boyfrond

boyfrond @ 2017-11-13T08:53:00

2017-11-13T16:53:20Z

Happy birthday a bit early. Hoping your endoctoring is everything you wanted and you are very happy. May next year continue to bring you love, success, and happiness. :) all my best.

entry and stuff

2014-10-06T21:48:11Z

I'm supposed to write about crossing your "t"s, and dotting your "i"s, I guess. A metaphor, about making sure... to have all your ducks in a row. Another metaphor, shaken, not stirred. I sit here, feeling uninspired, worn and tired, soon to be fired, my job expired. Right. Back on track. Taking a few minutes, while the children are playing quietly, having put the rest down to nap. Just a metaphor, because the act of actually making sure your letters are finished comes automatically, as an adult, unless you're writing longhand. I hate longhand. And we all use computers so much many of us have terrible handwriting. That's my excuse, and I'm sticking with it. Truth be told, I can't remember learning to write. Isn't that almost criminal, while I teach children to hold pencils and get their ABCs to paper, that I can't remember what it was like to learn myself? "QUIET!" I hiss. Whoops. I need to tell them to be quiet, so they don't wake up the other children.
Be right back.

I can't, though. Now, the metaphor? I feel like I'm STILL learning to cross my Ts. My last employment situation had so much paperwork and so many inspections I had my licensor's home number speed dialed, and, pardon my French, they were so far up my ass they knew if my tonsils were in compliance. That's just a metaphor, they had very little to do with my ass. Except that time my licensor had me bend down to make sure I didn't have plumber's crack showing. I didn't think it was any of her business, but I let her check, anyways. I guess some people feel weird about licensing men to watch children. Now I'm an employee, and there's a whole different set of Ts to cross. How to approach a two-year-old, number of interactions per hour to make sure you maintain, number of words to avoid, in between numbers, trying to form myself to a new set of expections while I contort more like a lowercase q or z. Letters. I haven't written anyone a letter in forever, or hardly received any, it feels like. I have some nice cards on my fridge from the parents of the kids I just sent to kindergarten thanking me for helping their kids learn to write, and cultivating a love of reading. funny. I don't think anyone would have me teach anyone to write if they were watching me flounder now. Whoops, the two wakeful kids are arguing again, and I really need to check on them - they have markers.
Be right back.

No, I can't remember learning to write, even my name. I do remember turning letters into a cool pictogram that represented my name, printing each letter over the other so my name was written in the space of one letter. Things your kids might do if you give them names they can write in three or four letters - none of your Phillips or Theresas will. Oh, right. Sorry, it's 2014. None of your Tristans or Sueanna Christals. I knew someone named their boys Qim and K'ael once. I wonder if they're still named that - they'd be teenagers now, and I can't imagine sticking with that. heh. Says Zed. I'm sitting here, not getting my writing done for Idol. This is the only time I've made to do it in, if I don't, I'll be disqualified, again. But I have to go take care of these kids, I've got my own "t"s to cross. I feel more star-crossed than "t" crossed. They're arguing again.

I'm back. They were arguing about whose name something was. I mean, they argue over that all the time. Sometimes they'll argue over whose mommy "mom" refers to, when they say it. "My mommy." "No, MY mommy!" "NO MY MOMMY!" They like their mommies. I read the Big Pumpkin book, and after the witch, the vampire, and the ghost, when the mummy comes in, everyone's always really happy. They like their mummies, too. I think they think she's just a funny-looking mommy, because they always say "mummy!"

Today, though, they're arguing about letters. One's crossing his T. He says it's his. But the other boy says it's for HIS name. But his name doesn't start with a T, so I don't know. I get them both new pieces of paper, this one is crumpled and ruined. If I weren't trying to keep them quiet, I'd put the markers away. They're both starting over. Tristan's crossing his T.

And Isaac's crossing his I. Of course. Gotta cross your Is, too.

His mummy told him so.

may write more on this, may not. depends how I feel in the morning.

2014-09-30T09:05:51Z

Swae's face tipped and turned as she stepped past the concrete wall into the wind, trying to find an angle where neither wind nor sun harried her, but home lay straight ahead, some ways ahead under the setting sun. She pinched her lips shut, ducked her head, and tripped out into a light jog, ignoring the heat and dust. Everyone knew it was best to stay out of the light if you wanted to live old enough to worry. She picked her way carelessly up the crumbling steps and over the dusty ridge, evidencing her care for her mouth and eyes while she moved down into the ruined neighborhood. Neither behind her nor to any side did she check, because she knew as well as any child that there were no strangers to worry about, no beasts to harry or disturb their rest. Apart from the wind, the Willamette valley was as quiet as a tomb.

When she was six, she asked her only friend Micheal whether there were other people. “Why would you ask that?” he said, seeking eyes sweeping her face for jokes. Sometimes, when she was playful, she'd made up stories. A building full of food, cars moving on the streets. “I just thought there should be. It seems like it.” “No, child. We here are the last, there are no other people.” “Oh.” Swae seemed to ponder this answer for a minute, before nodding. “How do you always know what things are called? Did you make these things?” “No, I didn't do much of anything with myself before the war.” “What's a war?” “Go find us something to eat tonight,” was all he'd said. So she'd gone out, but the question sometimes bothered her.

Her pack banged into a rock, and startled her back to the present. If people back in the Garden had known what had been coming, they might not have fought so hard, she thought. Life is a pain in the ass. As she came back to the camp, the wind kicked up slightly, and the old building moaned. It wasn't so bad, though, at least she didn't think so. Suddenly, remembering seemed too hard, and she felt the weight of how tired she was like another lump in her chest. She shouldn't have to be alone this long. The stories he'd told her were all full of groups of people, stories about traveling together and going to meet new friends. She liked stories. As she moved, her knee scraped away a streak of a color she loved, like the sky but different, the same as on some of the cans of food she ate. Favoring her scars, she started to draw pictures in the gray dust on the floor, frowning sometimes when she tried to think of how a word should look when you drew the picture.

Roughly translated, the green words read:

“If your world seems hard and grim
and small and people closing in
open yourself to love and hope
lest ye be me, lest ye be me.”

The scream of an entire people was quietly choked back as she lay her head all the way to the floor, her breath caught roughly, then faltered and was still.

boyfrond @ 2014-06-30T00:52:00

2014-06-30T07:52:01Z

Once upon a time, in a small town near the ocean, lived a family of crazy people. Some days they could speak, and some days they could work, and some days they could sleep, but it had been a long time since they could all speak, and work, and sleep at the same time. In their town, they lived in a house together, a boy of ten, his mother, and her grandmother. The boy was grateful to have such a family, but because of the family's difficulty speaking, he did not know that anyone else in the family ever had problems. He would creep from his bed, creaking down the stairs to the chest where his great-grandmother kept toys from his grandmother's childhood, and wind them up, one at a time. The bear, whose fur had worn thing and hung loosely away from the metal legs in places, the horse, whose head went up and down, and the train whose springs barely worked would then buzz their way around him, their insides grinding together as if they might stop any moment in protest and just fall to pieces. When he listened to the sounds they made, he felt like he might not be so different after all, if he just could stay here, cheek pressed into the dirty oriental rug, the cool darkness under the cabinets and tables occasionally rustling almost imperceptibly as the rug moved against his chest when he breathed. Then his great-grandmother would peer through her spectacles, shake her white straight-plaited hair with difficulty, and go back to her Bible, and he felt as though perhaps it was no use after all. Sometimes, when his mother returned home not too late, he thought perhaps he could tell her, but when she smiled, he couldn't figure out what to say and she said something reassuring about him being tired. Once, he actually did manage to speak, but that was a day when she could not, and when he looked at her, she simply pressed her mouth into a small line and said she was tired.

In point of fact, the only place he consistently felt at home was in a place where nobody should have felt at home at all. The people in the town had dug a ditch through the middle of town a hundred feet deep, and as they wheeled past it, they would throw broken furniture dump carts of discarded knick knacks over the edge of the bridge, down the gravel scree and onto the green floor where ivy and shadows twisted together under the clouds of mayflys which never disappeared. A long pipe had been lain in the bottom for the overflowing rains to sluice through, and the noissome stench hung damply in between the firs and under the bracken, safe from winds that might dissipate the nearly visible humidity.

Why he went into the tunnels the first time, I can't say, but as he stepped rung over rung into the dark, the noise joined him like a friend whose constitution prohibits manners or gentleness, hammering on his eardrums in a cacaphony of rushings, gurglings, and whinings all crashing along the tunnel into a black wall of white noise, dizzying the senses and blinding the mind's eye. Before he made it out, he'd tripped and fallen into the shallow water, the funk of years of slow-moving water and drainwater and god-knows-what lingering in his clothes when he returned home. He was sent into the bathroom with a quiet declaration to scrub and lather it out of his hair.

I don't know what he saw down there, but he went down many times after, screaming into the rushing sound, judging by the echo he could not here and the change in air pressure how far he was from the wall. After a while, he stopped touching the walls to ascertain his location, and eventually he learned to predict the walls, looming darkly out of the inky black like invisible sparkles in the bottom of a well at night. Sometimes the new senses didn't work, and he would come home with scrapes from walking into low ledges, crowning himself in the dark on harsh concrete edges and reeling with pain in the roaring, tepid trickle.

It wasn't long after he'd been beaten up by the neighbor boy that he tried to cross the ocean. The older boy had pinned him, muscles shoving brutally into his nose and mouth and teeth, punching him as he could under him. When the younger boy's teeth bit down as hard as they could, somehow, everyone was surprised, even me. When he went to the ocean, he knew he was going to be in trouble for leaving the house. "Going to be a while, it's all going to be a while," he thought. Perhaps he was trying to make the time count, I don't know. What I do know is, when they found him on the other side, he was gripping a piece of wood and lying half across it, murmuring about needing to study. The police never got his name, and it wasn't an hour before he gave them the slip, staggering out a door and through an alley. It was much later when someone explained how close he'd come, standing on the pebbly shore, staring across the narrows. Thirty yards, thirty minutes, they give an adult in those waters. The sun doesn't warm them enough to make them safe in the summer, but shining on his back, it had done its job as he floated nervelessly across the narrows.

The next time he went back into the tunnels, he knew he could go further. Peering out through grates under the cobblestone roads, he wondered what would happen if it started to rain heavily while he was down there. He'd probably die, he supposed, and swallowed, blinking hard, willing light to appear before his retinas. Panicking, he stumbled back along the way he'd come, stepping into the open space under the manhole he'd come in at. There was no light, this time. Clawing his way up the rungs in a dark blacker than the shadows of evenings, he tried to budge the plate on his entrance. Nothing moved. He pushed again, and slipped, the rebar clipping him on the chin sending him over backwards into the darkness.

The darkness nearly ate him that night, before he scrabbled out of a drain nearly a mile down the tunnel. Limping back along streets he'd never walked on, he arrived home, almost at dark. The cat pushed his head into his hand as he returned, then recoiled in surprised disgust at his dampness.

After that, his grandfather bought them a computer, and the little boy didn't lurk out so late. His dog bit a neighbor girl, and he mostly avoided friends after that. Sometimes, he would sing to the trees where he used to climb down into the darkness. The plate covered up the dangerous hole, too heavy by far to lift, fastened uselessly down for safekeeping. The metal glinted through the corrosion where it had been levered into place, cheerful and unknowing.

He often felt lonely in the rest of his life, but never again would he feel that same terror he did in the tunnel. The darkness had given him the name of his best friend who would never leave when all hope was lost--

--gave him his name, my name. I ride along with him, up here, looking out. He's older now, and he looks it. Sometimes, I feel about the same. Young, scared. I'm the voice inside. I watch, when things happen. If there's a decision to be made, I may too busy, but usually? I'm just along to watch and think. Sometimes I make him think. He and I asked Mom this last year about it. "Crazy?" she said. "Trouble talking?" "I bet everyone has that sometimes."

Maybe so, mom, but I don't know. I don't think everyone's like this. Those of us in the dark, we know who we are. Sometimes, I'm still in the dark, trying to remember people's names or understand how I should talk to someone I'm supposed to know what to do with. But I think Mom understood. She got me a book, and when I was four, way after I could read it for myself, she'd reread it over and over for me. The book said,

"If every flower was like every other,
you wouldn't know who was your sister, or brother
and if every flower was just the same
'Flower' would be each flowers' name."

Yeah. I think she got it.

boyfrond @ 2014-06-19T16:32:00

2014-06-19T23:32:58Z

It had been nearly three weeks of grey moods when she found the Thing. That morning, after dragging herself to an almost sitting position, she had almost wondered aloud whether something was wrong with her. Moments seemed to appear as out of a fog, unintroduced and seldom remembered. When she saw it, time stopped to blink. It stood, chewing the skin off its lower lip, and attempted to to sidestep around the moment awkwardly blocking its path.

"What" she mumbled inarticulately. It sounded harsh in her ears, sincere but awkward for lack of recent practice. She wondered briefly if she was losing her mind, but this seemed altogether too creative for her depressed subconscious. Red paint flaked cheerfully in the sun at her; rough-hewn staves stood almost cartoonishly bow-legged, bound round with iron rings.

As the beginning of a much better stage in her life rocked gently against the porch, she could only stare. Screeching sound of timbers being prised loose, gentle hooting sounds with higher screeching. Briefly, she wondered if she should be worried as the first furry form launched itself onto her wisteria vines, scrabbling up onto the roof and out of sight. Gawking, she had no time to worry where it had disappeared to when the next rolled out and loped forward on hands and feet. The situation was too ludicrous for words.

In fact, it really was. The Thing that arrived in her life wasn't ACTUALLY a barrel of monkeys, but it was just as fun. And things DID get better, a LOT better. And they kept getting better, most of the time. It wouldn't be the last time she felt down, but she never felt as lifeless as she had that year again. She was one of the lucky ones, and she was happy to have the life she had, even if it wasn't perfect.

Someday, I believe, we will ALL be one of the lucky ones. Please, God. Let us find the new day, more fun than a barrel of monkeys, ridiculous as a fish wearing a bowler. We can adjust.

:)

boyfrond @ 2014-06-09T00:06:00

2014-06-09T07:06:39Z

Kids, man. We tread gently with them, because we know that our footprints look much bigger on a child-sized canvas, and that the project they're working on, growing up, takes marks easily. We try and help them be able to make the decisions that will make their life richer, happier, more functional. We remind them to not hit, we stop them from getting into more trouble than they can handle. Sometimes, they make this difficult. Sometimes, they come into the daycare looking to pick a fight with a grown-up that day, and all you can do is help them figure out the mess of their day they plan on making. Sometimes, my job isn't about teaching them to be nice, or showing them consistent boundaries with real-life, connected consequences to good and bad decisions, sometimes my job isn't about helping them to be able to ask me using please or to tell me what "hello" is in Spanish. Sometimes, my job is to show them how to make a path forward from the moment they're in to another moment in time, because, in their frame of reference? That doesn't happen. They can't, and it won't ever move forward. So, in the moment,

I close the door. I can still hear him wailing, occasionally belting out a higher shriek to shiver the door still under my fingers. Today it was about a cup, I think, but he didn't give me long to figure out what about his current situation wasn't working for him before he began kicking the table and screaming and knocking stuff about. Kid's 4, now, and as much as I want to simply help change his world to keep his temper, this is gonna wreck his day. I take a deep breath, give a backward glance to the table of curious children staring and talking and laughing. I finish the rhyme I'd been doing almost unconsciously with the rest of the kids to try and steady the Situation, I ask a girl if she knows "Jingle Bells, Batman Smells" and while she's formulating a thought, I give her a smile, point to my assistant who opens their mouth to sing with the kids and slip through the door in the drop in decibel.

He's still hollering, occasionally choking on tears and the tearing sensation of his own throat. Two minutes and everything's a disaster forever. He can't remember right now what he was doing today before the cup that was the right color got grabbed by another kid and was replaced with a cup of the wrong color and his attempt to grab it back was thwarted. If he hadn't gone straight to things I'm supposed to teach him not to do, I'd have been there to give him backup, too, but. Even if he's already 4, he's just 4. And a half, he says, but he's not. Kids these days, turn "and a half" a week into their new year, the way they tell it. I realize I'm still standing here making useless shushhing sounds he can't here and sit down with him on the couch. "Hey, hey, hey, there. Let's fix this, I want to help you," I say. My voice is low, louder than it should be, but if it's any quieter he won't be able to hear me at all. A variation in pitch informs me that he's heard me and is mostly interested in me hearing him scream. I slide him over onto my lap, and he kicks me in the knees a couple times before I adjust him to be more comfortable / not be able to kick me. He shoves down with his hands and makes his body a rigid pole between my knees and chin, which hurts, but when he collapses back onto my lap, all I do is fold my arms a little around him and murmur "shhh. Are you OK?"

"NO!"

Well, now we're getting somewhere. "What's up? You can tell me, but we can't go back in there till you're not screaming and kicking." Whoops. Scream, kick. "Come on, buddy. I think there's another blue one, but you're gonna have to say sorry for hitting when we go back." As he takes another breath, I see that this isn't about the cup. I see in his eyes a bit of confusion in with the upsetness. He's not really sure WHY he's this upset - he just is. Something we'll have to talk about later at circle time. I have literally NO IDEA at this moment, I just can't even. He wants to yell for a while, but he's gonna be SUPER upset if he just sits and yells while everyone else does For The Golden Corn. Not that he likes that song anymore, he's usually wayyyy too cool for that. He's 4. Suddenly, I remember a time when I was his age when I got so upset about something that, after kicking my mother and being put on a chair, first thing I did was go and rebel by sticking my thumb in a light socket. It hurt. While the memory helps a little with empathy, it doesn't help at all for tactics. I'd rather not zap the children with electricity to help them emotionally uninvest in tantrums. Their parents would probably object.

"What would you like to do after lunch?" I ask. Eyes are a little bit mad, but mostly upset. Screaming gets quieter. "I'm not sure there's going to be room with the bubbles, but I need a helper with the play dough. Last time it came out too sticky." Louder again. That was too complicated. "So maybe you could come join us, for now. And we're going to see For The Golden Corn. And have lunch. But AFTER, we can do something nice: play dough or bubbles. If you want." Carrying on has been reduced to a manageable level by this point. I just don't want to bring him back in where I'd have to ignore his noise to get lunch on. If I were making this noise and nobody paid any attention to me, I'D be upset. "I'd really love to have you come in, when you're ready. You can call me ANY TIME, okay?" Still shuddering a bit, but things may be OK. Time to anchor. "Hey, ____. I love you; you're my favorite ____." Which he is.

I slip back to the other kids, and I'm about to give up and start lunch when the yell comes, a little hoarse, a little sad.

"I'm reaaady!"

And the lesson gets learned again, and I learn it again with him. What's just happened, the way things have been and what is RIGHT NOW can still connect into another moment.

If we let it.

boyfrond @ 2014-05-29T17:35:00

2014-05-30T00:35:20Z

If you came here to help me, you are wasting our time

but I don't mind.

If you came here to help me, you are wasting our time

but I like that you wanted to.

If you came here to help me, you are wasting our time

," I said. Sometimes I am most proud when I am declaring that I'm hopeless.

If you came here to help me, you are wasting our time

and I still feel bad about the people who invested so much in me when I was younger. Boy, what a disappointment THAT was.

If you came here to help me, you are wasting our time

cuz probably nobody can help anybody on the important things anyways. for once, time to stand on my own, I think. oh, Lord, that sounds scary - how will I manage?

If you came here to help me, you are wasting our time

look at this! look at that! THERE IS TOO MUCH and really, I don't believe that you mean it - I need help with, like, a lot.

If you came here to help me, you are wasting our time

I don't even always like what you say, and if you'd just come by and be able to cope and deal with how things are for a minute, I'd trust you more, but your constant meddling isn't appreciated. You think watching me like this is hard for you, and I should care? Yeah, fuck you, Mom. :)

If you came here to help me, you are wasting our time

you could help me from anywhere, really - ask me what I need, it's stuff I can hand off to you where you're at, mostly

THINGS TO DO:
find a place to move into for the daycare
pay bills
assemble better display spots for child work so parents can see kid work at a glance
fix my teeth ( ! :( )
mop
wipe down the toilet
clean my own apartment
cook dinner
shop for tomorrow
make sure the daycare has a tomorrow that doesn't crash and burn
make sure that if the daycare hasn't crashed and burned tomorrow that there is enough business still there for the daycare
run the daycare while it possibly is or is not crashing and burning today
run the daycare after it has or has not crashed and burned tomorrow
be alive tomorrow so I can run said daycare
scratch my back

actually
if you have come here to help me

thank you. I really appreciate it and I have a couple things that I keep meaning to get done that I'm embarrassed to ask anyone for help with but could really use it. Also, would you please scratch my back? My left shoulder blade REALLY itches.

smile and keep working. it will be Ok (probably).

2014-05-19T07:06:21Z

From 7:30 to 5:30, I smile and work. I scrub counters and floors, heft children onto my hip and greet parents, change diapers and serve snacks. When children put six crayons in the fish tank, I smile and work. When my landlord who is my mother who is my landlord tells me she thinks my work is a fool's errand until I go back to college, I smile and work. When parents ask about my signifigant other who has left, I smile and say she's fine, and work. When an inspector comes in and asks for paperwork that should have been done but isn't I smile, and work. This job only requires two things: kindness and patience, and if I can make it to the end of today, it will somehow be OK, as long as I smile and work. I have no idea how to get where I am going, and precious little understanding how things even got as far as they have, but tomorrow comes early, so I smile, and work.

And they ask, as though I have the answers, how to be a parent. How to react when children scream, or throw. Is it normal to not talk sometimes? How about a lisp? What should they do if their son is afraid of other boys at the park? If their daughter is not trying new foods?

Sometimes, I have answers. But always, there is the smile, and confession: I do not have children. I do what I do, because at 5:30, they go home, and then I do not have to smile all the time. I may decide the work left will wait until tomorrow.

But tomorrow comes early, and I will smile, and I will work. Hello how are you. Have a great day. Your daughter tried to break the door today. I mean, she drew a picture with her best friend. Here it is - I have not seen her socks, no, they are probably in the laundry. Please wash your sons' boots: they have pee in them. I am sorry. I will see you next week.

I am not yet quite expert at this grown-up thing, and sometimes the children are waiting for me with their parents. Have you been here long? Yes, I am fine, I am simply out of breath perhaps. Yes, I should buy a better alarm.

Tomorrow comes early, and I do not mind. No matter what happens, I will smile, and I will work. If I get a moment alone inside with an assistant, I will swear about the weather, or perhaps my family.

keep calm, and _________. Do the thing. Smile. Work. It will be all right, and I'm doing the best I can. at home, sometimes, I say I do not know where this is all going, but I will pretend. On the weekends, I take training courses. They say I am doing a very good job except that my oldest boy is very interested in swinging a cloth around and roleplaying being shot and I should help him process this. So far, I ask him not to do this, and he is OK with this, except when his best friend is there twice a week. Except on those days, he would rather know whether he can have another bagel.

I will keep calm, and smile, and work. If I cannot keep calm, I will just keep smiling, and working. If I cannot smile, then I just pray that people will forgive me somehow. Tomorrow will be OK again. It will ALL be OK.

even if I'm not sure how. :)

On taking a job before you're ready

2014-05-08T23:59:29Z

sometimes, the only way to learn to do something is to try.

In January 2013 I had been working at a daycare run by my mother off and on for four years, I think? From full-time to occasional part-time to two harrowing weeks during my grandfather's hospice care where I was taking care of ten four-year-olds entirely by myself, I had gotten used to having someone else, at the end of the day, take care of the big question about whether or not things were working out. I just kept the kids safe, handled certain chores, and spent some greater (or lesser) effort to restore the environment to a state that could be opened in the following morning. Teaching reading, potty training, conversations with kids who were used to feeling in trouble all the time about empathy and gentle behavior - it's amazing how much you can learn when you're just sort of stepping into new experiences one thing at a time. But then something different happened.

My mother, owner/operator for the last several years, from older kids to barely twos, had hit a day when she couldn't do her job anymore. She'd hit what she felt like was the end of her leash with it before, but this time felt different to her, and she was going to try and take a job in another state working with kids on the rez who'd been basically abandoned by their local school as an unwinnable. She'd be living a four hour instead of a twenty hour drive away from her mother, whose health had gone from bad to terrible as asthma made her drafty, half-finished cob house a difficult proposition for her. We were hiring a new manager, and the new manager would own the business in a few months. Maybe I could continue on, if I impressed the new manager, but I was only guaranteed another month's employment. I didn't mind, terribly - trying to help her settle in was stressful, but not too awful, and I figured she'd hire me if I should be working for her, about which I wasn't sure yet, either.

But then, over the next few weeks, I realized that she and I weren't going to see eye to eye. As I reported the situation to Mom in the other state, and we attempted to negotiate a smooth transition, it became really quickly apparent that we would NOT be able to use this woman, and we certainly didn't want to rent to her or endorse her. That day, I was asked the question that defines five out of seven days for me, if I wanted to help shut down, or if I wanted to take over and become licensed myself. hire my own staff. run my own business.

I wasn't ready.

I couldn't, I thought. I couldn't be the one everything came down to. But then the strangest thing happened. I did it anyways. I hired my own staff, and made mistakes, and got burned. I lost old clients, kept some long time families, made new connections, developed my own reputation. Now my one-year agreement is up, and I have to decide whether I'm giving up or whether I'm going to move into my own place, completely terra incognita. I'll have to make the decisions about whether the house is right, where to spend the money, which kids I try to keep, and it's all too much. I'm not ready, there's been a mistake.

But I learned a lesson. And this time, I'm planning on saying yes, and if I'm not good enough...

well, I guess I'll have to get better. :)

boyfrond @ 2014-04-21T12:01:00

2014-04-21T19:01:28Z

Step on a crack, break your mother's back
step on a line, break your mother's spine

Growing up, it was just mom and I. We took care of my great grandmother together until I was ten, when she fell and broke her hip, went into a nursing home and died within weeks. I'm not entirely sure when we stopped drifting around and moved in with great grandma, but I do know that it was the first time my life had been stable. Mom worked nights, mostly, at that point. We were close.

I'm trying to get that back right now, and I'm not sure how, or what it looks like. There's... damage. complication

When I was 11, she remarried a guy, so I'd have a father in my life again. Didn't really work out that way, and over the next ten years and two siblings, they fractured in the way that only people who love someone else and don't love themselves can, where the parts that used to glue them together turn sideways tearing up the things they care about, long shredding wounds with sanity and stability leaking through the lives set on top, tied around the bloody stump.

I worked for her, for a few years, after that, and eventually took over a childcare business that she ran. I do it myself, it's licensed in my name, and I'm trying to separate out the business from family entirely, no rental agreements to complicate things now that I've already handled the professional separation.

It's important, see, cuz when she and I were working together, and later, when I was renting the space she used to work in to run the business she used to run, there was never any line. What I did with my work "made it impossible" for her. "Made it hard". Words, other ways of saying that things I was doing with the business that was mine now would fundamentally change Mom's reality in a way that she didn't like, and she would turn and yank on the strings that she still had and shake the foundations of my life again. Codependence. Something. I'm not sure.

Once, when I was working, I had let three children turn a job of washing the table into a game of splashing and pouring, which mom informed me was NOT what she had in mind. I shouldn't have, she said in some curt phrasing and furious tone, and strode forward to "fix" things to the way she wanted them, recklessly plunging in in frustration and annoyance, when she tipped and fell, crashing into the floor sideways, fracturing her hip and tearing her ankle. Another time, before, she asked me to work on plastering the ceiling, and I'd gotten mouthy and left, because I felt like my time wasn't hers to use and abuse and she just didn't get it. Teenage rebellion, carried on into my twenties. She'd pressed her lips into a tight line and started to do it herself, and before I'd managed to slam the door behind me had already leaned out too far on the chair and tipped herself onto her back on the hardwood. Another emergency room visit, another long recovery period. I was never blamed directly for her injuries, but she made no secret of her belief that she simply couldn't manage her anger when I had the audacity to show such disrespect. To this day, when she and I argue, sometimes I feel like she's THROWING her well-being at me, taking her own composure or health or our relationship and knocking it over in a fit of pique like so many Monopoly pieces shoved off so many tables.

Yesterday, she told me that she was thinking about moving back into town, and wanted to work with me again. That she wanted me to think about it, paying me a full salary and having me on full time, since our rental agreement was about over anyways and I'd said I was struggling on the business side of things. I told her I had been really looking forward to having a normal interaction with her again instead, that I'd been really excited about NOT working with her even as much as we still were anymore, she could just be my mom the expert on daycares, talking to me from her own business, giving advice, maybe.

I'm not sure what's going to happen next. I'm not sure what I can do, getting the business set up on my own, but I know I'm going to try. I'm not sure what Mom's going to do, or how she'll react to what I choose.

Step on a crack, break your mother's back
Step on a line, break your mother's spine

what a crock of shit. I love Mom, but I'm only responsible for myself and my own actions. she can take care of herself like a grown-ass woman.

boyfrond @ 2014-03-31T16:42:00

2014-03-31T23:42:37Z

If I could remember all my life, I'd not compare it here with you
So many flowers of the spring and each had their different hue
If names would show the roads I've traveled, some bitter and some sweet
I could not show why I coursed by so many grimy streets
I have no shame for all the friends who've sometimes shared my bed
and heart and time and still live in my head
Lucky man in love am I, I said I was and always will be
I did not come here for my first taste to easy fill me
You are the same, yet differerent, perhaps a maiden fair who conquers
or maybe you just think it's funny to see me driven bonkers
if this poem sucks, remember that I stayed when dark nights came and went
Never 'gain to a princess in another castle I'll be sent

There's no more to tell, but perhaps you'll not be the only one
but if you were, I do declare, I'm in for some right unholy fun.

boyfrond @ 2014-03-24T00:21:00

2014-03-24T07:21:03Z

When I was small, I used to think I'd be my mom when I grew up. I'd curl behind her legs when she lay out with her knees bent on the couch, and we'd read our books together. I had already started to run to gangly, but somehow I fit in that space for years after I would have thought I couldn't. I've always loved hugs, big, full-chest ones, and she loved to hug me, fierce and close. She was going to be a teacher again, like when she'd run the daycare, and I was more proud of her than any boy in the whole world. I was eight, and she was just twenty-four, then. Her jobs kept her places, late, and I was never quite sure I understood what she did. Some months she'd come home late, always late, and I was supposed to go to sleep, and I'd try to lie in bed until she got home. I'd just started to learn how to use the new computer we'd gotten, and was usually in trouble, but she loved me even if I was perpetually sneaking off somewhere. I tried to make friends with the other children, but they usually either avoided me or fought with me as I wandered lonely. When I came home looking sad, mom understood without needing me to explain. She didn't have anyone else, either, and the men she met usually wanted to get married before they really knew each other. I liked them, but I was glad when she came home and was quiet, working by herself, humming tunelessly preparing dinner in the other room. I still remember those years best, the smell of the old oriental rug under the china cabinet where I used to hide. It was not until almost a decade later that I realized that I when I ate and she told me she wasn't really that hungry anyways, she didn't have food for herself, just for me.

Sometime later, I was older, suddenly much older, it seemed, and it was no longer the two of us by ourselves, but she was going to school again and I didn't mind the man she married much. He didn't seem to like my strangeness, but he took care of her, and things seemed to be OK. A different neighborhood, another house, with a colder basement and dirty beams with spiderwebs and suggestions of water everywhere. I felt like the grimy linoleum by the stairs, always coming apart in those days, and my interactions with other students were strange and confusing. I was eleven, twelve years old like this, and missed the children who used to hunt me where I came from. I was expected to help more now, and she was teaching me to clean and cook and sew, but she was most interested in my schoolwork. She felt that projects were something I had a natural aptitude for (I didn't) and so she'd get very angry when I let them fall through the cracks. That year, when we were arguing about my schoolwork, she laid me out cold once. It didn't really bother me as much as being expected to wait for a wooden spoon on my hand, and I knew I shouldn't fight with her. She was my mom. I was still obsessed with girls, and sex, and my strangeness made me an outsider even more than my difficulties controlling my voice modulation. I began to wish I weren't autistic that year much more than I had before. I still felt lonely all the time, but we had dinner together every night, and I'd watch mom and her husband cook together, sometimes singing.

My little brother was born, and I loved him very much. He liked to eat dirt, and chase worms. My strangeness had all but made me a shadow in our house, and my only friend was much shorter than me. I tried to play with him, but I couldn't help but feel sorry for him for having a stupid family, plus he was short. I kicked my friend a lot that year. He hated it, but he liked being around me. Mom screamed at me a lot more, but I made the best school project anyone had ever seen that year.

My little sister was born and I had been sent away to live with my father. I hated the tropical heat, I felt like I was melting constantly, nauseous, and could not understand how I was supposed to be normal with this adopted teenage girl I lived with who I was told was my sister. I loved my dad, but I was angry and scared at him all the time. He tried to teach me what being a guy was like, but all I could think was that I wished I had somewhere quiet to be. I was still hurt that my mom didn't want me to live with her then, and people kept telling me how much like my dad I acted. "Mister Potts boboing along, bucket firmly affixed on head" one of my dad's friends used to describe my adventures as. This was the first year I wasn't afraid all the time at school of people, because most boys were much shorter than I was at the age. I was 13, and for the third time in my life, I wanted to die. I didn't want to be there anymore, and I wanted to go home.

Back on the mainland, school was a blur, lonely time stretching out between classes I'd skip when I could, but people seemed to be happy with me at home. I still had no real friends, but I was happy to be back with bookstores I could walk to and chores I understood. I decided that year that I never wanted to leave the Pacific Northwest again, if I could help it. My mother was starting to show signs of wear trying to bridge me and the rest of the family. My stepfather was angry with me constantly for stealing his small treasures, but he enjoyed his job and seemed to not mind me existing much. I think he loved me that year, too.

We moved to the town I live in now, living for months in a house paid for by the company which had hired my stepfather. I was sick all the time, and hid for much of the time. We had cable television with the house, and I would stay up late, watching. I do not know what I am supposed to be. I rarely leave the house until we move to another house in town, but the friends I make at the church seem to understand me for the first time. They, too, like using the computer and read fantasy novels. I met a girl. I sneak out at all hours, hiding through the dark, leaving elaborate disguises to hide my absence. My mom puts me in the van and drives me to another state where my grandfather lives under the pretense of going to the store. I would have jumped out and run away with my girlfriend, but she does not slow down until we are on the freeway, and I am again living with a family of near-strangers, trying to find someone to be, hiding through the dark places in the night. My new friends are friendly, even if we all seem to be intent on lying to impress each other. I miss my mom and brother, but I have started talking to a girl over a BBS who sleeps with me when we meet, but when it is time for me to return home, I disappoint her by trying to tell her she could do better. My mother was not sure who I was, and I snuck out often.

I kissed the girl I'd met before I left, and was absolutely sure that I loved her more than anyone else had ever loved anyone for an entire month. My hair was often uncombed, and I rarely went to class when I went to school in the mornings. The next girl I stayed with for years, and when I was thrown out of the house, I clung to her for hope for my future. I was seventeen.

Since then, many things have changed. I no longer sell my body for money, and I take care of children for a living. I've gone on government assistance, and have worked my way off. I have new friends who respect me and invite me to the important things in their lives. Family paid for my eyes to be fixed. I no longer fight, nor do I lurk late or jazz gin more than occasionally. I live with two lovely woman in relationships that bring me a great deal of joy. But many of the people from the most special times of my life seem on the other side of this journey, a family of echoes of my mistakes. I do not know how to work with my mother without one of us yelling at the other for more than an hour, and when she visits the house where her girlfriend lives in that I rent half of to run my business in, she usually is frustrated with how the daycare I run is not up to the standards of the one I worked in with her a couple years ago, academically, and we cannot speak of the things we care about past work or we start fighting.

This spring, I will try and move my business away from family, and if I can get it without too much fighting, I will ask for my family's help. Maybe if there are no more reasons to be frustrated in her own home, my mother and I will start talking again. Maybe my brother will settle down into a place to live, without my help this time, and will build himself into someone he is proud of. My grandfather I have to accept the loss of, at least a few days a month, but his death still feels fresh every time I find a piece of interesting French music or a new thing people are using with computers to find each other.

If I can find the way back to my family, maybe it is not too late. They are still alive, for now, and once I am secure in a new location, I can stop panicking about my job and whether family will throw the game board on the floor instead of working something out long enough to build a real relationship again.

I didn't intend to write anything this week, but then I talked to my mother again today, and after fighting, realized I wanted to write this down. This is my missing stair. I don't even have the time to go searching for it right now, but I am trying to trust that when I have time to go looking again, it will be waiting for me, with a chance of what I want on the other side. If this all seems very disjointed and massively abbreviated, it is.

go talk to your family, if you can. They don't last forever, and neither will you. Put aside your loneliness, when you can, long enough to be a part of the things that will have you.

So, I intend to participate. I need to make a post about it. Announcing it.

2014-03-16T07:34:31Z

This is my post, announcing my intent to participate.

Your five-way, family dinner party, and volunteer charity will never be the same. MORE IMPORTANTLY, I'm participating in therealljidol

boyfrond @ 2014-03-16T00:28:00

2014-03-16T07:28:07Z

So. She's just told me that we're going to do something for dinner, and that it's important. And she's picked up this expression, from the internet, from YOU people, and she's about to say it.

"Yes. We absolutely HAVE to get ourselves hot dogs tonight..."

She's trailed off. She's going to say it, I can see her smiling, the corners of her mouth curl up briefly, compress down into her serious face as she prepares to ruin my evening. She's going to say it again, for the millionth time THIS WEEK, it feels like, and I'm standing here in the headlights of the truck and, like a particularly cowlike city deer, I can't/won't get out of the way. I still don't respond, my face gone stony, breath held.

"See, we need to..."

There she goes. She's dragging it out. She knows I can see where this is going. My facade is broken, the discomfort plain for all to see. I've locked my elbows to my side, in case I die when she says it, I don't want it to be painful when I fall down. "because reasons." On her worst days, it will be "because raisins." One day, she even used a lifeline from a friend to translate it into Spanish. "pasas de uvas," in case you were wondering. and here it comes.

"because I think it would be a good idea, and I really like hot dogs for dinner."

GODDAMNIT. She's DELIBERATELY not said it, just this once, just to piss me off. I'm not gonna let it ruin my evening, though. She knows she's thrown me off my stride, and she grins, the subtlety of her triumph blooming across dark eyes in a fireworks dance of victory. Even when she doesn't say it, she has me exactly where she wants me, even if she just suggests it, suggests

"BECAUSE REASONS!"

...even when she's not going to say it, or SO I THINK. My defeat is complete. All the preparation possible, my will steeled, my Zen considered and torn into the paper pieces of the mockery it proved to be, my jaded, internet- and family- and fuckerfriend-tempered sophistication all thrown aside by this stupid joke that I hate that I can't seem to ignore or get around or shut down. I take a breath, and am surprised when it doesn't hurt.

I laugh. Because I love her, and, well

it's funny.