more. I am terrified of getting drunk around anyone unsafe ever again. Dan handed me drinks and told me to drink drink drink long after I said, “I think I’m drunk enough.” But I wanted him to like me. So I woke up with a sticky wet cunt and an empty bed at 2am. I had told him in advance that I didn’t have unprotected sex with new partners. Oh well, right?

I’m fighting the idea of getting involved with communities again. There are too many Dan’s. I’m afraid to go if Noah isn’t with me and Noah doesn’t share pretty much any of my interests. And soon he will have far less time for me. My eighteen months aren’t going to happen. He wants to get started in January. He has someone to work with. They are both very fired up and eager. I’m god damn requiring that I get through Christmas this year. I have been a work widow. I’m very sad about doing it with a two and a four year old. Calli is just… not… quite… old enough. It’s going to be hard. And I’m not supposed to spend money. I feel like I am seeing all of the ways to get my needs met ripped away from me. The only way I will be able to live through that and be a nice person is if I reduce my needs. That is going to be very hard.

I’m not sure if I am being a martyr–I don’t think so. I’m making a conscious choice to invest in our future together. If it works then I will be very glad I did it. If it doesn’t, well… that happens. I’m scared though.

I’m not sure how to come out of this without being bitter. I have to. For all of us. Because this is all I have. I can’t fuck this up. I truly can’t. This is the highest stakes task I will have this lifetime. Will I do a good job raising my kids? Will they want to have relationships with me when they are adults? Will they make it through to adulthood happy and healthy and ready to be adults?

My crystal ball is busted. Do you have one?

Lately I’ve been doing a lot of telling myself, “I want to be here. I want this.” It’s complicated. I’m really looking forward to the marathon. Forty six days to go. Then things can settle down with my body. I can stop looking ahead to something and fussing over that and giving a lot of myself over to it.

I need to not look forward for a while. I need to just be. I’m not particularly good at that. I think that will help me with feeling frustrated all the time. I have a few more house project things to do. I finally went and bought a damn ceiling fan and light replacement for the play room. It’s been broken for over a year. With one thing and another it has just never made it to the top of the list. It is currently at the top of the list. Now I need to find spare energy. I also need to do dishes, pack lunch, and hurry my sorry ass up because park day is going to start in an hour in Alameda. Gotta go.

(Although before I do I will say that it worked today when I let Noah fuck me for a while then I pushed him off and got myself off with a vibrator. Then I let him fuck me again and I came during the sex. I’ll be doing that again.)

(I found the post from a few days ago that didn’t post. Woo.)

Drifting. So much time and so little to do. Strike that. Reverse it.

If I had an odometer it would be red lining. Something needs to change. Noah is about to go through a period of intense stress and it’s really important that I support him through this. Supporting him through this will make the next 1-5 years of my life manifestly better. Enough so that it doesn’t matter how tired I am… I have to find it somewhere.

I feel like I spend life going between periods of limbo where I am unsure what direction to start off in.

“Get over it and let your kids be friends.” I wake up and go to sleep thinking, “I would like to die.” I’m really glad for people who can just “get over things” but I can’t. I’m sorry. I have to work through things slowly and sometimes that isn’t a speed other people like. It feels like every thought I have has to slowly bubble up through the lake of depression. “What should I do today? Who should I talk to? How should I spend my time?” People who take a lot of energy from me in order to bear their presence are not a good trade. If I want to make it to tomorrow I have to carry about that energy load even though no one else gives a shit.

It sounds so melodramatic. I feel like a whiner. I feel like an incompetent piece of shit. In seven weeks I will be an incompetent piece of shit who completes a marathon. I really don’t have the extra energy to burn right now.

Things that are hard for me are easy for other people. Things that are easy for me are hard or even impossible for other people. People are asynchronous.

I have a lot of anger. I have to live with it. I have to control it. I have to. Some days it is easier than others. Some days it takes everything I have and I have nothing left to give to assholes who are rude to me. I have to live with that.

Near as I can tell I don’t owe anyone anything. Not even my husband. Not even my kids. If I truly don’t want to do something then I shouldn’t do it. I don’t actually hate most of the activities I do. I do, however, wish that I had more help and that I had to do slightly less of them. I believe this will change. I believe that my children will learn the pattern of life from me.

I think that every day that I live I am showing my kids what it looks like to live and be a person. This is what being a grown up looks like. You have to put your own oxygen mask on. I tell my kids pretty frankly that sometimes we don’t go to events because I am not up for dealing with the people. I wish I had a larger capacity but I don’t. That’s life. I can be upset with myself for being who I am or we can have fun at home. Which sounds better?

I’ll admit that being almost finished with the garage is a huge weight off my mind. It really and truly looks how I envisioned it in my head a year and a half ago. I’m really excited. I feel so much relief. I think I am glad the washing machine broke.

I have bits and pieces I will change here and there but the structural work is done for many years. Probably most of my childrens’ childhood. I did the work until it was done. Now I can stop. I feel relieved in a way I can’t put words to. I want to cry with relief. Yes. I did what I said I would do. I don’t have to feel driven and anxious and terrible all the time about how pathetic I am for not being done. It’s quite a relief.

Now I can finish the play house. Ha.

There are plans that are sprints and there are things that have to be part of the marathon of life. Gardening stuff has to be done slowly in phases over many years. It is teaching me patience. And science. I didn’t know science was this interesting.

I feel like I have been trying to settle my house down so that it is the appropriate kind of place for the activities I want to do. I want to homeschool my kids. I want to set up a life around learning. I want a “yes” environment. I suck at babyhood. I’ll be honest. This has been a very hard stretch of time but it is almost over. I’m very much looking forward to home schooling. We get to “play school” all day every day. I think that sounds like so much fun that I want to cry. How could I possibly be lucky enough to get to have this life?

Nothing is ever as good or as bad as it seems. My life is very good. My life is very blessed. But I have limitations. I’m very clear about which limitations are mine and which belong to other people. I talk to Shanna about how right now she is limited to having the kind of environment I feel comfortable in and I like staying home. As she gets older she won’t need me for direct supervision as much and she will be allowed to stray further and further from home and she will get to find out what kinds of environments make her most comfortable. Every bit of exploration will happen when it is the appropriate time for it to happen. You don’t have to do everything before you are ten. It’s ok to wait on a few things. Life is long.

I think a lot about rural living situations. I think about historical lives. I think about how bizarre it is that I feel pressured to put my kid into group classes so she can “learn about children her age” when I’m not sure that is historically or evolutionarily necessary. She does hang out with kids. But she does a lot better in mixed age settings. Sometimes she plays with the babies, sometimes the other 3-5 year olds, sometimes the 11 year old. It all depends on which game they want to play that minute. I don’t see how it benefits her to be pushed into being lock-step with people “her age”. It’s such an odd idea to me. I feel resentful about the idea.

I was always highly asynchronous. I am forking thrilled to let Shanna develop a friendship with a girl who is seven years older than her who is quiet and shy and reserved and timid. That’s a lot better than the sexually active, drug-using children I hung out with. Perspective is an interesting experience.

Shanna is mad at me because I am pulling back on screen time. They are both getting grabby and demanding and rude about the ipad and to me that means it’s time for a break. If you bloody scream at me that you want that NOW I am categorically going to deny you whatever it is you wanted. I don’t scream at you like that and I’m not going to god damn let you do it to me. I feel like it is important. I feel like it is mandatory socialization. I don’t know how to do this when other people are around. I tolerate or don’t tolerate different behaviors and it is confusing to me and the kids. It’s stressful and hard to remember.

I should start working. My back is sore. Maybe it’s time for some vitamin I.

I wake up and go to sleep thinking I would like to die. But then I see Noah lying next to me. Not yet.

Simmering. That is what the acid in my stomach is doing. No more rest for me tonight. That’s ok. I climbed into bed at eight. I didn’t sleep for over an hour because I was reading, but I did rest my body. I seem to be heading into the “need less sleep” portion of life. It’s about fucking time.

All of the kids I spend time with are in screaming phases. For some of them it comes and goes for some of them it is mostly a constant state of life. I’m struggling. More than once lately I have gotten up and specifically walked five feet away from a kid and clasped my hands firmly behind my back before I had the ability to speak to them about a situation without hitting them. If I stayed in striking distance I would have lost it and hit. I don’t think I am on the verge of giving anyone a terrible beating.

I have always told myself I “wasn’t hit much”. That’s a big part of my story to myself. My sister and my brothers were fond of telling me I wasn’t “really” hit. My mom didn’t leave bruises because she wasn’t strong enough. I wasn’t hit by my father so it didn’t count. Mom hitting didn’t mean anything. I was hit a lot. I was hit fairly constantly as a means of exerting control over me. I am learning it more and more as the years go by with my kids. Truth be told I was hit far less than any other child in my family in the generations before me. The generations after me weren’t hit much due to a change in public social climate and because I god damn hit back. My mom became afraid of hitting kids. The kids were now so disrespectful that they defended themselves.

It is hard to look at every impulse I have all day and think, “It’s bad. What should I actually be doing?” It’s exhausting. It is hard to find any love at all for such a nasty, fierce, mean-spirited person. I don’t want to turn my kids into competent adults! I want to turn them into quiet and polite children! Well, not really. Have you met my kids? Quiet will never be the word. Thank G-d. But that is my impulse. It really is.

Part of what I like about this parenting gig is that it is the most unrelenting training ground I have ever been through. Other people (sane people) take more breaks from their kids than I get. They have jobs or they have families or daycare or something. They get away from the kids. They are not in the house with the children for 21+ hours of most days. And for those ~ three hours we go out… I’m with the kids! How I am with them is how I am. That is how I spend my time. Who and what I am to my children is pretty much all that I am right now.

They see someone who has some pretty hostile facial expressions and someone who needs a fair bit of personal space sometimes but mostly I am patient and kind. Why don’t I believe that is who I am? It’s one of life’s little mysteries.

Lately I am in one of those super clingy phases where I initiate a lot of sex! Five times in three days! We didn’t keep going because Noah was tired. As much as he says, “It’s ok to wake me up for sex” he is a human being with limits and when the kids aren’t sleeping… yeah. Not so much. That’s ok. I need to touch him. I’m feeling like a fraud and invisible and bad and touching him makes me feel better. He loves me and wants me. I’m safe.

I don’t think that most modern wives look at their husbands and feel gratitude the way I do. Without Noah my life would be very different. When I sat down and wrote out a list of what I wanted–I think it was even before I left Tom–Noah had more than 80% of the things on the list.  What he didn’t have then he has since changed. It was like I created Noah out of thin air. I don’t understand why he likes me so much.

Well, until he explains how badly he feels about his interactions with the wide world. I don’t think I understood that nasty isolation like I experienced really doesn’t have to be about abuse. It can just be. Being rich doesn’t make you safe. What makes you safe is not needing anything from people.

Things are kind of awkward with the home schooling group. The other moms are actively trying to become friends. I’m trying to let Shanna make friends. I often sit on the edge of the crowd with a book. I can’t fuck this up. It’s not fair to my kids. This is the largest and most active home schooling community in our area. I can’t fuck this up. That is a terrifying kind of pressure for me. I fuck everything up. I get run out of every god damn community. Or I leave when I stop finding people to have sex with. One or the other. I’m not hunting so I’m waiting for pitch forks. I think I hide behind the men who want to fuck me in most communities. I feel like status is highly transferable and I am allowed to stay and be tolerated as long as I can find someone willing to take responsibility for me. I am not part of communities in my own right. I’m there as ________’s person–even if it is only person-of-the-night. Someone wants to talk to me. I’m allowed to be there.

Noah gives me the freedom to exist. I don’t think I have offended him much. When I hysterically demand that we stop speaking about _________ he listens and that topic is gone from the roster. He adapts to me seamlessly and enthusiastically. I don’t think I have met another man in my life who would have been a good coparent for me. Not like Noah. Noah wants me so bad that every hurtle is just an impetus to run faster as he sees it coming so he has the power to fly over it. Right now Noah is the reason I can leave the house. Noah wants me. I’m allowed to be here.

It’s hard because status is not transferable up. I can’t get status or worthiness or place from my kids in the same way. Shanna and Calli get to be active members of the home school group. I’m not much like the other moms.

For one thing I genuinely do not feel the desire to emulate the preschool experience. I am not preparing my children for “school” thus they do not need “pre-school” as a stage. It seems kind of silly to me. We do a lot of kinesthetic activities that are similar to some things in preschool but not much. And I’m not going to go through a lot of trouble to make silly staged art activities so they can “learn to interact with nature”. I just have a different approach.

This is the way in which I feel insecure about my educational approach. I am not particularly giving my kids what is commonly thought of as “child hood” in my time and place. I’m not interested in shoving them into a large mostly homogenous group of children who are all the same age and mostly from the same place and who all have the same experiences going through. When people talk about school being how children learn about diversity I have to guffaw. I have been to a lot of schools. I have seen diversity in education. I’m pretty sure few of my classmates saw similar diversity. You don’t know what you don’t know. If you have been standing in one place your whole life you might believe you understand diversity. That’s because you’ve never actually seen it! I keep my mouth shut at home schooling gatherings. My philosophies are not universal.

My kids have eighteen years where I am responsible for keeping them safe before they will be abruptly let loose on the world and they will have to make their way. That’s not a long apprenticeship, not really. I don’t feel like I have the time to waste on getting them ready for kindergarten. It seems like a besides-the-point set of activities.

I believe very firmly that extremely young children (under four) should not be encouraged to sit still at tables and write. That is a skill for older children. In this age group they need to be rolling around on the floor. They need to be figuring out how to move their body. They should be so brimming with energy you feel like you will lose your mind if you don’t take them out to run laps. Then take them out and run laps. What they are working on are the building blocks of physical existence. Yes, language acquisition happens. It’s very important. It should be happening incidentally. Take your child out to the mall and walk around. Get used to saying, “no”. Talk about everything you see. Talk about the different kinds of furniture. Talk about wood and metal and plastic. Talk about manufacturing such items. Talk about food. Talk about the fact that food requires a lot of fucking labor to get it to you. Talk to them about their position in the world.

Seriously, they are going to figure out how to draw a fucking square. I don’t need to sit there and pester them to practice. Give me a break.

For all of my choking social anxiety, I get over it and I get things done when I need to. I may feel bad why I am doing the things I need to do–but they get done.

When I feel generous towards my family I recognize that this was probably one of the most helpful lessons I learned as a child. Never expect things to be easy. Everything will be so hard you want to quit over and over. If you quit you will never get what you want. Ok, now how do you want to act?


My sister and my mother both go through very functional periods. Then they crack under the weight of life stress and mental illness. They don’t describe things that way but I do. Given my life I get to. Anyway.

A friend sent me an essay on Unschooling as a feminist act that is sitting heavy in my mind. What kind of world do I live in, anyway? I live in a world that values my ability to produce products or do work that creates money. What I am doing with my life is… almost an irrelevant hobby.

I don’t much care for the modern way of living. I want to have enough food and I want shelter and I do want money (I won’t lie) but I don’t need to always be striving for a bigger house. I don’t need to go buy a new car because mine has dents in it. It’s fine. It’s functional. It gets me from point A to point B. I’m told that people have to care about their appearance because appearances are how people are judged. No wonder I don’t fit in.

I think the lack of community in our country is oddly striking. We don’t view children as a blessing. We view them as an unfortunate pestilence. They should be hidden away and kept out of sight as much as possible. They should sit still in chairs and be entertained with handheld devices. No one wants to deal with the endless questions and talking and running and…

I feel that way still. Who and what I am doesn’t fit very well into the carefully constructed institutionalized view of the way people should act. I am not normal. I do things at unpredictable intervals. I can be silent when necessary.

I know a fair number of very quiet people who can blend into groups and feel comfortable anywhere. They don’t need to feel understood in order to feel accepted. They feel group identity by virtue of standing in the right place and that is good enough. I don’t have that. I need to be god damn wanted or I strongly feel like the right choice of physical action is for me to get away from the large group because large groups are dangerous. Large groups harbor bullies and predators. I get into trouble. I get kicked out. Not of every group but enough that I am not paranoid I am skilled at detecting patterns that really do come up time and time again for me.

The people who feel offended enough by me to send me nasty letters or emails or phone calls are in the minority. Why do I care?

Because unless I want all-out-war I have to avoid the turf of people who feel free to attack me. It’s a tactical decision. Unless I want to fight I should avoid people who start fights. It seems practical.

Ok, the screaming stage is hard. But why am I really freaking out lately? Part of the way that I avoid general arguments is I tend to speak very exclusively about my life and my experiences. I try to avoid larger commentary. It’s a decision. It’s not going to continue working as my kids get older. My experiences are unusual. I’m not sure how unusual. Everyone lies to me so I can’t get a good guesstimate. But I need to unconsciously adapt to their experiences. I need to allow them to grow up and become them and they are very different from me. How do I figure out which things are actual systematic problems and how do I decide that something is just my problem?

The thing about “just my” problems is that I live with them. And the people who live with me have to deal with me. The people who are my friends have to deal with them. Oh wait. Maybe all problems are community problems. Why am I so angry? Because I have these problems. And a lot of them are things that I really need some fucking support for and I don’t have anyone. How do I deal with that? How do I teach my children to deal with these situations? Should I teach my children that they should expect to be alone their entire lives? That no one will give a shit? That no one will show up when they need help?

Shall I teach them to conjure a partner out of thin air so they don’t have to do everything alone? It doesn’t work out very well. It’s highly probable the bastard won’t enjoy dancing. Even though he has all that wonderful, juicy status to share… it’s not enough. I still want to take up space and have status in worlds he is not connected to. And I can’t go fuck anyone else and steal their status. That’s why I hid behind my girl-friends at the last dance event. I wasn’t looking for a guy to fuck so I just didn’t talk to men much. I was there to see the people who liked me. The two people who asked me to come. I don’t need to interact with all of those people who are at best ambivalent about my presence. They want me. I’m allowed to be here.

I feel like part of my feminism is this pathetic need I have for community. It’s not that I need a community of just-women (I’m not a separatist) but I need a community that values who I am and what I do. I don’t get a lot of that from general men. I have men who value me: Taylor is the main one I think of who isn’t a former lover. I don’t have very many men in my life I haven’t had sex with. If they stick around I eventually have sex with them because that is the trade–right? In order to bribe people to put up with me I will put out. It seems a fair exchange.

For the 4th we were invited to a friend’s house. She has a five week old baby who is just out of the hospital after having open heart surgery. They didn’t need to go anywhere. When I was there I had a great conversation with the dad. We talked about religion and spirituality. I don’t talk about my relationship with unseen things very often because I can’t deal with being ridiculed. Tom was fond of saying, “Anyone who believes in God is brain dead.” That was accompanied by a loud chorus of laughter from all the munch guys. But I had a conversation with a man about what we believe. And he wasn’t nasty to me. He didn’t obviously think I was stupid even though he is older and has more experience. It was novel.

It isn’t that I need a community of just-women. It is that I need a community of people who genuinely see what I am doing as good and worth doing. I need people who believe that I have worth. Outside of using sex I don’t know how to find that with men very well. I have mostly found it in the last few years through parents. Other young-parents understand how hard what I am doing is. But there seem to be two general camps. Either they think it is a good and worthy thing to be doing or they think I am stupid and I should pawn it off on someone who is lower status/less able to earn money than me. Shouldn’t I be above such menial labor?

What are we teaching children? That they should only be influenced by people who are too poor or too little educated to do something better than hang out with kids? Really? If you have more privilege/education/whatever you should go out to the real world. That world that doesn’t have any children in it. Because children aren’t real and they don’t matter. You cannot look at America and say that I am wrong.

We want children to be entertained and Educated. By someone else. But we don’t understand how to educate. You educate by allowing someone to do things over and over at their own speed. People do things in different orders. It is hard to predict what a child needs. Mostly safety, security, love, affection, and room to run. Time out in the woods.

Seriously? Every time in the woods has to involve sitting down and writing activities? For kids under five? Really? Yeah I don’t fit in at the homeschool group.

We will write. When my children are teenagers they will be able to write long, complicated pieces of writing. I kind of know how to ensure that happens. Right now I take dictation for letters to relatives. That’s the extent of me encouraging writing. I want them to think of the physical act of moving a pen/pencil over a paper as magic. It allows things they say to be “heard” by people far away. Typing is many steps more magical and we aren’t getting there yet.

I want my children to think about the world as a place they can have influence on. What kind of influence do they want to have? I don’t care if you know what a rhombus is while you are four. And no I don’t need you to prove over and over that you know your colors. You fucking know your colors and we don’t have to do yet another color scavenger hunt.

So I sit on the edge with a book and the kids play. I really don’t have the extra physical energy to create a bunch of preschool-style activities. That shit is work. I would have to alter my priorities. Most people say that they give up cleaning. I uhhh don’t want to. I don’t think that it is worth that much of my time and energy to manufacture “entertainment” for my kids. In the overall scheme of my life I will be better served by teaching my kids that I god damn expect the house to stay clean. And I spend time every day helping them learn how to clean house.

Right now I am worried about teaching my children mindfulness and connection. I’m not worried about counting. We count, sure. But I say, “Can you pick up three dolls for me?” I don’t go get out a fucking counting activity with manipulatives like beans. Then I would just end up cleaning up the fucking beans as well. Fuck no.


I’m feeling some internal conflict about being a fascist because I took most of the toys away. I’ve noticed that their play hasn’t slowed down at all. Shanna has brought me more bags of things to put up “Because I’m sick of having to pick them up and Calli keeps dumping them on the floor.” I told her that was an excellent approach. So I feel a little guilty but not much. My irritating focus on cleaning is something my kids can learn to live with if I figure out how to make it manageable for them. Part of that is being fair in my expectations.

If it is possible that their mess takes a sustained forty-five minutes of picking up to sort out then it is above their skill set. They can’t pull that apart. It’s too hard. In giving them enough belongings that they are overwhelmed to the point of tears I am not serving them well. Ok! Pull back! Its been a week. Going well. At least I’m not feeling pissed off about picking up those toys. The screaming is of the “I told her not to follow me and she’s following me” variety. Everyone wants privacy but no one can leave anyone else alone. All three of the girls are trading off these roles. I want to beat my head through a window. But they have to work it out. They will. It’s not easy to figure everything out. They have to figure this shit out on their own. I should probably start putting ear plugs in the morning as a matter of course instead of waiting for the headache to start. See, writing is good for me. I figure shit out. Oy.

There are a lot of things in my head I wish I had time to sit down and Really Write About. I don’t have the mental energy. I’m starting to try and think about scheduling. I try to look for predictive patterns in life. If I can find the natural energy cycles and schedule things that way then everything goes better. Things like: don’t start a painting project in December when I’m focused on Christmas. Even if the pantry is pissing me off. There are also financial concerns for a lot of the things I would like to do. Self-control is hard.

Right now summer is just starting. Summer is the time to be outside. I need to deal with growing and preserving food. I need to be playing at the water park. I need to be running. It’s not the time to do serious writing projects. I think that is a switch that has hit post-parenting. Now I want to do more than record the endless flow of my thoughts. I want to produce specific things. I want to make my own status. I want to be doing and not just being. I want to find how I fit into that world out there that I will have to deal with again in fifteen years. Ugh.

This intersects strongly with my feminism. My complication wants me to write about feminism. The thing is, that’s on that list of “uhh… later” topics right now. I am too busy trying to construct what I believe to explain it. If someone believes the feminist battle is over then I want to know why I have to worry so much about staying “relevant” if I don’t want to end up sitting alone in my house after my kids leave because no one will hire me to do anything else once I was stupid enough to stay home with my kids because kid care is obviously only done by people who are too stupid and uneducated to do anything else!

I have no interest in ever working in a setting where I have to behave but at some point I will probably work again out of boredom. What can I do? I can write. Blogging isn’t shit and I know it. I have project ideas. I’m thinking about them pretty hard while I run. There are things I can say. It’s scary to think of really being judged on products. I have to do it. I have to deal with people not liking me. That is part of being a functional adult and I have to do it and I have to show my kids how to do it.

I think part of my current food issues is another way of dealing with the conflict about being good/bad/defective.

I think I need to read more about potatoes. If I’m not supposed to be eating grains, how about potatoes? (I know they are a New World food. They probably aren’t good for me. Maybe I won’t read about them. I don’t want to know.)

Anyway. I woke up really early. I don’t have to go yet. But I think that is all the venting of my spleen I have at the moment. I’m a lot less frustrated. I suppose that’s good. I like purging all of the swirling negativity. If I don’t get it out in some form then it stays and intensifies. It’s hard. I suppose it’s like using a leech. You just have to get some of the bile out.

I was hella smart yesterday. I acquired supplies for making dinner in the crockpot today. Hella smart. That way I don’t have to come home from the county fair and cook. Lately Noah has been making more dinners.

That’s something I haven’t written about lately. I’ve been thinking about Noah a lot. I’m thinking hard about how I am going to shape the book. It means I’m thinking really hard about Noah and his behavior. What am I going to show about Noah?

Noah has shaped my feminism. Noah appreciates me. Noah looks at me and values what he sees in a way I have never experienced before. Noah looks at me how I imagine people look at men.

Then the kids woke up. Oops.

I think the next thing I should work on is I need to stop feeling embarrassed that I cry when I run. It’s ok. Really. Many spiritual traditions believe that grief is held in the lungs. Running makes me breathe very deeply. I have a lot of stored grief. I’m feeling very nervous about that. I am running with friends this weekend. I don’t know how that will go. I’m nervous. I don’t like for other people to actually know how sad I am. I want to get to pretend it is invisible forever.

We had a really good weekend. I feel quite good about myself for successfully managing to get through babysitting with a smile on my face. When I left the little boy with his parents he told me, “Goodbye Mama” and “I love you”. Now, I don’t think I’m his mom. But he recognizes me as a caregiving woman in his life that he loves. He doesn’t have another word yet. That makes me feel so good about myself. (For the record when we cuddled I said, “Krissy loves you” even though I felt idiotic. I was *not* trying to introduce myself as Mama.) Ahem. End defensive side note.

I can do this. I can take care of people. I can be nice. I can be generous. I can be loving. I am not someone that small children feel fear around. I’m an intimidating person. I’m also a very kind and understanding person. If you need to cry I’m not going to show irritation with you. I’m going to sit down with you and hug you and tell you I know you are sad. I love you and I’m here with you. And that is actually enough.

I’m enough.

He was calling Noah Daddy and he didn’t want us to leave. He was even cuddling the girls by the end. That is how family acts. I got to hold his sister less than twenty-four hours after she was born and promise her that I will take care of her too. I’m going to take that seriously.

I’m enough.

I’m good. I’m kind. I’m smart. I’m good enough. I can take care of people. I can bring them comfort. I can make it easier for them to get through their days. I make their lives better.

That’s really hard to believe. I’m not mean. I don’t hurt them. I scare teenagers. I scare adults. At least, that is what people tell me. I feel slightly bewildered every time someone feels the need to tell me how much I scare them. It’s hard for me to deal with the fact that they should be scared. I would very easily and quickly hurt an adult who did something that was a problem for me. I don’t hurt kids. Adults may need to be taught a hard and fast lesson in manners. I don’t have patience with adults. I don’t know where I am finding it for the kids.

It was really weird this weekend. I felt good enough. I felt appreciated. Shanna’s birthday party was lovely. Cooking and clean up were non-stressful. Noah cleaned the whole damn house as a way to thank me for the party. I felt very appreciated and loved. He and I both try hard to meet the others needs. He really needs the floor to be picked up or he trips and hurts himself. I keep the stuff off the floor for him even though I’m fine with walking around landmines. I need the floors to be clean. It grosses me out and makes me feel bad about myself if the floors are really dirty. He doesn’t notice in general. This weekend he vacuumed and swept and mopped. He doesn’t do that very often. But it means that I have a much easier week. It feels like such a kind gift. He went out of his way to lighten my load. Just because.

It’s really weird for me to realize that Noah isn’t used to people liking him any more than I am. He’s weird and difficult and abrasive as well. We really are a lovely match. We are both blunt to the point of brutality. I will say that he has learned how to not make me cry. He’s willing to try as many times as he needs to in as many different ways as he needs to in order to communicate his actual meaning to me. That’s not how communication usually works. He wants to make sure I understand his intent. On the first listen through I rarely do. I’m trying. I do better than I used to.

At the very core of me I understand that I am hearing the world through a broken filter. I think everyone hates me and that I deserve all the mistreatment I have ever gotten. It’s my fault that people treat me so badly. If I were less of a bitch maybe I would deserve better treatment.

Noah tells me adamantly that people are indifferent to me and are acting in self-serving ways and I should be equally indifferent to their actions. It’s a useful perspective. It causes me to think hard about the fact that very few people know me. Of course their behavior isn’t about me. I take up very little space in their lives. I take up a lot of space in Noah’s life. He’s really nice to me.

Noah comes home from work and tells me “thank you” for the things I did that day. He takes time to stop and look out the windows and appreciate out loud what I have done in the yards. He likes hearing what the different plants are and what my future plans are. When I ask him for help he is unstinting. Mostly he just lets me do my thing and he does his thing.

Ack. Time to go to the park.

I only have fourteen more years where I have “control” over making decisions for Shanna. What was I doing fourteen years ago? I was sixteen. I was a high school drop out. I worked full time at Ross Dress for Less and my mother took my paychecks. I only had access to $20/week. To buy all of the food I didn’t get from the kitchen at home. My mom said my paycheck didn’t really even cover my room and board so she was being generous. At the beginning of June my mother wasn’t getting any child support for me any more. My father obviously wasn’t paying it while he was waiting for the trial. For some reason me saying, “I’m not interested in being raped” means my father doesn’t have to support me any more. Fair enough. I worked because I wanted to eat. I wanted to have my own room because all of the people I lived with looked at me like I was a dirty and disgusting person because I lied and claimed my father had sex with me. No one believed me. They were angry with me for making up lies. Rent on a room was $500. Auntie had to survive and pay the bills somehow.

So I worked full time. I made $6.00/hour. I had no benefits. I worked 40 hours/week, often with overtime even though I technically wasn’t legally allowed to do so. I reliably made just over $1,000/month. I was given a $20 bill every week. My room was half of my paycheck. My food took the other half. My mom was generous. I did not have a social life that cost money. Bus fare ate into that $20 quickly. I sat at home and read the same books over and over. I watched the same movies. How could I not be a geek fangirl? I watched Hackers hundreds of times.

My daughter is going to have a very different life. I cannot imagine what she will be like in fourteen years. I have no idea. I’m scared to death. I don’t think I could have imagined where I am now. Now when I think about figuring out money I’m working on a different scale. It’s a lot harder and more complicated. I’m learning a lot about planning. I think this is good for me.

Many years ago my brother told me that my insurance settlement gave me a mindset difference. He told me that whereas I could be broke I would never be poor again. I think he is right. There is some crucial jump that most people never make. How do I prepare for an unknowable future? It’s complicated. I don’t feel like I know.

But I know it will involve living on less money. And then less money again. And then less money again. Unfortunately, $60 for a mixer is still… $60. When I shouldn’t be spending any money I shouldn’t be spending $60.

What do we actually need? We need food. I make a lot from scratch. We still get a meal a week mostly from food I grew last year. That’s pretty cool to me. We are eating out less and less. I have downgraded our food in a variety of ways already. I’ve cut at least $200/month on food and I need to cut a bit more than that. I no longer buy raw milk. Noah is lactose intolerant and the difference he experiences is dramatic. Nevertheless at $16/gallon… that’s a luxury we can’t afford right now. We used to buy a quart a week. Now we go through more than a gallon a week because the girls like to drink milk. And I’m cooking with milk more. Things change.

It is interesting to examine where and how I make decisions. If Noah really manages to start going on a business he is going to need someone else to handle money. It’s just not his strong suit.

I feel like I am trying to learn how to actually get shit done with a certain amount of money. What does that mean? How do you handle shifting priorities? We will never run out of things we would like to pay for (the mixer is really a metaphor) and how do we handle that?

It means I have to think about how much labor I can accomplish with my body. If I can buy a season pass at the local water park (we can walk to it) or a mixer… I’m buying the season pass. It is incentive for me to walk 5 miles multiple times a week pulling the wagon. I’m going to be so fucking buff. And if I decide to be brave and start trying to make bread I will have to learn how to do it by hand. Oh god nooooooooo the horrorrrrrrr.

What things are more like needs and what things are more like “enh I’d have slightly fewer excuses for being lazy if I had ________ expensive tool”. Thing is, in my experience, having the tool doesn’t cause the work to magically happen. If I want to make cookies I make cookies. I don’t need a mixer. Not having it causes me to build up strength in my arms. How is not having a mixer a bad thing? Oh. It means I say, “Well making bread would be a lot easier.” I used to have a mixer. I didn’t make bread. I made cookies and cakes. I still do that by hand. Yeah.

If you “save money” by buying a cheaper version of something you don’t need… you haven’t saved any money. You have spent money you didn’t need to spend. I may not have taken any accounting classes or business classes or whatever. I took maths. I can add and subtract. Mint.com is a really fucking awesome website. I can’t lie about spending money. It is all tracked. I even parcel out my cash spending.

Right now I need to try to remember what it is like to live as if I have no money. If I am lucky I will never get back to the point where it is actually true. If I pretend it is true and live like it is true I am more likely to survive longer. I will have a buffer. I come from a long line of hearty peasant stock. I need to remember what it is like to walk and carry things by hand because that is what I have the money to do. Cars are expensive to operate. Right now I’m thinking about trying to live without it for the sake of saving money. I have certainly had times in my life where we simply didn’t have a car.

I’m trying to not feel weird about walking. I have a lot of weird internal dialogue about it. Here walking to the store is a conspicuously low class activity. No wonder my neighbors think we are poor. I’ve had people say I can come over and watch tv at their house. Uhh, no thanks. I don’t have a television because I don’t enjoy watching one.

It’s an entire culture I don’t share. It’s weird. I don’t watch very many movies either. People don’t know what to talk to me about. Random people I meet. I don’t think I’m the only socially awkward person. Uhm, obviously if you slog through all this shit I write you would probably be able to find something to talk to me about. I reallllllllly like all twenty or so of you. Ha.

Sometimes when I write I am kind of mentally addressing Noah and sometimes I have a specific person I think about. Not very many people have told me they read my blog. A number of people have told me adamantly that they don’t. I like talking to them the most. It’s extremely passive aggressive of me. I am going to hell.

And the kids came in. No more babbling today. I had fun though. I don’t know why I enjoy doing this so much. Thank you all twenty-ish of you.

Some day I would like to like myself. Some day I would like to be willing to try and convince someone that they should want to spend time with me. Right now my impulse is, “If you don’t want to fucking spend time with me then don’t”. Not always a useful response. In fact, rarely. I won’t say never. I have a hard time with trying to figure out why my existence is a net positive for the universe. I feel like a drain of energy and resources. I take up space. I don’t make things. I don’t produce things. I am a consumer. It is an existential complaint.

Yesterday I went to the park with the home schooling group. I ran laps. I was the only parent to rough house with the kids. I pick up the rough and energetic boys and throw them around for a while. I feel far more comfortable interacting with the kids than I do the other mothers. I assume the other mothers would dislike me and think I am bad if I talked to them. I have already outed myself as ok with the idea of nonmonogamy and been given the stink eye for that. There was a conversation a few weeks ago with all the mothers chuckling together about telling their kids “You have to pick one person (of the opposite gender) to marry.” I said that I don’t tell my kids that because it woud make it very confusing to explain why their Grandpa ____ has a wife and a girlfriend. I figure they have to decide their own configurations. You could have picked the chins up off the ground.

So I don’t talk to the other mothers much. I don’t want to poison the well for my kids. I am their biggest liability in life. I may always be. Who knows. The kids are getting to know me and they like me. I like to play. I like to run. I had a pack of kids running laps with me yesterday. Most of the kids ran at least 3/4 of a mile. They would run a lap then rest then run another. It was really cool to have this ever-changing group of children with me. They wanted my company. What I was doing was way more interesting than their other options. That feels rather weird.

I enjoy talking to the kids about their bodies. About why they should consciously try to be stronger. It felt really amazing to practice sprinting as fast I could go to keep up with the little kids. This one boy is five and a half and he sprints like a cheetah. He has no stamina, but holy moly he hits high top speeds. When I caught up with him I felt like my heart was going to burst but then I just kept going past him. And I kept going for a long time after that. Ok, I slowed down a lot after I passed him, but I fucking did it. At the end of the run I fell to the ground and told all the (ebullient, proud) children that I was really afraid of what was going to happen in a few years because they are all going to keep improving rapidly and I’m only going to get older. I won’t be able to outpace them for long.

I spend my life wishing that I was the kind of person who was a leader. I don’t want to be a boss. I don’t want to tell people what to do. I want to do the fucking right thing. I want to live my life in a way that inspires emulation. I feel vain and over proud because of this.What a conceited asshole, right? I don’t seriously look up to very many people. Even fewer of them are alive. I don’t feel this way because most people are bad or doing things wrong. I have had an unusual life. I have weird calibration on needing inspiration and teaching. I need to develop non-standard skills. To me, learning how to do the right thing and I mean the right thing is the most important thing I can do. The right thing for me isn’t the right thing for other people. Life circumstances are like that.

What I mean when I say that I want to be a leader is I want to be someone who does very hard things and causes other people to realize that they, too, can do very hard things. Yes, it is going to hurt. I know. I truly do. Things that are worth doing are often hard. It means you have to figure out how to get stronger.

Some day when I am a grown up I will figure out how to actually do work that improves the world around me. Between now and then I need to study as much as I can and work as hard as I can to be stronger. Some day when I am grown up I will have a better idea of what I will be specifically working for. Right now all I know is I need to be less ignorant and I need to be stronger.

I don’t have to care that other people have different priorities. I should encourage it. Stay out of my specialty. Don’t crowd me out. I don’t know much about anything yet. It’s going to be interesting to go learn. I want to learn about the real world. I want to know things about plants and survival. I want to feel comfortable with the idea that I will actually be able to survive. I have already proven to myself adequately that I can get a job and make money if that is what is necessary for survival. I want to see for myself if I am a brighter-than-most animal that can survive. Modern society is weird. My daughter adamantly denies that she is an animal. Many pundits do the same. Uhm. I’m made of meat. That means I am an animal. I am an animal that needs to eat food. Can I provide it? Do I have the skills to go out into the world (instead of Safeway) and actually continue to live? What good am I?

I live in a strange world. I have been inside of many homes that were worth upwards of $5,000,000. My mother made more than $30,000 in a year for the first time when she was fifty one. People like me should only get into the kinds of homes I have been invited into if they are being paid to clean it. Or if there is a whole class birthday party when you are little. It’s complicated.

I was not brought up learning how to be successful in the world. I was not brought up learning actual skills that would benefit me. I was taught to watch television and eat cheap, unhealthy food. Occasionally you would go to some shopping space (outdoor “festivals” are generally just portable malls) and spend money you don’t really have to spare on something you don’t even remotely need. That was what we did and that was all we did.

I want to have a life that is worthy of emulating. I want to be a good enough person. I want to do this mainly for my daughters but I think that you can’t want to be that kind of person and only set your sights that low.

My world is small now. I have done that on purpose. It is hard to learn when you are distracted. It is hard to learn when there is too much going on. I have already limited my life a great deal and I am trying to embrace the freedom I have within the structure of my life. I have given myself the gift of sixteen years of safety and learning. I picked a job where what I supposed to do with my time is go out into the world and learn as much about it as I can because I am responsible for teaching my children far more than I currently know. Get busy.

I think hard about how I am going to teach maths and science. I talk about physics at the playground. I seem to be the PE teacher for the home schooling group. I think I should make a serious habit of that. I should just get up and do that. I shouldn’t expect someone else to ask me to. I should do it. I should do my strength training exercises (mostly yoga, honestly) daily so my kids do it with me. They also want to do more things. Shanna is starting to eye the monkey bars but her arms aren’t strong enough.

Life requires strength. How do I go about getting more of it? How do I teach my children? I am so lucky and so privileged that I get to sit around think about the structure of my life. I get to think consciously about what habits I want to have and figure out how and where they will fit into my life. I have increasing freedom to do most things I want to do with my kids. I think soon I will venture to dance events with them. It will be fun. I will finally have companions.

I have spent my entire life desperately wanting to do things with people. I simply don’t enjoy doing things alone. Now the only thing I do alone is hide in the garage because I desperately need some time when I get to be alone. Even though it feels overwhelming at times I feel so much gratitude. Every morning and every night I hold my daughters close and tell them that I feel very lucky because I get to spend the day with them. I really enjoy their company. I am so glad I get to spend my life with them. This is exactly what I have always wanted.

But the thing is… this isn’t going to continue on forever as it is. This is going to change dramatically and then end. Oh shit. I’m going to be kind of an asshole and say I can understand why people keep having kids. What am I going to do after this? It’s terrifying. I have a lot of identity wrapped up in being the one to take care of my kids. For now. My kids are not going to be coddled forever. I don’t have the patience for this shit.

I’m going to go on record saying that I think baby wearing, extended nursing, tandem nursing, home birth, and co-sleeping all suck rocks. They are horrible. My fucking back hurts. The problem is I don’t think the other solutions are better.

I am starting to better understand the desire for a four year age gap between children, now that Shanna is basically there. Now she tells me she wants space at the park so she can play out of my eye sight and hearing range. We agree on check in times. She is pretty good. Now I can go focus on the other baby. Calli is so excited by this she can barely stand it. She likes being pushed in the swing and she will make me do it literally for hours. Yesterday she was in the swing for more than two hours. She laughs and laughs and laughs. She is so happy she nearly bursts.

I need to try and predict the future and know what kind of adult my grown up children will respect. How can I help them become adults? This is my job. I’m kind of a work-a-holic. It feels like my whole life right now is this really intense on-the-job training program. I can’t stop. I can’t take a break. This is my life. What kind of adult do I want to be? What do I want to teach my children to be like?

It means I’m thinking very hard about my self identity. I have been a nonmonogamous queer pervert for most of my life; a rather shocking majority of my life if you use liberal definitions for consent. My children see a monogamous heterosexual couple in a very standard male/female set of roles.

Why do I need to talk about how often I think about fucking women? Because if I don’t then people think I am something I am not. If people think I am something I am not then they form a picture in their mind of who and what “someone like me” looks like. At some point the conflict will be realized and it will be shocking. Ok, so who am I? Am I really a nonmonogamous queer pervert? Not really. It means I don’t know what I am. It means I don’t know what I am. I’m not really a voyeur so I don’t see much point in going out anymore. I don’t know how to go out looking for conversation to a sex-oriented event where I am not looking for pick up play without feeling like I am doing something terrible in some way. But I honestly don’t really know where else to go. I consider munches to be sex-oriented–I can’t bring my kids. If I have to find non-kid hours to go to an event… that’s a tough sell in my life. I don’t get much time off and I desperately need to spend most of it alone. I’m exhausted.

I will never be nonmonogamous again. But I still think about sex just as much. No, that’s not true. I haven’t thought about sex much for a long time. My libido is starting to return. I am just barely starting to think about sex. It feels very weird to feel like I should actively state that I am queer. It is a political identity. I have these feelings. Biologically I am not exclusively attracted to any particular gender.

And…. that’s when the kids missed me.

Ack. My screen looks different. It’s annoying how these geeks keep wanting to “update their look”. Despite being married to someone who cares about such things I still don’t really get it.

I have updated my “profile pictures” most places to reflect my current hair length. I look quite butch. It feels weird. People keep telling me that it looks good on me. And then I uploaded pictures to here in separate short posts because I am not awake enough to figure out embedding today. I’m really tired. I had therapy last night and then Noah and I stayed awake talking until 10:30 and then Shanna woke up. She was hurting. I think she was growing. She had a rough night. Then I had my normal every night interruption of needing to use the bathroom. I wish that my “regular” as a grown up wasn’t 3:30 am. It’s annoying. Then I decided to spring sex on Noah. About twenty minutes after we finished Calli woke up and needed me for a while. By the time I left her room it was after 5:00am. I might as well just be up. When did I become this person?

I feel increasingly perplexed by myself. Who am I? What am I capable of? What do I actually need? What do I want? How are these things different?

My therapist doesn’t interrupt my ranting much. I get the impression I am intense for her. Ha. Last night she interrupted me once to say, “That was an interesting question.” I had just asked “When will I stop missing people who have never and will never be in my life?” She doesn’t interrupt me much. That makes it a challenge for me to remember that question and think about it.

There are so many things I’m afraid to really jump in and do. Humble, stupid shit. I really need to fix the grout in my bath tub. I can watch videos online and read tutorials. It’s really not a complicated task. But I feel this inner resistance. I don’t trust myself as an autodidact. I always feel like I need a teacher for the first time I do things. I want to be an assistant. I want to be the competent assistant who helps someone build things they can’t build alone. I feel comfortable in that role. I can’t serve an idiot. I really liked my scene shop boss in college. He was very talented and he taught me how to work hard. No, that’s not true. He was a hard worker and he was happy to have me keep him company. He can’t teach the skills very well though. It’s a different kind of skill to teach. Anyway.

I am not behaving how I think I should behave. I am a deeply social animal. Despite the fact that I loathe group work in a class room setting I really long to work with people. I just don’t suffer fools well and very few people want to work as hard as I work. That sounds pretentious. Other people work hard at things that are not the things I value and as a result they do not meet the speed I want them to meet on most tasks and that is frustrating.

I have a physical need to get things done and see visible progress in my life. I have to think, constantly, about the fact that I am a dynamic and changing individual. I can have some lasting effect on something. I can become strong enough to do all of the tasks that need to be done in my life. I can gain those skills. It is an education process. It is an education process I think my kids should have. I have so much stupid fear about doing things wrong. I believe in the back of my lizard brain that people who come to my house will think worse of me if I try to repair something in my house and it looks less than professional. I don’t really make straight lines very well. I make up for it by using the brightest fucking paint Home Depot sells. There is nothing neutral in my house.

I write sitting next to a palm tree book case that is strung with bumblebee and dragonfly lights. I’m annoyed by the splotch of green on the ceiling. My hand slipped when I was painting the bookcase. I should really get around to fixing that. How many years will I sit here and be annoyed by that mark? Hopefully less than a year. That would be great.

There is never an end to the things that must be done on a house if you want to maintain it in a state of good repair. This house hasn’t been maintained very well and it is more than fifty years old. It wasn’t made high quality when it was built. I guess I have my fixer-upper. And I have to do it all by myself. And we won’t have a lot of money. These projects are going to drag out. I have to figure out a triage list and do them as the money exists in the budget.

I have to be someone else now. I’m having trouble learning this job. I’m having a hard time envisioning what I will look like in ten years. I keep coming up on this problem I have over and over again in my life.

I learn by watching people. I learn by mimicking behavior. It’s a lot of how I pass the way I do. I pattern myself off of whoever I am talking to as much as possible for as long as possible. I had to learn to do that when I was young. I don’t feel like I have much of a me that I know how to be around people on a consistent basis.

I keep going through my mental roster of people I admire. I have no desire whatsoever to be like any of them. I’m not sure what I want to be like. No, that’s not true. I know what I want to be like with my kids. I’m getting closer.

I’m learning how to mother myself as I mother my children. I’m learning how to pay attention to subtle signals in how my body moves. I’m learning how to listen to what it says. It is hard to find compassion for my frailty. Often I don’t start tasks because I am afraid of the physical difficulty. I am not as strong as I might wish. I know that the answer is to become stronger. I’m trying. It is hard that the answer to most of my problems is simply become stronger. You have to become stronger in a way that balances the system as a whole or you risk injury.

I don’t really get runner’s high. Just like I rarely got endorphin rushes while being beaten. I don’t get it. When I do these activities I am miserable and I hate them. A good run is one where I am so lost in my thoughts I barely notice the time passing. I am slightly worried about being hit by a car so I try not to get too lost in trance. Most running days involve actual whining. I do this because I have an end goal in mind. I want to run in a marathon with my brother. This is for me. This will be the closest I have to doing something with my family. I don’t really care if other people understand. I fucking want it. I hope that will be enough closure for me. This is my last chance. I need to get buried in the minutiae of my life. I need to paint the damn ceiling.

I need to stop feeling bad that my life is this small. I have taken to projecting a lot of my guilt on my misperceptions of Noah. I feel manifestly unworthy of him. I worry that I try too hard sometimes because I am trying to impress him. I feel like he made a bad deal. I’m trying to do what I can to mitigate the damage. It’s really stupid. Even though I think that Noah deserves better than me I can’t even define what that means. Sluttier? More virginal? What? Why am I bad? Why don’t I feel like I am a good wife? Mostly because I need so much from him. I’ve been told over and over and over all my life that my needs are not very important. Mostly the problem is that I don’t meet my own needs consistently enough. I don’t know how. I don’t really even know what they are.

Luckily I live with two people who are loud and demanding about getting their needs met. They are showing me that it is ok to have the needs I have. And oh man they are teaching me who I want to be.

I don’t see very many people.  In many weeks I only speak to the people I live with.  Soon that is going to narrow to a pool of one adult again.  I have a friend who is wonderful and amazing and has been coming down to visit me for years.  He’s been one of the thin threads holding me to the world sometimes.  I got to see him yesterday.  The visit was wonderful.  There was one line in particular that tickled my fancy: “It seems like monogamy is so… hasty.”  He’s not the first friend to tell me pretty much exactly that.

Non-monogamy means that for the rest of my life I need to think about what I have to do to be attractive to people other than Noah.  That sounds a lot like work.  Not to put too fine a point on it.  Non-monogamy means having to think about my boundaries a lot as they shift.  I have to figure out how to explain where I am to new people.  I have to always expect that after new-sex I may be in pain for days. I can find lovers who don’t hurt me even slightly (thank you Daddy) but it’s rare.  And scheduling with those people is a constant drain and stress.  Or I can stay home and fuck Noah.

I can’t express what it is like for me to have a partner who is interested in sex any and every time I look at him.  Monogamy with Noah is not signing myself up for years of deprivation.  It is a different situation.  My previous experiences of monogamy were that monogamy mostly meant “celibacy”.  I am rabidly against getting myself into that situation again.  This isn’t that situation.  If we had adequate childcare we would find a way to have sex three times a day every day.  It’s different.

I have sex with lots of people because that is the only way for a woman to have control over how much sex she is having, in my experience.  My experience is that men are just as big of withholders as women supposedly are.  I think the Embargo is kind of a crock of shit because guys tend to like the idea of a woman who wants sex all the time but they turn nasty if you say, “Again” before they want it.  They can’t handle the pressure.  It emasculates them.  Monogamy with Noah is not as hasty as it sounds.

The only thing standing between Noah and the bondage abilities of my dreams is me developing the patience to teach him.  Noah is ok with being bad at things before he is good.  I’m not ok with bad experiences.  I am too cocky because I spent so long as a bottom I didn’t need much time to get good as a top.  Noah is interested in keeping me happy.  He puts great effort into doing so.  I didn’t know a man could feel that way about me.

Most of the men I have dated put very little effort into me.  There are some that are better at putting up with a lot of me, but they are not interested in changing for me.  They are just mellow guys who can ignore the difficult parts of women and enjoy the good parts.  Good for them.  I’m really glad they exist in the world.

Noah is the only person who doesn’t tell me that I am too angry.  Noah asks for clarification if my anger is about him.  If it is, we try to fix it.  If it isn’t he just goes about his life and acts like it is perfectly fine for me to feel that way.  Ok, he doesn’t talk much when I rant.  But he genuinely thinks it is ok I feel that way.

It’s really hard being told you are too angry all the time.  I was just barely angry enough to save my life.  I threw my fiancé against a wall when I was eighteen; that’s a lot of why I ran away from that relationship so hard.  I have kicked holes in drywall at least five times over the last fifteen years.  This week I kicked the cabinet doors.  The 1/4″ screws in the hinges didn’t appreciate that.  I punch things like trees more often.  I punch metal things so that I can’t break them.

That’s the whole extent of my acting out as an adult.  Other than that I just yell.  I don’t even yell all that much.  I just have a nasty tone of voice.  I was interested in the fact that people with Borderline Personality Disorder are known for their loneliness and it seems to be tied to growing up neglected and sexually abused.

Do you know why I feel lonely all the time?  Because I was angry as a child because I was being continually sexually assaulted and no one believed me.  No one had any interest in protecting me or stopping the assault.  When I lived in a house with twelve people I was told to stay in my room alone while everyone else had dinner downstairs because “no one wanted to put up with my mouth.”  When people constantly tell me I am too angry… fine.  I’ll just leave.  I know that no one wants to put up with my mouth.

I’m told I should just stop being angry and learn to be “nice”.  Be pleasant.  Don’t ruffle feathers.  I’d rather stay home.  I lost a friend this year because I got to a point where I could no longer be nice about behavior that was bothering me.  I was told adamantly that he was never sexist, racist, and he has absolutely no privilege at all.  I am just wrong.  There is nothing wrong in his behavior.  I disagree.  It is to the point where spending the afternoon together and having dinner is too much time because by the end I am so enraged at your casual dismissal of all experiences that differ from yours drives me insane.  I cannot sit near someone so encased in his own world he refuses to even acknowledge that other people are allowed to have different experiences.  I can’t do that any more.

I just stay home.  Not very many people visit and I think that will trickle away when Sarah stops inviting people over.  I don’t know how to have friends.  Apparently it involves feeling something I don’t feel: lack of anger.  I’m stressful to be around.  It’s really not worth it.

When I’m alone with the kids that’s just not part of what is going on.  Ok, I’m overly huffy as I move around doing chores but when I have the schedule down I’m not even real huffy.  I clean for 1-2 hours every morning.  I have a circuit I do.  I go check the white board and I do my chores.  Part of what appears “huffy” is that I am concentrating really hard because I am trying to figure out how to make the process go faster.  Where are the pieces where I can develop faster coordination (folding laundry) and where are the pieces that I have to go slooooooowly or it is pointless (vacuuming) etc.  When I am alone with the children they get up and help with a chore a day.  It’s different from day to day.  Sometimes they want to “help sweep”.  Sometimes they want to “help vacuum”.  Shanna is actually helping occasionally.  There are tasks I can trust her to do.  I stand there and watch her and talk to her about it.  She beams.  I thank her and tell her I’m so glad I get to have a little girl who wants to help me.

These things fall apart when someone else is here.  As soon as there is another adult in the room watching me work the children stop asking to help.  It is culturally normal to sit and watch the work, not do the work.  That’s what I grew up with.  When I lived alone with my mother, we worked together. When she was off at work I learned to take care of house stuff for her.  When she got home we read or watched tv together.  We were partners and buddies.  I could clearly see how my efforts resulted in her having more time and energy to devote to me.  And she did.  She had no one else.

When we lived with other people there was always something wrong with me and I should go away.  Groups are so terrifying to me.  I’m well aware of how it goes when one person dislikes you.  Soon there are two.  Then three.  After all, I am so angry and difficult.  Aren’t things much smoother and nicer and more fun when I am gone?

When I stay home with the kids alone we schedule fun.  We go to museums and parks and the zoo.  We go for walks.  We make big elaborate snacks together.  I know that I am solely responsible for providing all amusement.  Except when I’m not.  And my kids are ridiculously good at entertaining themselves while I do other things.

When I know that I am the only responsible one I make sure I am balancing their needs.  We need to do “learning type” activities.  I’m pretty vague at this point.  Mostly that means that when I read aloud I talk about letters more than normal and I sound words out and talk about phonics a little.  Like two sentences.  But my kid knows that there are two ways to learn words.  You can either memorize the whole thing, like Daddy, or sound it out, like Mommy.  I told her that Daddy actually has way more words in his head than I do.  But I get to sound just as smart because I can sound them out anyway.  She deemed that a neat trick.  She still isn’t interested in learning to read.  She is adamant.  That’s ok.  Even though it feels like pulling teeth I initiate art activities and sit and do them with the kids.  I am drawing.

I actually think that the next book I put together should be a childrens book.  I told my story in an adult way.  What can I say to my children to help balance out the things I do that are broken?  How do I make them understand that warriors are sometimes grumpy because they do hard things.  Warriors can be anyone–even Mommys.  It’s not about kids.  Kids didn’t do anything wrong.  Sometimes warriors are just grumpy.  You can choose if you want to be a warrior or not.  There are other paths available.

I don’t know how to explain to my children that my battles are just in my head at this point.  I actually already won.  I just don’t know how to believe it.  I don’t know how to feel safe.  I never have.  I don’t know how to learn that feeling.  I’m trying.  Part of how I am trying is monogamy.  I am deciding that from this moment forward I never have to worry about pleasing anyone other than Noah and myself.  It gives me a lot of freedom to try things.  And if people don’t like my anger, fine.  Don’t come over.  But I should invite more people over.  I don’t think it is truly that no one likes me.  I don’t exactly extend invitations.  I’m sure people feel like they would be rudely inviting themselves over.

True story: on Monday a friend showed up for dinner.  We uhm, were supposed to have dinner together, out, on the following Monday.  Instead he showed up right as things were tense and hard and uncomfortable with Sarah.  Because telling someone that moving is in their future is a god damn unpopular thing to say.  We had plenty, because Sarah is awesome like that.  I keep going back and forth between saying in my head, “Oh no!  What will we eat now?!”  And trying to acknowledge to myself that I am actually a good cook.  It’s just not my favorite chore.  We will eat just fine.  Like we did before Sarah moved in.  I was getting it done.  Just not with as much good cheer as Sarah.  That’s going to have to be ok.  It has to be ok to be me in my house.  I can’t spend the rest of my life apologizing for my tone of voice.  I need to figure out how to raise children who can know in the pit of their stomach that I am truly not angry with them when I have a negative tone of voice.  I need to figure out how to raise children who can love me for who I am and love themselves and know they get to choose whether they are angry or not.  So do I.  I choose to continue being angry.

There.  I’ve said it.  I don’t see much point in pursuing this “nice” that other people espouse.  I’m always terribly unhappy.  I always feel stepped on and kicked and ignored and… No.  That doesn’t work for me.  However, I want to be effective.  I choose to not try to give up anger.  I don’t see a point.  I think that instead I should look very carefully at where I am angry and why.  Then try to change that situation instead of trying to change my feelings about it.  How about if for five fucking minutes in my life I acknowledge that my anger is generally in service of my overall well-being.  It truly is.  It burns so hot because I spend a lot of time actively damaging my well-being.  I don’t think the problem is my anger.

In order to feel ok with myself when I am out dating I don’t say “no” to many activities.  I’m well aware that “asking for vulnerable sexual acts is harrrrrrrd and people need to be supported in doing so.  Well, that’s fine and all but I’m not new any more.  There is this major thing in the bdsm community around fetishizing “newness”.  Everyone wants to be the first one to tie up, spank, flog, whatever the fresh meat.  I’m an experienced bottom.  My first time getting suspended was nearly twelve years ago.  My ex specifically was very into “firsts”.  That’s a lot of why I am so bitter.  Once he had done something with me once or twice he had no interest in doing it with me again.  He wanted to go find someone else who was new to do it with.  Do you know why that is?  (In my judgmental opinion.)  When you are playing with someone new they have few preconceived notions.  They will take what you give them and say thank you.  When you play with someone experienced they say, “You know, every time you put a rope across my right shoulder like that I end up with pain in my arm for days, how about if we move it like ____.”  That’s uhm, harder to feel like a stud with.

I long ago exhausted Noah’s repertoire of standard tricks.  He’s had to go find new and exciting ones for me.  He’s had to adapt.  And in the process he has learned things about my body that no one else bothered to learn.  Even when I try to tell other people, they don’t really listen.  They want to do what they want to do.  They don’t actually have that much interest in me having the kind of experience I want to have.  No thank you.  I’m really ready to move into a period of my life where I only have sex with someone who thinks I am worth all the effort in the world.

Maybe monogamy is hasty and maybe it isn’t.  I think that after five years of marriage we actually know what we are getting into.  I’m ready to stop being angry with Noah for pursuing other women.  I’m ready to stop being angry that I am not good enough for him.  Yes yes, I should just work on getting over those feelings so we can both continue to grow separately and change.  I’d rather put all that effort into working to grow together.  I think there will be more pay-out.

I have spent a lot of time living in an individualistic subgroup in an individualistic society.  I want to be part of something.  The only thing I will ever really have in the whole world where I know unconditionally that the other people truly want me to be there is my marriage to Noah.  I sincerely doubt I will ever feel accepted and loved the way I do by him by anyone else.  I will always be just wrong for other people.

I’m sure this is codependence.  I’m ok with that.  I do have friends.  They just generally live far away or they are very busy or they are chronically ill.  I talk to them online as we can.  It’s kind of like way back in the day when people lived on more isolated farms.  I do see people occasionally.  But mostly I’m just going about the business of living with my family.  We are a fairly self-contained little unit.  We can figure out how to do this together.  I can’t figure out how to do this if I am feeling the whole time like what I want is wrong to want.  I don’t want to be pressured to be poly.  Do you know what pressure to be poly means?  It means that everyone else thinks I have no business closing my legs either.  I’d really like to set a high bar of entry for the rest of my life.  I am worth so much that the only person who gets to have sex with me is someone who was willing to marry me.  You have to be forever and ever madly passionately in love with me.  But I guess wanting that is too hasty.  I should leave room for the fact that in the future I will probably be in a different headspace.  I will feel compulsive.  Why should I shut down that compulsion?  Maybe because it isn’t worth the cost.

If I want good sex I have to deal with the fact that it means major communication with Noah.  Not just lots of words.  But specifically saying the hard things I usually try to avoid.  Ew.  I can avoid talking about those things forever if I just go through a series of new partners hoping to strike gold and just find someone to “meet my needs” that Noah isn’t meeting because he doesn’t understand what they are or how to do so.

I don’t want to be a complete individual.  I want to be part of a whole.  I want that with every piece of my soul.  I am tired of always fighting to stay separate.  Fighting to keep parts of me away from whoever I am talking to because they will criticize or tell me what I “should” do or tell me I am too angry or tell me “don’t hold back, tell me how you really feel” or they will seem perfect and then in the middle of the marathon sex they will take a break for thirty minutes and watch tv and ignore me until they decide they want to fuck again.

No.  I want to know what I am going to get in my life.  I want to know what kind of support I can actually expect.  I want to know how much effort someone thinks I am worth.  I want to know that someone is really doing everything in his power to make my life good and wonderful and this is the limit and please-God-let-it-be-enough.  So far in my life it hasn’t been enough.  I feel like that is a failing in me.

Noah has put more effort into accepting me for where I am than anyone else ever has in my life.  I will not get better than him.  Every day for the rest of my life I want to sit next to him.  I want to talk to him.  I want him to be the one I spend my time with.  I don’t really want to have a whole separate life.  I spend time away from him because there are things that have to be done.  But I’m happier when I’m doing my work in the same room as him doing his work.

Other people don’t have to live like me.  Other people don’t seem to need this kind of scheduling.  This kind of isolation.  This retreat into the safety of being alone.  I don’t feel lonely when I am with Noah.  Well, that’s not true.  When I think too hard about the fact that I will never have a family because they think I am a liar and a terrible person for saying that my father assaulted me and pressing charges and forcing him to die and forcing them to know about it.  That makes me feel lonely in a way that nothing can ever repair.  Mostly I just don’t think about it.  It is easiest to not think about it when I am with Noah.

Only now he is realizing that his childhood wasn’t what he thought it was.  And the kind of hole I have in me is something we will create in our kids if we completely keep them away from his family.  The kids need to know they are loved and wanted by many people other than just me.  Although I would give anything to know my mother really wanted me in a way that allowed me to be safe.  My kids will at least start off with that.  Hopefully it is enough to keep them safe from being like me.  Apparently being like me is just about the worst thing in the world.  I certainly feel like I can’t leave the house without people commenting on some part of me that is unacceptable.

I don’t even know if it is true or not.  I don’t know if it happens or not.  But Noah likes me and wants me and thinks I am worth a ridiculous amount of effort.  And a ridiculous amount of catering to.  Noah wants me to do whatever I want with my house.  And he wants me to have hobbies that make me smile.  And he is trying very hard to learn how to say and do things in a way that works for me.  He is trying to learn how to communicate in a way that promises only what he means to promise.  It means that some things need to be black and white because the gray is just too hard.  I don’t think it is too hasty to decide that monogamy is a good idea.  I think it is a good way to decide that neither of us enjoy dealing with my emotional tumult around him being non-monogamous.  We could spend a lot of time saying there is something wrong with me because I have those emotional issues and I need to get over them.  Or he can say, “It hurts you.  I’ll stop doing it.”  That isn’t healthy at all to do with everything.  He does still play video games and go see his friends and have time off and… He is very carefully picking his battles.  What are the things worth fighting for and why?  Fucking other people isn’t worth the effort.  The payoff is way too low for the amount of effort.

I like the rhythm of days where we manage to work together and play together.  Noah likes to be told “Do this list of chores by x time.”  He will wait till the last five minutes and rush.  I like to be given a really long period of time and I will space the work out so I get to rest in between.  That means I tell him, “On Thursday at 7pm I would like you to _______” not “Some time this week could you ____”.  Because if I tell him “some time” he may not get it done till Friday at 9pm I will be angry at him.  He was shooting for Saturday evening.  Whoops.

I don’t especially enjoy being angry.  I dislike the body load intensely.  But I think I’m done feeling upset with myself for being angry.  When I’m angry that means something is going on that I need to change.  I need to pay a lot more attention to that than trying to “stop feeling angry”.  That’s telling me to learn to dissociate more so that I just can’t feel it.  I don’t need that.

How can I build things that are just for me into my life while spending all my time with my kids?  I think this is going to be an interesting learning curve.  With every person who tells me that I shouldn’t want to be monogamous, that it’s too hasty, that it’s too… something.

I know that I have strong mood swings.  I do significantly better when I take as many of the “reasons” for those mood swings as possible in my life.  Having to always sit around and wonder when my husband will get the itch to step out on me… it’s not worth the cost.  Because the paranoia and fear can surface at any time because I really don’t know when it will happen or have any control over it.  (Yet another) Tom told Noah that his incentives are not in alignment with his goals right now.

Time to go do something else.