It's summer: the season of kids around 24/7 and of subsequent blog neglect.  It's also the season of summer visitors, passing through in cars bulging with luggage, fast food wrappers and warm, disheveled smiles.  While some people like to do spring cleaning to prepare for those visitors, I (a hopeless procrastinator) prefer to do summer cleaning.  And with the kids out of school, not only do I tend to need to do it anyway, but really, what better way to keep two bored kids occupied than by sorting old toys and rearranging furniture?  So, we have been slowly working our way through the house and ridding ourselves of clothes, furniture and toys that are outgrown or just unused.

Most things go to charity and a few hopeless odds and ends find their way to the trash, but those things that are too nice to throw away but a little too worn or, um, scribbled upon in permanent marker end up being freecycled.  Now, as a good sex addict codie, I know I really ought to do my freecycling through some other source than the website so bound up in addiction that it cannot be named, but I've found that nowhere else can I post any kind of crazy old junk -- from broken electronics to a nest for spiders that was once a stroller to a table with a dinosaur drawn on it in Sharpie -- and have ten people lined up to cart it all away in as many minutes.  I've tried alternatives, believe me, but they just don't work. Left to choose between feeling unscrupulous for actually using The Site That Shall Not Be Named and distressed for having to take perfectly usable items to the dump (and guilty for not having maintained every part of every item in my home in pristine condition, with its original packaging and instruction manual), I've chosen unscrupulous.

And it honestly does make me feel unscrupulous.  Seven years of hanging out with people who have used The Site That Shall Not Be Named for the worst of purposes and those who have been harmed by it have given me a nagging underlying feeling that everyone on the site is at best a liar and at worst a serial killer.  And when I use the site, I feel like I'm trying to get away with something too, although it doesn't start out that way.

I start by posting a perfectly accurate description and picture like: "Small bookshelf. Unfinished wood. 36"x 36" x18". Decorated in blue Sharpie with a 3-year-old's depiction of PacMan eating dots, several smiley faces and the words 'i lik dinasors.'" Five minutes later, I have ten messages in my inbox each begging me to please, please bestow upon her (or him) the honor of carting away my bookcase.  Some of the messages just say something like, "I want this if still available." And I find those only mildly suspicious. After all, maybe some of those are from some crazy person who just likes to screw with people who post things for free on The Site That Shall Not Be Named. They say they are going to come pick it up but -- psych! -- they never do.  Instead, they sit giggling at home at the thought of that item sitting on the curb one extra day before someone else gets it.

But other messages try to convince me that they are more worthy of my esteemed stuff than the other people who might want it. These messages usually read something like, "My granddaughter would love this for her birthday next week!" or "I've always wanted one of these, but can't afford it!" These messages leave me wondering things like "Do you really have a granddaughter at all?" or "Maybe you are actually the CEO of AT&T but have some weird mental disease that makes you pretend you are poor while you go around collecting other people's old stuff."

So, with nothing else to go on, I always offer the item to the first person in my inbox and tell them so, but I always feel vaguely as if I'm lying, because I suspect that the liars I'm writing to will think I am.

Last week, I offered an old tricycle to a man who called himself Joe and said he wanted it for his kids. (Read: he doesn't have kids and was going to trade it to his dealer for crack.) When the trike hadn't been picked up a day after he said he was on his way right over, I called the number he sent.

"Hello?"

"Hi, is this Joe?"

"Um..." His bewilderment pulsed through the telephone line.

Just great, I think. Joe is one of his aliases. Ignoring his confusion, I plunge on, "My name is Mary. You responded to an ad about a trike on The Site That Shall Not Be Named."

I can hear "Joe" struggling to recall this. "Oh, yeah!" he said at last, "Is that still available?"

"Yes, I was calling to see what happened and if you were still interested."

"Oh, yeah. Sorry.  My girlfriend just had a kidney transplant last week and she's not doing so well."

A kidney transplant? Seriously? "So, you've obviously had other things on your mind. Totally understandable," I lied.

"Yeah. But I still do want it. I'm heading over right now!" said Joe.

"Ok."

That was one week ago. I never saw Joe, who (I assume) after finishing the bottle of whiskey he was drinking, got distracted by a prostitute, lost his car in a poker game and (once again) forgot all about the fact that he promised his drug dealer a trike. Or who went to visit his girlfriend in the hospital instead and happened to find another trike that would be just perfect for his kids.  Either way, the trike went to "Anna," who wanted it for her "grandson."  Or at least that's the story I'm telling.  Since I post things on The Site That Shall Not Be Named, you really shouldn't believe a word I say.  After all, how likely is it that I actually have kids or am doing any summer cleaning if I've actually managed to write this blog post?

"I don't like Agnes much," said my mother, "She's definitely no Aunt Gerty.  But it's because Gerty was so wonderful that I think Uncle Fred is marrying Agnes."

"What do you mean?" I asked.  Uncle Fred and Aunt Gerty had been married over fifty years when Gerty died.  I was in my early teens at the time and had always figured that the sign of a truly happy marriage was keeping that space in heart and home forever sacred, and never marrying again once you'd lost that one true love.  So it had seemed strange to me that, after a year or so of seeming lost in grief, Uncle Fred had started dating with so much enthusiasm.  He was over eighty and had a social life more active than mine.

"Well, Uncle Fred and Aunt Gerty loved each other a lot, but he not only misses her, he misses being married. He's had such good times being married, and he's used to living life with a partner. But then look at John, next door; he and Martha had a hard time. It's been years since she passed away, and he doesn't even have the slightest interest in dating.  I'm sure he doesn't want to go through that again."

Our elderly neighbor John seemed to love and care about his wife Martha, but her mental illness colored everything. She was depressed, addicted to prescription medications and could have been (if she had lived in today's reality TV world) featured on Hoarders. When she died, I assumed that John, a great, spunky man with a quick smile and a zest for life, would finally have the chance to find a partner who could make him happy.  But I'd been baffled to find that he preferred to spend his time alone, tending to his garden.  Maybe my mother was right: with no experience of marriage as happy, John had no incentive to get into a new relationship.

I find myself thinking of John from time to time, because (I know, never say never) I can't picture myself ever wanting to get into a romantic relationship again.  I'm happy in my marriage as it is now, but I can't imagine starting this all over again with someone new.  It's too dang much work.  And I have no illusions that the next time, if I somehow pick the "right guy" (you know, not a crazy sex addict), the journey would be an effortless dance on a carpet of rose petals rather than, well, more hard work.  It's similar to the way I love my kids and have found parenting rewarding beyond belief, but I have no desire to adopt more newborns when my children are grown.  (I don't even get nostalgic for that newborn scent and downy hair, because I know all too well it comes with dirty diapers and sleepless nights.)  If I lose Mark before he loses me, I fully plan to spend my golden years, ensconced in a house full of beautifully fragile and child unfriendly things, in happy retirement from both romantic relationships and young children.

But what if things happen the other way around?  I had a cancer scare recently, and while I was waiting for the biopsy results, I wavered between faith and fear.  I was firmly on the faith side for several days, knowing that whatever happened (whether it was, from my perspective, good or bad), I would be where I should be and I would be supported, loved and able to cope.  But thoughts of my own mortality would creep in, especially as time went on, and while I valiantly pushed out thoughts of what my kids would do should the absolute worst case be true (there was no way I was going there), I did find myself wondering which path my husband, still just in his forties, would choose.  And I found myself fighting back tears as I drove to an appointment, because I couldn't imagine Mark being alone and that thought hurt deeply and scared me as much as almost anything else.

Before the disclosure of sex addiction, I used to be comforted by the thought that, if I died, a remarriage would be, like it was for my Uncle Fred, a way of honoring the happiness we have and of finding (hopefully) a new loving partner to be there for the kids.  Besides, as Mark always says, "I don't care what you do after I'm dead.  I'll be dead, so I won't know the difference."  But now I found it brought up, not just echoes of abandonment and betrayal, but illusions of my own power and fears of the addiction surfacing anew in my absence.  I could hear the whisper in my mind, "I have to live, because if I'm gone, there's nothing to keep him from diving right back into insanity."  And that's the sound of me diving back into my insanity.

When my doctor called to tell me that all was well, it was a relief to know that my physical body is sound, but it was also a relief to know I have time to deal with those little demons in my mind that tell me that I'd be better at picking Mark's path than he would and that I'm the only thing standing between my family and disaster.  That kind of pressure is exhausting.  No wonder John's post-Martha puttering in the garden looks so attractive to me!

I have a bazillion ("No," my son Austen, who is very proper about his numbers, would insist, "there's no such thing as a bazillion!"  Fine then, a gajillion?) things I want to get out of my head and onto this virtual paper, but I spent my writing time today sleeping. (Now you may ask how I'm writing this, and the answer is, "Do you really want to know?  Ok, my husband is feeding the kids while I pretend to be using the bathroom.  When you are a mom sometimes you have to type leaning over a laptop perched on the bathroom sink.")

So, lesson number one, five days into the Year of Health, is that I don't get enough sleep.  I knew that.  But what I didn't realize until yesterday was that nothing else (eating right, exercising, flossing my teeth, showering daily) is going to get done unless I get enough (or closer to enough) rest.  So after (once again) staying up too late last night, I took a nap today with the promise that I will. not. stay. up. tonight. writing!  You know, the way I usually do.  Napping is my sleep version of using one credit card to pay off another, while still remaining in debt overall.  (Not that I know anything about that kind of behavior with credit cards.  Nope.  Not at all.)

So, to kick start the Year of Health, I will be giving the Week of Sleep a try.  I'm just hoping I can do it without too much harm to my writing time.  I'm planning to let the dishes suffer instead!

Last week, I asked you all to join the Just for Today Challenge with me, where we would all change one thing about our lives for just one day. I'll share what I did, and if you did something yourself, either share about it in the comments or (if you wrote a post about it) enter the URL for the post in Mister Linky below to add a link to your blog.  (This is my first attempt to incorporate Mister Linky, so I'm hoping everything will go smoothly.  Just in case, I'd encourage you to leave a comment too, at least this time.  I'm going to try to make this an ongoing thing, so hopefully I'll work out the kinks as I go.)

As many of you know, I've instituted a day of rest and spirituality for myself every Wednesday, and each Wednesday I'm thinking of focusing on one change I'd like to make.  This week the big challenge was cutting out sugar.  Now some of you might think, "It's not hard to go just one day without sugary treats!"  Well, good for you, apparently you're not addicted to them.  For me, it was hard: really, really, crushingly hard to go the entire day without sugar (and because I only take my caffeine in soda form, caffeine as well).

Actually, that's not entirely true.  I got up in the morning and said, "No, no. No chocolate PopTart for you today!  We're having a bagel instead."  And that wasn't so bad.  Then I ate lunch and I wanted a Coke with it, but I settled for water.  And I wanted some Halloween candy for dessert and my hand was reaching for the bowl, but I pulled it back and said, "I can go just one day without a mini Snickers!"

But then the kids came home from school, and I felt like I was drowning in "Mama, I want..." and "Mama, I need..." and "Mama, where is..." and "Mama, can I [insert insane and dangerous request here]..." and "Mama, Daddy said I could..." and "But he started it" and "No, she started it" and "No, he did!"  I wanted one of those freaking Halloween candies so bad I was ready to tear my hair out.  And I wanted to wash it down with a can of Coke.  So I stopped taking things one day at a time and took them one minute at a time for the few hours until Mark got home from work.  Once Mark was home, I had dinner, went off to my meditation group and came home to the kids asleep.  And I thought about that pumpkin pie in the fridge, but I didn't need it.

So, I learned that I really use sugar and caffeine to handle the stress of juggling the kids' needs and demands, of setting limits and enforcing rules, of just the plain sensory overload of two kids focusing their attention on me.  And I learned that one day without sugar was hard, but it also acted like a reset button: the next day, I didn't crave sugar as much and while I let myself indulge again, I ate (and drank) less of it than at any time in the last few months.  I've also noticed that my sugar intake has gradually increased over the course of the week, creeping not quite back up, but closer, to where it had been before.

Still, it's comforting to know that my one day a week of change could be a way of hitting reset on a lot of things in my life, and I'm looking forward to testing the theory with some other behaviors.  And I want to know how your one day worked for you!  What did you add to your life or give up?  What did it feel like and what did you learn?  Post a link and/or leave a comment.  And feel free to pick a day and a behavior yourself and join in next Tuesday too.  If you participated this week, you can keep it up with the same thing this week or choose something new.  It's up to you.

Mr. Linky:

I sort of want to write a post today, but I sort of want to curl up under a blanket and watch the leaves fall more. Of course, I say that, all romantic, with this great image of myself curled up with a cup of tea and a cat on my lap, but have you seen my house today? No. Thank goodness, none of you have. Nor have you smelled it.

Do you have kids? Do you know what a house looks like when they've been home for the weekend, generating dirty lunch dishes and taking stuff out of the Goodwill box to play with and leaving army men on the floor for people to step on? (Note to self: e-mail son's teacher to ask if he's limping.) A better mother and woman than I would put the kids and the husband to work cleaning up their own messes, but let's not get into that. Really, let's not. Well, ok, let's, but only if I don't have to hear about how you'd do it better.

In this house, your mother does live here and she's way more worried about contracting salmonella and falling to her death tripping over Legos than you are. So, yes, I could employ "natural consequences," leaving the dishes for someone else to do, until they reach up — in a stinking, fetid pile — to the ceiling, but then I have to live with a mountain of putrid dishes (and with the years of therapy it will take to bring me out of a state of catatonia when I find them covered with roaches) while my family cleverly fills the kitchen with discarded paper plates instead. (And yes, my husband has actually gone out to the store and purchased paper plates. You think I haven't tried?)

I could employ those old mothering standbys of nagging and punishing, rounding up family members and standing over them, poking them with the underwire of the bra that's currently on the kitchen floor until the dishes are done. (How did a bra get on the kitchen floor? Excellent question. It is mine and believe me I wasn't doing anything sexy in the kitchen with it. Somehow the dirty laundry migrated there this weekend. Yes, it really did. I don't know.)

I could ask for help, appeal to my family's better nature, institute a sticker chart or any number of other things (and don't think I haven't from time to time), but you want to know the truth? All of those things — the consequences, the nagging, the poking with bra underwire, the yelling, the endless sticker charts — take way too much energy. There are three people in the house who are happy to live in squalor and one who can't rest easy looking past the ping pong paddles on the sofa and the carrots and ranch dressing still on the table from last night's snack, who can't bring herself to kick the sleeping cat off the quilt that's currently on the floor and who can't quite enjoy drinking tea from a paper cup while looking at the leaves.

So that one person either needs to learn to look past the mess (and buy a noseclip to block out the smell of, whatever that smell is...) or she needs to get up and do the damn dishes. If I'm lucky, I can finish it all 5 minutes before my daughter comes home from school. And I did manage to get a blog post out of it. Thank goodness the glow of this computer screen blocks out that... Um, ew... Did someone actually leave a snotty tissue in the middle of the living room floor? I have to go clean that up.

There's a reason I'm not a journalist. It's one of those jobs you always think about, if you're one of those people (like me) who has considered careers in writing.  But I always saw two problems with it: 1) I need to let things ferment a little too long in my brain, putting me constantly behind the news cycle and 2) I hate interviewing people.  While this post didn't require any interviewing, it did need some fermentation, so, needless to say, I'm behind the curve in commenting on a (not so) recent New York Times piece on parental yelling.

So, did you know that yelling is the new spanking?  (You probably did, because you read the article three weeks ago, like everyone else.  Well, in case you haven't...)  It is.  The article says so.  And it's bad.  Do you hear me parents?  Don't ever do it again!  I SAID, "DON'T EVER DO IT AGAIN!!" Did that work? Darn.

Yes, I admit it, I yell on occasion, and yes, yelling is a crappy long term strategy. The thing is, in a moment of crisis, yelling often works. Let's face it, that's why we do it. There have been times when I've yelled out of sheer frustration over something that is not a big deal because I'm tired or hungry or just haven't taken care of myself. Fortunately, this happens less frequently as I get better at taking care of my own needs, recognizing when I'm about to explode and stepping away before I do. Then there have been times when I've yelled out of (I'll admit it) crappy parenting, because I lack a coherent long term strategy for dealing with a particular problem. And fortunately, this happens less frequently as I learn better how to work with my kids. Finally, there are times when I yell because preventing a short term disaster is really all that matters.  After all, if your child is running into the street, it's not the time to say, "I think you're making bad choices, dear!" (Although, if your child runs into the street every day, it probably is time to get back to that long term strategy thing.)

Like yesterday, I'm eating my lunch when I hear Austen say, "No, stop that! Get off!" followed quickly by "Ow! Janie really hurt me!" I run into the other room to see Austen rolled from head to foot in a blanket, curled in a ball on the sofa. Janie is now sitting in a different part of the room drawing a picture as if nothing has happened, while Austen sobs quietly.

"Austen, what happened? What hurts?" Austen continues to cry, wordlessly.

"Janie, what happened?"

Janie looks up, and like a sullen teenager more than a six-year-old, says, "So-rry!"

"Janie, Austen is hurt and he's hiding. I need to know what part of him is hurt.  Do you know?"  (I'm pretty sure she ought to know, since I heard enough to know she caused it.)

"Well, he wasn't playing the game the right way and I just wanted him to move..."

"We can work on that later," I say, working to control my anger and anxiety, "When someone is hurt or sick, I need to pay attention to that first, and right now I need to know where is Austen hurt?"

Janie mumbles, "I don't know," while Austen continues to hide and sob. Austen's reactions to pain are hard to gauge; I've seen him unable to speak for fifteen minutes after a paper cut but go right back to playing after a bad fall and vice versa. So it could be nothing or it could be a broken bone. I wait until Austen finally begins to emerge, hugging his hands to his body and moaning, "She jumped on me!"  So all 45 pounds of Janie have landed on...  Some part of Austen.

"Yeah, well, I was climbing up like this...," Janie says, pushing past me to try to stand on the arm of the sofa.

"Janie, get down!" Austen is curled in my lap, and Janie is now standing behind my head, as I try to extract myself.

"And I wanted to jump down..."

"Janie, get down right now!" I say, firmly, as Janie inches to the back of the sofa, still standing, and teeters precariously where the back slopes to the tiny lip where she's balancing.  For now, my body is between her and Austen, but my anxiety rises as I try to figure out how to get her down without leaving Austen vulnerable to having her fall (or jump) on him (again), especially since I still haven't determined how badly he's been hurt.

"But he wouldn't move..."

"Janie..."

"So I jumped on him!"

"GET DOWN NOW!!"

Janie plops straight (and safely) down onto her butt, bursts into tears and says, "You yelled at me!"

"Yes, I did.  I don't like to yell, but it's my job to keep you and your brother safe. If you are doing something that might hurt you or someone else, yes, I might yell or grab you or do anything else I think I need to to keep you from getting hurt."

So, my magical yelling prevented the short term problem. And it bought me jumping-free time to determine that Janie had landed on Austen's finger, which was red but had been cushioned by the couch and so appeared to be bruised rather than broken. Now to work on a long term solution for avoiding situations like that in the first place.  I'm thinking maybe I'll duct tape Janie to a chair until she's old enough to know better.

I'm pretty certain that everyone who passed my daughter Janie's elementary school at dismissal time a few weeks ago now knows me by sight. Yep, I'm that woman whose daughter threw a tantrum so gigantic and so spectacular that it took us over a quarter of an hour just to move to the front of the school and strangers felt moved to ask if she needed medical attention. I'm the woman who stood there for more than a half an hour next to a six-year-old girl who was sprawled on the sidewalk, as people passed by with nervous glances asking if everything was ok.

Yes, everything is ok. First grade is just hard, and tiring, and this has caused our mother/daughter relationship to devolve into a hostage situation. The hostage being me. Her demands are: 1) a juice box right now, 2) that I carry her backpack, 3) that I carry her, 4) ice cream upon arrival home. Otherwise she is not moving, nuh-uh, no way; she's going to sit here and cry until it gets dark and then sleep on the sidewalk. (This is her actual plan.) My position is that I do not negotiate with terrorists, I do not have a juice box anyway, I have neither the desire nor the ability to carry a six-year-old anymore, and I'm not rewarding a hissy fit with ice cream. As you can imagine, this produced a standoff.

Now I know that some of you are thinking, "Well, make her move! You're the mom! You're the boss! Demand it!" And believe me, that's what I was telling myself. I'm the mom! I'm the boss! She ought to do what I say! She ought to be enticed with the (non-ice cream) snack that awaits her at home, and she ought to be mortally fearful of the consequences of her behavior. Yet she didn't care at all. Have you ever seen a donkey just refuse to move? You can yell at it and beat it and push it and drag it and still it stands there stubbornly. I had a little donkey and had neither a stick big enough nor a carrot tasty enough to induce movement.

So there we stood, until we were each able to bend just enough to reach a mutually agreeable settlement: I would not carry her but would let her lean on me, and I would carry her backpack, but in return she would have to downgrade for a week to her preschool backpack which was smaller, lighter and much less cool looking. So, an hour later than usual, we staggered through the front door looking precisely as if we'd just fought a war: me, sweaty and disheveled and Janie with debris clinging to her hair and her grimy face streaked with tears.

As expected, a snack and a rest on the sofa greatly improved the matters, but the ceasefire ended at bedtime, when Janie refused to get into bed.

"Time for bed."

"No."

"Janie, get in bed now."

"Or else what?"

Or else what? Who did she think she was talking to? Or else this!

Now, we must pause for a moment to allow you to imagine "this." I find that whenever I divulge my specific parenting methods, it distracts from the story I am trying to tell. People get caught up in the details. So at this point, don't think about what I did, imagine what a good parent (whatever your definition of that is) would do. Imagine what you would have done. If you would have spanked her, spank her in your mind. If you would have told her "no story tonight," then no story. If you would have made a sticker chart for nice talk, go make a sticker chart. If you would have lifted her firmly into bed and left the room, go do it.

I did what you would do. I did what I thought was going to have the effect I wanted.  I called on the examples of parents I knew and admired and did what I thought a "good" parent (whose children do what they are supposed to do) would do. Furthermore, I did it calmly and firmly. I even used what Janie calls my "stun voice" (which I think is a variation on "stern voice").

But here's what you have to imagine now (and this is the hard part): imagine it didn't work. You spanked, she cried louder and refused harder. You told her no story, and she screamed, "I don't care! I'm not going to bed!" You offered ice cream or stickers, and she told you she wanted that plus fifty thousand dollars right now. You put her in bed and and she jumped back out and tried to run out of the room. Whatever you did, the situation escalated, she got more adamant and more upset and still was not in bed.  And if you tried again, she escalated the situation still further.

That was where I was.  We were getting nowhere, and I was in despair.  Here I am doing what everyone I admire says a good parent is supposed to do and my child is acting like a complete nightmare, thus proving that I am a bad parent.  I don't get it.  Why am I so bad at this?  What the hell am I supposed to do?  What have I done already to make things this bad?  I can't even ask anyone for help, because then I'd have to admit to how much I've clearly somehow screwed up already.

That's when the answer came.  Beyond the point where Janie was kicking and screaming on the floor, a book on her bookshelf caught my eye. Actually, a single word in the title caught my eye: God.  Cheesy, huh?  The old me would want to punch me for something like this, but I thought "No, wait.  That's it!  God's will, not my will!" I knew what my will was: I wanted to be a good parent by bossing Janie into bed. (She's tired! She needs to be in bed!) But what was God's will?

So I took a deep breath and said, "Janie, this isn't working.  I'm going to try something different.  Right now I'm worried because we're fighting over bedtime.  Bedtime isn't something I'm trying to make you do to be mean.  We all need enough sleep so our bodies can be healthy, and it's my job as your mama to protect you and help take care of you and help you learn to take care of yourself.  I don't want to fight about this, but I don't know what else to do right now.  I'm stuck.  So, do you know what I believe?  I believe there is a God part inside each one of us and if we are quiet and still we can hear that part of us tell us the right thing to do.  So I'm going to be quiet and still now and see if that God part can help me figure out what I need to do now.  And maybe you can be quiet and still and think — not about what you want me to do — but what you should do for you right now."

Janie stopped crying.  She turned away from me and scooched across the floor to where her beloved stuffed animal Gigi lay, and she sat there for a bit, hugging her knees.  Then she turned to me and said, "Mama, I think I can go to bed if I show you something."  So I joined her, and she showed me a bead she'd found on the floor: "It's pretty, isn't it?"

"Yes," I said.

"Can I make something with it in the morning?"

"Yes."

"Ok.  I'm ready for bed now."

"Sweetie, can I give you a hug?  I think we've both had a rough day."

"Yes."

So, I gave Janie a hug that felt like melting, like walls dissolving, like peace.  Then she climbed into bed.  I smoothed her hair, and she smoothed mine, and she was asleep in minutes, holding my hand.

Last Monday I walked through the grocery store feeling like a weight was crushing my chest, a tight lump in my throat the only thing between me and tears. And part of me wanted to self-indulgently sit there on the linoleum floor under the flicker fluorescent lights and cry, much the same way that I'll both fear and crave the relief of vomiting during a wave of nausea. For the second time this year, a babysitter had dumped us because she found my son Austen's autistic behavior too difficult to handle.

The grocery store I was in wasn't the one closest to my home. It was an additional twenty minutes further away, because the one closest to my house was all out of strawberry Yoplait, one of the three foods Austen will eat (and not just eat reliably, but eat at all). I'd had a clerk check the stockroom and then check with the store in the next town before making the drive to the store in which I now clutched my cart wanting to cry.

It had been the sitter's first attempt at watching the kids, and I'd been satisfied that everything went just fine.  She had experience working with autistic children in the past, and both children seemed to take to her from the start.  There seemed to have been a few rough patches, but it didn't strike me that the kids or the sitter had a particularly difficult night and the sitter, even at the end of the evening, seemed interested in learning more about how to work with Austen.  But this morning I'd been informed that she did not want to come back because the job was too difficult.

Too difficult?  Is that what my life is?  Here I was having driven an extra twenty minutes each way to the grocery store because my son's eating issues are so severe, and I have a babysitter who has worked with autistic children before seeming to say to me (through her actions) that my son is worse than any of them.  Am I in another one of those situations, like living with an addict, where we start to think that everyone secretly drives raging drunk or tries to pick up prostitutes or does drugs with their kids because that's all we see, where the bizarre and unacceptable become normal?

I remembered the babysitter asking about whether Austen's behavior was better at school than at home and wondering, "Was she saying it was my fault?  Did she think if I'd worked harder, if I were smarter, if I were more skilled, if I set up a different structure, if I were stricter, if I trained him better, everything would be different?  (I'll work harder, I'll do better, please love me!)  Does she think I'm a bad mom?  But the beloved sitter she was replacing used to tell me what great work I was doing and how blessed our family was..."

And I actually started to tally the sitters up: "Two quit this year, but three started and love us.  One stayed on from last year (the one who had just moved, whose eyes would glow with enthusiasm when she talked about our family) and in past years no one had ever quit; they got pregnant or moved or started school... But maybe things are getting worse?  Oh, this isn't helping!  Am I in denial?  Is my life crazy or just life?  Am I bad or am I good or am I... (damn!) looking to other people to tell me what is real and whether I'm doing the right thing for my son."

It didn't help that tightness in my chest or that longing for tears to dissipate to know that I was looking to other people (rather than myself and my God) for definition and approval.  I still desperately wanted to know what I couldn't know: that I was doing the "right" things, that my son would be ok in the way I (not God) wanted him to be ok, that he'd be able to get along in the world on his own someday.  But it did help me to see that, wherever I am on my journey as a parent, the answer is not going to come from taking a tally of what babysitters think of my family, but in feeling confident in myself and my higher power.

Most kids (at least those who grow up in safe, middle class, American neighborhoods) don't see every new face at the front door (from evangelists to pizza delivery guys) as a potential threat.  But Austen is not most kids.  Unless they come bearing an Amazon.com box with a video game in it, he is not a fan of strange people on our front step, and he reacts more like a defensive pit bull than an eight-year-old boy.  Intruders!  They startle him.  They frighten him.  They alarm him.  And he makes it clear.

He'll eye the door warily when he hears a knock, and like a dog sending out its initial warning bark, he'll demand "Who is it?!"  Because it could be a UPS delivery guy with a package full of games (sure, it's highly unlikely, but as far as Austen is concerned, you never know), he always hesitates and waits for more information before rushing in ferociously to drive the miscreants away.

A few weeks ago, there was a knock on my front door.  "Who is it?!" Austen demanded anxiously.

"I don't know, buddy.  I'll find out." I said.

He followed me, and as I opened the door to reveal two smiling elderly women holding Bibles, Austen stood with his body huddled slightly behind mine, clutching my arm and glaring around my side.  My daughter Janie, curious, peeked around the door frame smiling up at them and grabbed my other hand.

"We're here to talk to you about the love of Jesus," one of them said.

"Thank you, but now is really not a good time," I said as Austen pulled on my arm trying to simultaneously get my attention and drag me from the door.

"We understand you must be busy.  What lovely children."

"What do they want?!" Austen growled.

"Thanks, yes, I'm sorry.  I really need to go."

"Maybe we could stop back sometime.  When are you free?"

"What do they want?!" Austen yelled, continuing to tug furiously on my arm.

"Yes. Um..."  At this point my brain was struggling with several competing demands.  I wanted to tell Austen who these people were to reassure him.  But more than that I wanted to close the door between him and the offending strangers who were not bearing video games.  In order to do so, I needed to figure out how to extricate my hands, one of which Janie was holding and the other Austen was tugging on.  And of course, part of me was automatically trying to process the question that had been posed to me.  When would I be free?  Good one.

I decided to answer Austen's question to buy me some time to process the rest of it.  So I said, calmly, with a warm glow in my voice that lingered on the word "God" and was meant to come out like a comforting verbal version of a motherly hug, "They want to talk to us about God, buddy."  At which point Austen screamed, so loud that it shook the foundations of neighboring homes, "I HATE God!"

Ok, oops.  Didn't expect that.  Apparently I got the order of operations wrong.  It should have been extricate arms and shut door first, then explain.

The two elderly ladies gasped and their smiles faltered.  "Well, God loves you anyway," one finally stammered.

"No!  There is no such thing as God!  I HATE God!" screamed Austen furiously.  He had stepped forward, advancing to drive off the enemy and in doing so had (mercifully) released my arm.  He was standing, leaning forward slightly, stiff and straight as a board, fists clenched with his arms tight by his side, face screwed up in rage.  The women looked shocked, clearly convinced that my house was demon possessed and I was poisoning my child's mind.  So much for that verbal motherly hug of mine.

"Um, ok.  Well, maybe-when-the-kids-are-back-in-school-then-thank-you," I said in a hurriedly cheerful voice as I shut the door.  The women have not come back.  And I'm considering a sign that says "Beware of the 8-Year-Old."