Category Archives: Uncategorized

Confirmation

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Today my oldest friend in the world came to visit with her mom. We were born across the street from one another and we are 4.5 months apart in age. So I asked the mom if she knew what was happening to me when I was my daughter’s age. She said yes. She said that all of the kids’ rooms had locks on the door and she asked my mom about it. My mother told her that the locks were to keep my father from molesting us, but she knew they weren’t terribly effective. I asked her why she never turned my mom in and she said, “You weren’t neglected. You were always clean and well dressed and you didn’t go hungry. There was nothing to turn in.”

I’m uhm, predictably not doing so hot. So far I have been assuming that the abuse started then because I remember my acting out starting so young. People knew. It wasn’t the secret I thought it was. They just didn’t stop it.

smks: ice cream

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Today we were at the store buying ice cream (consolation prize for vaccination day) and uhhhh Shanna lectured a guy at the grocery store. She asked him what kind of ice cream he was buying. He said vanilla. She said, “All the ones my mama looked at have corn syrup. And that’s not good….”
He looked at her funny. Then he walked out with his two half gallons of store brand vanilla.

Why I smoke pot

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I am probably not the typical stoner. I’m a stay at home mom of two kids. I didn’t smoke pot until my second pregnancy to deal with a recurring pain issue. Before then I had tried it a couple of times and really disliked it.

Trying to parent through a panic attack is far far far harder and more potentially dangerous to my kids. Trying to parent through being stoned makes me slow to react and thus there could be some safety issues. I minimize them by not cooking or driving while inebriated. If something bad enough to necessitate medical care happened I can always call an ambulance or we are friendly with several of our neighbors. Why do I feel like a terrible person for it?

On clean houses and class

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So my dear oldest friend in the world, Brittney, is coming to visit me today. She is doing so primarily because her mother is in town and her mother would like to meet my children. Brittney’s mother met me within days of my birth and has supervised to a greater or lesser extent our friendship of 29 years. It would be quite logical for me to want to “impress” Brittney’s mother. (for the record: Brittney reads this journal) So yesterday I felt like I should rush around doing the flight of the bumblebee making the house at least look completely neat and orderly even though it looks shabby and kind of run down. At some point while nursing Calli to sleep I had a great series of thoughts.

I’m thinking like a poor person. A poor person apologizes for the stains on the carpets, the chips in the paint on the wall, the weird cracks in the ceiling. A poor person notices and feels pain because a poor person can’t fix these blemishes. A poor person cleans everything to within an inch of its life and never has an item out of place. A poor person has to be visibly trying to look like a “good person” and feel shame about the visible slippage from grace.

But I’m a rich person now. My house is not degrading because I cannot afford to repair it. My house has not been remodeled because I would like to spend a month traveling in Europe this summer. We did not fix the interior of the house in favor of putting solar panels on the roof. We took out the lawn on purpose to reduce water usage and I haven’t gotten my act together to figure out a more visually attractive low water solution so my yard looks like crap. I don’t have better furniture because I fully expect my kids to absolutely destroy any furniture we have in the first few years and that’s ok and I don’t want to try to stop them. The list goes on.

My house is in various states of degrading because I bloody well don’t care and I have other things I want to do with our money. Ha! Flight of the bumblebee my ass. We played with Lego’s instead. 😛

Food for thought.

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Today my therapist said something very interesting. When I am meeting new people I should basically have it in my head whether I am facilitating Shanna having friends or am I looking for friends for me. Basically if I want Shanna to have friends I should deliberately not befriend the parents. I, somewhat predictably, have mixed feelings about this.

{milestones} Calli signing and sitting

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I am pretty darn sure Calli signed milk for the first time this morning. I was changing her diaper and she was fussing just a little bit. I told her, “I know you want milk. We will nurse right after we finish putting this diaper on you. She looked up at me gave me a look like, “You know you wanna…” and put her hand up and squeezed it. It was funny and appropriate and wheedling. When I finished and I started to lay down next to her she grabbed at me with both hands and started trying for a sit up with a wide open mouth lurching towards my breast. She absolutely knew what was going on.

And then she proved that on our couch (it has that ‘someone sits in exactly THIS SPOT’ lean) she can go from laying down to sitting with one lurch.

I remember Shanna hitting big milestone batches right around specific ‘ages’ too. 🙂 Today Callidora is six months old. Hard to believe she is this old already.

I was recently sent an email asking me to post more about my kids

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That’s a good reason to post! I can do that. It may not be too long because typing is hard at this angle. I do want some kind of documentation of the fact that after about two weeks of really hard, nearly nightmarish behavior from Shanna she has leveled up in terms of manners and interpersonal behavior. When she wants something from Calli she has said, “This is not my favorite! Calli, will you please share?” Then she waited till Calli dropped it and reached for a new toy. When asking for something from us she spontaneously says please way more often. It’s amazing. Yay! However the difficult behavior isn’t going away. Man are her emotions SO BIG right now. Her sandwich being cut wrong can result in a puddle of sobbing on the floor. I spend a lot of time sighing and asking her how I can be supportive. This will pass too. 🙂

smks: evolving manipulation

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Shanna came toward me trying to get at my pizza sitting next to me. I picked it up and moved it out of reach. Then she said: “Oh mommy I love pizza. Daddy let me share his pizza. Oh Daddy is so nice! Thank you! Thank you, Daddy! I love you soooo much. You are so kind. Hey Mom, can I finish the movie now?”

Yeah. There was follow up in my direction. Awesome. 🙂

It just keeps getting better.

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So yesterday was shit and today started out with heavy emotional processing. Today has also been shitty.

Weevil infestation in the pantry. So far I’ve thrown away 20 lbs of flour. Haven’t finished that clean up.
Ant infestation in the bathroom (it’s raining) with swarming because I left Shanna’s shirt on the floor and it was covered in yogurt.
Calli is teething and just can’t be made happy.
I had to let Shanna down and not make cookies today because of before mentioned weevils.
I can’t find Calli’s birth certificate anywhere even though I have picked it up already. So I’m going to have to go up to Oakland today and get a new copy.
Today or tomorrow I need to get some sort of letter/verification from a health care provider so that I can prove Calli is an honest-to-goodness person so that I can order her Social Security card.
Once I have the SSN and birth certificate I need to obtain a passport for her. We have less than four months till we leave the country and I may end up having to pay for expediting at this rate.
The information for the Mexico trip seems to have been lost in the mail. No one seems to have any idea what to do next.
I finally got all the information to finish making the reservation for the guy who is renting my DVC points and now he is pissy because they misspelled his wife’s last name. *sigh* THIS IS EASY TO FIX STOP CALLING ME HYSTERICALLY!!!

It isn’t noon yet and I want to declare today over and go to bed and cry.

So I got dumped yesterday.

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Not by my husband, by one of the women in my mom group. I got sent a rather hurtful email. To be defensive, because I always am, the hot sauce comment was not even vaguely serious. I would never do that. It was an unkind thing to say at all, but I don’t think this level of response was appropriate. And the ‘cold baths’ were tepid, just not warm and fun. I took zero pleasure in them and I don’t feel they were cruel. They were business like and not *fun*, but Shanna was not harmed in any way and despite not being fond of them she doesn’t seem traumatized by being in less than super warm water.

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smks: rule bending

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Shanna was making up a story about how she lost her toy necklace. Then she got to the part where she said she put it in the box with the new necklace up on my dresser. I glared at her a little (playfully) and said, “You got something off my dresser?” You could see her eyes go off to the side and she said, “Uhhh… no, never…I think that the necklace got put in the box in some way that meant I didn’t take it off the dresser. (big perk up) And that’s ok!”