Category Archives: Uncategorized

Great visit!

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I took Shanna to her first visit with a new pediatrician today. We switched insurances again so I had to start hunting from scratch. I like this chick a lot. She did her PhD thesis on Intergenerational Abuse Issues. That seems like someone I should maybe hook in with. She is tolerant though not enthusiastic about the really delayed vaccines. She didn’t have a problem at all with us skipping flu and chicken pox entirely. w00t. She was very willing to talk about best practices on parenting stuff and at one point she said, “It is so nice to talk to a parent who is educated!” I’ll be buffing my nails for a while after that one. She asked me pointed questions about a lot of our parenting choices and how we are going to handle support network/social stuff given our homeschooling plans but said that all my answers were the best they could be. I appreciate that. It’s kind of sad how badly I need the rubber stamp of someone in charge in order to verify that my copious research is actually correct.

And then we went off to start DTaP. The shot technician started off emphasizing the pain and how it was awful but it will be over quick. I told him to stop and then I sat Shanna on the table and we had a little chat about how it will pinch and probably not be her favorite thing ever, but shots are to keep us healthy and they aren’t that bad. I asked her if she could be brave and hold still and she did perfectly. The shot guy was really surprised. He told me he’s never seen a kid her age be so calm and collected. That surprised me. Really? Every single kid freaks out? If it is that pervasive then maybe he should think about the fact that his approach isn’t exactly reassuring. 😛

And the doctor was impressed with her vocabulary, counting ability, and ability to sing (almost all) of the ABC song. 😀 Yay kiddo!

Things I’ll never say

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Dear Sissy,

You are persistently asking, nay demanding, that I give you information about my pregnancy and Shanna’s current progress. You state that I haven’t wanted to share, but you can’t wait any longer for the information. I’m not sure why it is that you believe you “can’t wait any longer” but you are going to wait quite a bit longer, potentially into forever. I’ll explain why.

In the past year you have made it very clear that if I want to have a relationship it involves “forgiving you” of anything you do at any point. You stated to our brother that “that’s how love works.” No, that is how abusive relationships work. I do not have any obligation whatsoever to forgive people constantly of repetitive hurtful behavior. In fact, it would be strongly to my detriment to do so. I would be showing my daughter that I believe I deserve the treatment you give me by continuing to engage with it and I am absolutely unwilling to present such a view to my daughter.

You came to my house, where you were my guest and I had gone through a great deal of effort on behalf of you and your family, and proceeded to lecture me about how you have to assume all of the matriarchal duties because “No one else is going to do it.” Essentially you were letting me know that regardless of what you actually -do- you are my superior. I reject this version of reality on every level. You will never be the matriarch of any group I am part of. The reason for this is very simple: I have no respect for you. If you nominate yourself the matriarch of our family I will leave. I would prefer having no family over having to tolerate the abuse you consider standard in familial relations.

I will never send you this letter because just like every other text book abuser you would find a way to feel victimized and declare that I need to apologize for being so terrible to you. I am not terrible for pointing out the specifics of your inappropriate behavior I am being honest. I am taking responsibility for my own mental health and well being. I am accepting the overwhelming responsibility of modeling healthy, appropriate relationships for my daughter. I am no longer engaged in the cycle of abuse and I refuse to step back into it.

Sincerely,
Your Adult Sister

+/-

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+ Someone should be arriving in about half an hour for a play date
+ Great dinner with friends last night. Shanna was an angel.
+ Lots and lots of productivity this morning. I’m impressed with myself.
+ Feeling energetic and social. It’s nice.

– My laptop screen is dead. It fell off a very high shelf. Not sure if we can replace it ourselves and can’t really afford sending it in for repairs. Fuck.
– Shanna destroys stuff almost as fast as I can clean. It’s hard to find my zen with this.
– Even when I’m very productive there is still more to do and more and more and more and… it gets overwhelming.

Feeling social

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So I’m kind of generically energetic and social feeling today. So I figured it was worth putting out to the interwebs that it would be awesome to have people come over tonight. I don’t know for sure what we would do and I really haven’t figured out what to feed people (take out probably..) but! I’m a sparkling conversationalist and all. 😀

So come over! I don’t have a set time on this but keep in mind that I’m not a real late night person. 🙂

Fuck that exercise shit

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Ok, so compared to blacksheep_lj it doesn’t count as exercise. Thank all that is holy that I do not have to be compared to her. 😀 Sunday I worked the resale even and spent four hours standing and walking rapidly on concrete. That is a much longer block than normal for that kind of activity for me. Monday I went out with a friend and spent a couple of hours walking in a park. Last night we walked to the park with Shanna and that’s a good 2.5 mile loop without all the walking back and forth we did to add on it. And we did that at the speed of toddler.

Holy crap I hurt. I don’t normally do that much walking in three days. I used to, but I haven’t this pregnancy. I feel like my uterus weighs about 30 lbs and it is sitting right on top of of a sharp pointy bit (my cervix). It fucking hurts when I stand right now. Ok, so on a scale of 1-10 it’s only like a 3, but I’m not used to that hurting! Whine! My back and knees are very sore and unhappy with me because basically all of this walking was on concrete.

But I never got winded even slightly. I didn’t have to take breaks to sit down much. Once last night, once at the park and those were both more because I needed to change angles for my hips more than anything else. My legs aren’t tired at all. Oh good. I’m not nearly so out of shape as I thought. 🙂 My joints are going to hate me right now no matter what I do. Three days in a row was probably overly ambitious but I really should start doing this at least three times a week. I don’t want to get as out of shape as I did when carrying Shanna. 🙂

Good stuff

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Last night I spent some time with the California Mindfucker. I have some really awesome friends. 🙂 I really really appreciate that I can call up my friend the Master NLP practitioner and he’s happy to go hang out with me for a while and help me deal with some of my big painful mental issues and help me get my head on straight. That is just so rad.

To follow up on that: I’m really not so freaked out about the upcoming birth. There is still work for me to do there to get properly excited and to work on getting back in my body (I’ve been incredibly disassociated for a long time) but that’s not something he can do for me. He did a great job of taking the anxiety away and he was only mildly smug about it. 😀

It was probably also very useful for him to beat me over the head with the idea that if I was in trouble there would be droves of people who would show up to help me. On one hand I feel like I want to tell him it wouldn’t happen–people wouldn’t bother. But he’s right, people would show up. It’s kind of hard to wrap my head around the fact that even though people don’t have the time to spend with me all the time they would absolutely be there in an emergency. It’s kind of a weird sort of security. He pointed out that I am really good about showing up when other people have an emergency and that karma really does come back to you. Believing in that takes a kind of faith I struggle with but I’m trying.

And then I came home and talked to Noah about it and explained some of where the anxiety is coming from and he committed to being home for six weeks. It was looking like he was going to be home for a lot less time for this birth and I was really feeling upset about that and not being good about communicating my fears/needs/wants around this birth and when I got around to really saying what was going on for me he is absolutely willing to do what I need.

It’s been really hard lately expressing my needs. I have too many of them. I feel really bad for having so many needs. I feel like I am asking too much of Noah. I am avoiding talking to other people because I would rather sit home just not getting my needs met than risk asking and being told no. That hurts too much. I’m not sure what to do about the fact that there is a tremendous amount of stuff that is just not getting done because I can’t do it and I feel ashamed of asking for help. Pregnancy is the most humbled I have felt in my life. I don’t want to impose on anyone. It seems as though bad stuff is crashing down on just about everyone I know. Everyone is suffering right now and I just can’t add to that for anyone. So I just do without help. Noah and I are muddling through the absolute essentials, but there is a big gap between the absolute mandatory essentials and all the stuff that really should get done. It’s really hard when I think about the fact that much of it will have to literally wait for a year. That’s such a long time.

But! I made progress on one of my biggest points of anxiety. That’s important.

Wants vs Reality

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I want to travel! I want to go on a long train ride to somewhere I have never been. I think that would be wonderful.
Reality? If I were to travel it would be to drive back to Arizona to help Sarah unpack. But that’s not a financially good decision right now. (Noah will be taking unpaid time for the next birth so we have to be more frugal than usual.)

I want to clean and organize my whole house! I want to go to the nursery and pick out a bunch of plants for the yard! I want to figure out more nifty decorating stuff for the living room!
Reality? Once again I hit that wall of money. Damnit. I also have this little problem of if I am too physically energetic I feel shitty for days and I am at the start of a long week with Shanna. It would be foolish to kill of my energy reserves early.

I want cute clothes!
Reality? Maternity clothes are f’in expensive and mostly ugly. So yeah, not a lot of point there.

I want to go to parties! I want to have sex! I want to be social!
Reality? Babysitting is in short supply. Most of the parties we are invited to are not kid-friendly. Sex just… doesn’t work the way I want it to. Being social requires that I have more people in my life who are less flaky.

Fuss! 🙂 And thus I whine on the internet.

+/-

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+ BEST DINNER EVER- I need to find some way of sucking up massively to the wonderful woman who came over and cooked us fantastic Indian food last night. As I overate some of the leftovers for lunch (with that fucking fantastic pickle relish) I sat here almost crying from joy at how wonderful it was to have such amazing food. I really need to learn how to cook better. 🙂
+ Two nights in a row of getting to talk with smart, awesome, fabulous women. I win!
+ Flirtations (not even mine)
+ Awesome conversation going with a hippie/freak mama on okcupid. Hopefully that will work out into a playdate soon.
+ Best Husband Ever
+ Doing something about my fears

– Flakiness. Man am I sick of it.
– Being cold all the time. Why isn’t this pregnancy making me feel warmer!
– I’ve felt physically out of sorts for the last couple of days. Not sick, just off.
– mmmm temper tantrums
– People totally don’t post enough on livejournal. I’m looking at you!

{dirtier} Fishing…

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When I was pregnant with Shanna I really wanted to be suspended and do pictures of that. I never got around to it. Seeing as this is probably my last pregnancy I should hurry up!

There is a photo party at Edges tonight that I might actually be able to go to if Noah is feeling magnanimous. (I would have to go alone.) Otherwise it would be April 9th. Honestly trying for later than that is pushing it on my physical capability.

This would need to be a very comfortable suspension. I already have significantly increased blood volume and my pain tolerance is down pretty far. 🙂 Think artistic…

So yeah. I know a few folks who are amazing at rope but because y’all know who my first thought is “amazing at rope” and why I won’t be asking him I’m kind feeling… limited. I don’t know who has gained tons of experience in the past few years so I should approach them. Uhm, any ideas?

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I was out of the house all day yesterday and came home kind of cranky. I’m not feeling stellar today either. I always feel icki the day after dental work for some reason even though this was pretty mild in terms of dental stuff. I will try to respond to comments tomorrow when I’m being less of a pill. I’m not mad at anyone or cranky with anything you are likely to figure out. 🙂

In other news: the implant process is completely done. I have a ‘tooth’ in that spot for the first time in 2.5 years. It’s kind of weird.

Something else I’m thinking about

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I’ve noticed that with a couple of friends I have a particular issue. So my friends are eldest children and they were assigned a lot of child-minding duties growing up. They very automatically step in and start doing what feels like parenting my kid. I have mostly bit my tongue about this but I’ve felt kind of butt-hurt. Recently I started talking to one of the people in particular and I think that I’m having the feelings I’m having because I have so many issues with my own sister and her attitudes around doing the same thing. But I don’t like that I’m feeling this way about my friends. They aren’t my sister and they don’t behave like her at all. Even if there are some surface similarities in ‘caring for nearby children’ it’s just not the same.

Ok. I’m going to make a resolution for myself. I’m going to work on my butt-hurt feelings. In all seriousness these friends who take these kinds of self-imposed caretaking roles are going to be the closest my children have to family experiences. I really want my children to feel what it is like to have people other than me who love them and take care of them. That means I need to get comfortable with it and not fuck it up for them because of my issues. I really wish that the list of ‘shit to work on’ was getting smaller instead of longer.

(Shanna asked to watch videos so I got to type again. 😛 )

Brain dump

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I just kind of want to babble and I feel guilty doing it at folks on IM sometimes. 🙂

We bought into the Disney Vacation Club. It is probably not the very best timing ever given all the other financial schtuff coming up right now (teeth issues, birth, increased health insurance costs with the new job) but it’s not going to screw us over in any way. I have been feeling really trapped lately and just knowing that I have that ability to go to a hotel for a few days and it is already paid for is actually helping me feel less panicked. Not to mention that as I’ve had a few days recently of feeling fussy/not well I have really enjoyed the escapism of getting to look into possibilities for future vacations. It’s kind of like playing Lottery Fantasy only I will almost certainly get to actually do it. 😀

Loneliness comes and goes. I’m doing better than I was for a while. I have started scheduling specific time with a friend and it’s actually helping. Knowing that he cares enough to carve out a specific day every month even though he is pretty frantically busy is giving me a hefty dose of, “Yes I’m worth some effort.” It helps that he and I share some very strong core values of shared labor. Granted I can’t do a lot of physical labor right this minute, but I can provide a big vehicle that enables him to get supplies for his projects in a way that doesn’t cost him extra money. 😀 And he knows I will start doing labor as soon as I am able. And he loves my kid. 🙂 Stuff with other people is less predictable so I’m kind of hanging my hat on this hang-out with this friend. It’s a lot of pressure for him but he has indicated that he doesn’t mind. And it’s only once a month. 🙂

I’m strangely excited about the kids resale event this weekend. (www.outrageousoutgrowns.com) I’m selling stuff we don’t want/need and I’m getting a cheap thrill out of making at least a little bit of money on the stuff that we have already used as much as we want to. I’m hoping to make enough money to pay for the next size up in Shanna’s wardrobe. Given that I don’t spend much money on her clothes it is a relatively modest goal and I’m selling an awful lot of stuff. So it’s random but I’m excited. I’m less excited about going to drop the stuff off early tomorrow morning with Shanna because I have to place everything out on the sales-floor by myself. That’s going to be uncomfortable. It’ll be ok though. Would anyone have any interest in going with me to the sellers early buying time on Friday evening?

I think it is really funny that I have turned Fetlife into a place where I go to argue about parenting stuff. Not how I pictured that involvement…

I don’t feel all that present in this pregnancy, which is kind of a hard thing to explain. I had that lovely haze of pregnancy euphoria a bit for a few weeks a few weeks ago. Lately I just feel kind of clumsy and lazy but not particularly excited about being pregnant. I have constant low level sour stomach (it always feels wrong to call it heart burn) but Tums make me feel disgusting in a whole different festive way. I’m having trouble feeling really attached to this fetus. I’ve been feeling movement every so often for a while. I’m definitely growing. But… it’s like the miscarriages made me afraid to love the baby before it arrives. I don’t like feeling this way.

I’m having a hard time processing how I feel about the upcoming delivery and how I feel about Shanna’s birth in retrospect. I feel… kind of defensive. I feel like the fact that I got pain meds means that I can’t ‘really’ handle labor even though I never got to the point where it felt all that painful. I feel like I must be lying to myself about the experience. Even though no one has ever contradicted my experience of my birth in any way I feel like there must be people who think that I am weak because I went to the hospital. I feel overwhelming shame about the fact that I needed sleep that badly. Which is really pretty stupid. I know logically that I am not a wuss/weak/pathetic because I needed sleep but I feel like those things are true. I’m scared I am not going to be able to handle the second labor. I’m scared that if it takes a long time I am going to cave much easier and not see a point in fighting for a natural labor because I am obviously too pathetic to handle one. I really don’t know how to handle these feelings. This physical sensation of being too weak/pathetic is overwhelming and I can feel it shutting down huge parts of my brain/body. I know that being afraid is going to cause me problems. My labor with Shanna wasn’t painful until I was beyond exhausted and terrified wondering how many more days would go by before it ended. I really don’t know what to do with these feelings.

Shanna says I am out of babbling time today.

Followed up on the milk.

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I sent an email to our co-op host and she replied with a long winded version of, “I’m not doing anything wrong! Their receipt is messed up and I don’t know why!” I get the impression I’m not the first person to ask about it and she is feeling kind of defensive.

So I called the dairy. 🙂 The prices we are being shown on the receipt are the prices you get if you drive to the dairy yourself and pick it up. The driver of the delivery truck has a faulty machine and he has been told to stop using it. Apparently he was told a while ago and he isn’t following directions. We are being charged what my co-op host charges us.

Debs–the reason the whole milk is so much more expensive is because they make $9/pint on cream. They have trouble getting rid of the skim. 🙂 So of course they charge less for it.

So I’m glad I asked. I’m also glad I asked in a polite way. I’m also glad I followed up with the dairy because now there is no doubt in my mind that my co-op host is on the up and up. Yay for certainty. (I apologized for any perceived slight upon her character.)

And… a random whine.

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So I’ve been participating in a raw milk co-op for about a year. The co-op is presented as “everyone pays the price the milk costs plus a $1 delivery fee each drop off”. Not a problem. Last drop off one of my milks wasn’t there so the whole group had to share the cost of the milk. Erf, but ok.

Today I looked at the receipt left with the milk because I was the first person to pick up. The prices listed were $3/skim milk and $5/whole milk. Thing is, she charges us $4.75/skim and $6/whole. Uhhh… wait a minute. If she wants to charge a markup and make money, fine–but be fucking honest about it. And why in the fuck do I (the only person who buys skim) pay a much steeper markup than the whole milk people?! That seems inappropriate. And why is everyone charged a delivery fee when she is already making money?! And why do we have to share out the cost of a fuck up when she is already making money?!

I’m feeling cranky. If I’m going to be fucked over on the cost of milk I might as well buy it at a grocery store where they are at least honest about fucking me over.

Question month!

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“Consider your five senses: hearing, sight, touch, taste, & smell.

which one would you surrender first? which one would be last?

and just a couple lines of why.”

Well, seeing as I have a disease that is known for causing deafness I’ve had a long time to come to grips with the idea that I will end up deaf. But if I had to choose which one I would give up it would be smell. I’m not particularly focused on olfactory stuff. I have a hard time breathing out of my nose so I think I miss many/most smells anyway.

Last would be sight for me. I would have a very hard time adjusting to the kind of limits blind people have. I know many who still have awesome lives, but they have no choice but to accept help that would be super hard for me.

Question month!

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“What’s your taking on “poly” vs. “dating”, as discussed here: http://fd-midori.livejournal.com/377749.html ?”

– Your definition of each
– Compare & Contrast
– Pros & Cons of each
– Does it ever morph from one to another? Does it ever morph back?
– Are there perceived social status or greater cool-factor to be in one or the other?
– Peer pressure for one or the other?
– Role models for either?
– Source of information about how to have poly relationships or how to date
– Myth around poly, myth around dating

– In my very humble opinion dating is casually spending time together to see where things will go. Poly is about being open to multiple serious relationships. You can date while you are poly.
– Dating can be done by people who are monogamous or by people who are poly. Dating doesn’t have a requirement to be ‘exclusive’ though people can choose to use it that way. Dating essentially means you have no commitment to anything serious in the relationship. Poly in my opinion involves having some level of commitment with the folks you are dating. It doesn’t have to be super formal or defined in great detail, but there does have to be the assumption that you take one another pretty seriously and you aren’t going to disappear without notice.
– Pros of dating: no commitment, freedom to be ‘single’, no relationship boundaries on your behavior.
Cons of dating: you don’t necessarily have a good idea what the other person wants from the interactions, you may or may not be looking for the same kind of eventual result as the person you are seeing.
Pros of poly: more people who are committed to you means more support, possibly more sex, the ability to get needs met by disparate people, the freedom to explore many more aspects of yourself than is generally allowed in monogamy.
Cons of poly: you have to juggle the needs of multiple people, scheduling can be a serious bitch, you need to have an extremely high skill level at communication for it to work, you need to ensure you are only involved with people who are very emotionally mature or it descends into a drama clusterfuck.
– Sure it can move in either direction. Depends on the level of commitment involved in your interactions. That’s up to the individuals.
– There is absolutely a ‘coolness’ factor to poly these days. If you are casually dating multiple people with the understanding that once you figure out with whom you want to be in a Relationship and then the other dating situations end you are viewed as limited, narrow minded, unevolved, and sometimes even mean because you were ‘stringing those other people along’. I think that general society has an unfair expectation that people take any dating situation Seriously. I don’t think it’s good for people.
– I don’t think there is pressure to be poly in the general societal pool. 🙂 There is still a strong push in general society to take any/every dating relationship and require it to be a Relationship. People are not really encouraged to casually date if they are monogamous and that’s kind of sad. In the queer/bdsm circles I’ve traveled in there is enormous peer pressure to be poly. I think is mostly because the folks who choose to be active in the public scene are people who are hunting. People are privately kinky all over the place and don’t feel the need to be around ‘the scene’.
– For me personally or for people in general? For me personally I know a few individuals who are fuck-you good at poly. Daddy Joe comes to mind. His extended web seem to by and large have their shit together and I respect that a lot. For people in general I think the ones that are always trotted out are Janet and Dossie because they wrote the book. 🙂 I don’t think there are role models for dating. Maybe there should be.
– I know there are many books on poly but the only one I am personally familiar with is The Ethical Slut. The closest I can come to a book on casual dating is The Rules and it really makes me shudder. It does point out that people shouldn’t be exclusive until it is serious.
– I think there is a pervasive myth that if you are poly you will fuck anyone anytime and it’s not true for the majority of poly folk. There are also a lot of assumptions about how poly relationships work and it is nearly impossible to determine how people structure their relationships without asking. I think that one of the biggest myths about dating is that it has to be exclusive. It really doesn’t.

You can ask me a question here.

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(part of the question redacted to preserve the anonymity of the asker)
“Speaking consensually of course, what sexual experience do you think of as the hottest you’ve had? And to be balanced, what sexual experience was the biggest let down/least hot?”

Hm. Hrm. Man this is where my shitty memory causes me problems. It’s a good thing my lovers don’t tend to have thin skins because they could get their feelings hurt by how badly I remember. This is something you aren’t supposed to admit in public but really it has to be sex on drugs. There have been a couple of uhm, altered, experiences that were so incredibly intense and overwhelming that straight sex has just never been able to compare to. I know it’s not pc and all… oh well. My memories of it have to keep me warm while my body is out of commission for such activities. 😀

Although if you want a (mostly) sober experience there was that time in Carmel with Noah. It was the first time we were dating [uhhh, before I dumped him and all] and he got me fairly drunk and introduced me to the wonderful world of anal sex. That was completely hot and wonderful and scary and overwhelming and fun.

If I reveal the biggest let down I’ll hurt someones feelings. So yeah. I’m skipping that one because despite popular opinion I do occasionally have tact. 😛

You can ask me a question here.