For several months I have actively tried to balance my time so that I was both keeping busy and spending time alone with my grief. Lately though I have lost that balance. Somehow I let myself slip into a constantly busy mode. I do not think this has been good for me. I find myself fighting back tears at work more often. If I do not find time to deal with my emotions they are going to overwhelm me.

Part of the reason is having the girls living here. It is hard to find time for yourself when you have a baby in the house. Twice in the last week I have wanted to give up. I felt like I needed to quit trying to raise children, quit everything. I just wanted to be left all alone. I do not handle stress as well as I used to and raising children is stressful. Especially when the children legally belong to someone else, someone who is erratic and hard to deal with.

Today I had the most beautiful day. The morning I spent with Lane and the baby. He laid his head in my lap while we watched soccer highlights. She kept pushing his head with her foot in an attempt to claim her territory. After lunch I dropped the baby off with my mom and drove Beezus and Ramona to the Two Buttes Reservoir to jump off of the cliffs. Back at home I took a long shower then drank a glass of wine with Fria Chica while we sat in hammock chairs and watched the sunset. It was a wonderful day off.

Tired, I was in bed before eleven. Around midnight Lane woke me up to talk about a pickup he wanted to buy. I fell quickly back to sleep. Over an hour later I hear Lane say, "I'm going to the beat the shit out of that boy." The door slammed. He was gone before I jumped out of bed.  I knew right away which boy he was talking about. Beezus has been running around with an eighteen year old boy from a neighboring town. Lane asked around about him and what he found concerned us both.  He had come home that night to find his pickup pulling away from the house and Beezus's bed filled with a wad of clothes. She came in quickly to insist she had just been out at the hammocks. Lane came home without having fought. He did stop the boy on the highway out of town and threaten him. The boy insisted he had just been buying her cigarettes. Lane pointed out that he was buying cigarettes for  a fifteen year old and that in Kansas anything he did with a fifteen year old was illegal.

Through all of this the only thing Beezus seemed concerned about was her phone. Lane had taken it from her. I had taken it from him. She does not seem to have any concern for the people around her. She is very much like my sister.

I could not fall asleep as quickly after this interruption. I am worried Lane will be hurt because of me trying to do the right thing.  Frankly I am also worried about Beezus somehow hurting all of us because I am trying to do the right thing. Trying to keep this girl out of trouble is a fulltime job for Lane and I. It is way too much stress for both of us right now.

As I slowly started to slip back to sleep the baby woke up. She had been sleeping fitfully for awhile. She crawls in her sleep sometimes. This time she crawled into a wall. The bump on her head woke her up. Something kept her awake and crying for an hour. She is teething. It also seemed like she might have a stomach ache.

I do not want to do this anymore.