Today is an extra day, so....

I wrote this on FEB 8, 2011. I had not started my blog then, so this did not get published here, though you may have read it as a Facebook "note". I found it in a group of "documents" on my desktop destined for the recycle bin. I am putting it out there today, again, as it is Leap Day, and an extra day to add to the blessings in my life. Seth was one of them. This is how I felt a year ago. I am grateful that I still love him as much, but the pain of reading this no longer drags me under. I have come a long way. On this "extra day" of the year, I thought I would share it with you...and yes, we did the balloons and ice cream.. it was amazing!






I am a woman. That alone is enough to keep half the people out of the sub-set. I am also a mother, so a smaller group still. But then there is an "elite" group to which I belong, whose membership comes with every wish that I did not belong to it at all. It is the group of mothers who have immediate and unfaltering knowledge that babies die. Their babies. Not the news report kind of dying, with a deep sigh at the loss. But the world-has-just-come-to-an-end-and-I-am-at-the-center kind of dying. Dead, before they took a breath. Still. Quiet.

My son Seth would have been ten years old today, February 8, 2011. All the positive thoughts of love and energy, and sadness that grandparents feel, and the wishes of the people I hold dear raining on me with the softness of a summer shower quiets my breath, and stills my heart. I feel it. All that goodness that lives in my life. I get that others feel sadness today, too. They all get to remember the excitement of a new baby, the tingling you get when you know someone you love is pregnant and hopeful, and all of the potential, each with their own kind of pain and loss when all that is suddenly pulled out from under them, like a rug. More like a trap door really, because there is a kind of free fall first, before they hit the bottom. For those in that "potential" group, the tumble is quick, the hit is hard, and there are others who also fell waiting to help you up.

Then there is my elite membership. The one I get by myself. The one that says I know he lived. I felt the little hiccup flutters, and the need to pee. I heard his heartbeat on a little staticy machine. I felt the kicks in the middle of the night, and voiced my annoyance at not being able to sleep, secretly thrilled that this little being picked me to be his mother. I would have plenty of time to get back at him later, with homework, and timeouts, and embarrassing pictures of him naked in the bathtub to show to his girlfriend right before the prom. He would play baseball, and love Barbie clothes, since truthfully, I call him HE now, but then I did not know for sure his gender. It did not matter. I would dress him in red and feed him graham crackers and build blanket forts and read him Harry Potter and Winnie the Pooh. He would know how to change the oil in the car. He would like neon colored band-aids. He could be tricked into drinking his milk if I gave it to him in a cup with a swirly straw, because everything tastes better through a swirly straw. He would like fish sticks.

I talked to him quietly, this baby in my belly. He could already make me cry with my ache to hold him, meet him, start the second phase of our existence together when my voice did not sound underwater to him, and his kicks would be playful under the fluffy white blanket I already had in the crib in the freshly-painted nursery.

Today, I will pick up Seth's brother and sister from school early, and we will go get balloons. Ten of them. We will take Sharpie markers and write love notes on each one while we sit in the car. We will drive to the beach, and release them all at once, and sit, with our toes in the sand and watch them drift away until we can't see them any more. We will play at the beach, write wave wishes in the sand with an old piece of driftwood, and laugh. We will go get ice cream. Four dishes. One for each of us, and one for us to share that would have been Seth's. We will argue about what kinds of toppings Seth would have liked, Haysten thinking that he needed more cookie dough, Mariah thinking he needed more candy, me, just wanting the whipped cream. We will laugh at that, too. We will have invited their dad to come with us, celebrate his son's life. He won't, but we have learned to let that go like the balloons.


I am part of an elite group. At the ten year mark, I would still want my membership revoked.

Today's show brought to you by the letter "F"

I have an hour. Right now. It is a small space of time. What to do? (Tapping fingers on the table) I am in a coffee house. I have coffee, a laptop, and some fun eye candy in the chair nearest me. He is tapping away on an iPad, and has made some light conversation, mostly about computers and coffee, but it is a start. He is not wearing a wedding ring, is not sitting with anyone else, and looks to be about 40. Hmm..

So why am I writing about him instead of talking to him. I have never been accused of being an introvert, so I have the social skills. Oh, he just looked up and smiled. Could it be that I am typing to hard on the keyboard? I peek over. He is on the CNN website, watching.. um. okay, sports news videos, ugh.. yep, I am trying not to notice....

So this is what it feels like to be wanting company. Okay, company is not the right sentiment. I want adult company. Male adult company. It has been too long, and I am lonely. It is not just the sex I miss, that would be easy enough to get if it was all wanted. Sex alone isn’t enough. Damn growing up and respecting my own emotions!

I remember a time when having sex was what I wanted first. The sex that came with the first rush of excitement from someone I just met, or had been seeing. The way the lips moved, the way the hands moved, the way the body moved. Drowning, willingly, in the eyes without even caring if there was a chance of being saved. It was on skin, and then...

It is the *and then...* part that is keeping me from talking any more to this delicious man near me. I can't trust myself, not yet, to not spin him into someone he can not possibly be, and myself into someone I couldn’t stay being. I can smile and flirt and be charming. I can giggle and listen and ask all the right questions. I could get his number, and call him obsessively, and internet stalk him, and become jealous and giving and invisible and demanding and self-sacrificing and belittled and victimized and pathetic and depressed and lonely all over again.

Amazing how I have our whole life written in the space of this one tiny hour, and I don't know his name. It would not matter what his name is, I would compare him to all the people who came before him, condemning him to fix them, and my past, and my insecurities, and my heart and my will power. And do it all while giving me space, and understanding me without me saying anything. He is doomed. Our relationship is over. He can go back to his sports videos on CNN and pretend I never existed.

So this rambling is courtesy of my free association and fear. It feels like a public service announcement right out of Sesame Street. It is how I am spending this hour that I have to myself. Whew, glad that is out of the way, now maybe I can find something more productive to do. I wonder if the delicious man next to me that has been watching sports videos on his iPad would like to talk. I only have about 30 more minutes. I think I will find out.

Warmer on this side of the door.

I ended a friendship this week. Yes, by choice. Yes, it might have started out as a misunderstanding, or circumstances spinning out of control. Yes, I can see why the former friend might have been upset. I can even say, with an accurate amount of certainty, that I was not the only one feeling the way I was feeling, I was just the only one who said anything. It happens that way sometimes. I said goodbye, politely, and I don't regret it.

I was told by a mutual friend that she was sad that the friendship between me and my former friend had ended. I asked her why? She replied that it is always sad when friendships end. I wanted to beg to differ, saying that friendships don't end, that isn't the way friendships work. Friendships stick around. Friendships survive. Friendships grow. If they aren't the kind that can do that, maybe they aren't friendships any more, and that letting go is all that is left.

I knew the end of the friendship was coming for months. A series of things had happened that helped me to know this person was heading into something that was not going to be good, no matter what the spin-doctors could have conjured. I could see it, can still see it. I had been there. Depression, sadness, compliance, anxiety, all being masked and fronted by anger and control. On the surface, she looked great. Losing weight, busy, making plans. Changing friends, buying new clothes, new hobbies, errands to run. While on the outside that all looks great. And while I am not pretending for one second to have anything figured out (if you have ever read my blog, or do so now, you would know I am far from having most things figured out on any given day) but this one I got. Depression and me, well, we are intimate. She is heading where I had been. I can't warn her off, and trying, well, that was kinda pointless, too.

I thought about this writing for a long time before sitting at the keyboard. I wondered when the sad was going to hit me. I wondered if it would sneak up on me and leave me crying or angry when I least expected it. It hasn't happened. I don't think it will. I think it is exactly like I had told my other friend; that it was just the letting go part left, and I did that really quickly this time.

I am grateful to this former friend. She taught me some things about the nature of the people I want in my life. I no longer want people who control just because they think they can. Not ones who try from a position of demand, rather than from a position of leadership. I do not think of her as a leader, so I could never have followed. I no longer want people in my life who have no sense of other people. Hide it behind words like "suffering from high self-esteem" really just means self-centered control freak with no ability to see how other people view you. I don't think anyone "has to" live by another person's definition of who they are. Measuring yourself with someone else's stick is just silly. But being able to see yourself though someone else’s eyes is just a skill everyone should try their best to have. Not so you can see if your butt is too big, but to see if your heart is too small. My former friend does not have that skill, and having friends with that skill is essential to me. It allows for communication on anything. And compromise. And compassion. And love.

So don’t feel sad for the loss of this friendship. It hasn’t been a friendship in a very long time, at least not by how I am choosing friendships at this point in my life. And letting go has become easier and easier as I know more and more about myself. Worth a fight to keep it? Nope. High price? Nah. I have definitely come to believe that what is worth the price is always with the fight, and this price was easy to pay, and not worth the fight. Saying goodbye should always be like this, when closing a door just stops the cold from coming in, and relieves the burden. Like I said near the top, I don’t regret it. It is warmer on this side.

Depression Remix: The Single

It has been just over a year since I recognized in myself that I was depressed. When I wrote about it back then, I can remember (and re-read) that I did not think of it as "classic" depression because I was functioning, even if just barely. I could get to work, see my friends, care for myself and my children, and get my bills paid. I had a new house, a job that, if not liked, at least I did not hate, and had been hanging out with a guy that was okay to date, though it was soon to be ending. I could sleep. I was not binging. I did not call out sick. I was alone, and walking through mud daily, but too depressed to know that I was depressed, so I kept functioning.

I have recently had to answer that for myself, the *big* question about why it is (or in my twisted depressed thoughts, isn't) okay to be alone. I didn't even know what alone meant. It equated so congruently with *lonely* that I could not breathe. My kids were away for the weekend, and I needed to call a friend within 2 minutes of them driving away. They would fall asleep, and my couch, and more to the point, my bed, would feel huge and empty. I hate to admit some of the more desperate things. I once slept on the floor of my daughter's room because my room felt overwhelming and scary. I once took my sleeping son out of his bed and brought him into my room, just so I had someone next to me to hear breathing. That was not alone. That was lonely. Depressive all-consuming lonely. Bordering on psychosis. It was bad.

Depression is a strange beast. It comes in various forms, at least it does for me. Last year in January my depression looked like a halfway decorated Christmas tree I did not have the energy to take down. In April, that same depression looked like a whole bunch of blog posts and complaints about my ex. In August it was a sunburn because I was too tired to walk back to the car to get the umbrella. It kicked my butt in a hundred different ways on an everyday, small, immeasurable scale to where I didn't even know I was getting better.

And I have been getting better. It has been a fucking lot of work, and (as you can see) I have been cussing about it a fucking lot. But I know. How? Little things like having an actual conversation with my mom that did not involve one of us walking out angry at the end (well, technically the middle, since we used to never get to the end). It has actually opened the door to other non-angry conversations, imagine that. I have been able to pinpoint my menstrual cycle and how it effects my mood. When before I would have just curled up in a ball every 4 weeks or so, and cried, blamed it on being on my period, yelled at my kids and ate chocolate for 4 days, I can now *feel* my mood shift, and know what to do to get through it. I still eat chocolate (duh) but now I can also relax enough to acknowledge that my temporary bad mood will pass, and to not make decisions right then. I make it to work, but I also allow myself to be sick when I am. In my pre-acknowledgement world, I would go to work even when I was sick because staying at home sucked.

So having learned this, and as I keep expanding my arsenal of tools in finding myself and getting self-esteem back in place (if I ever had it, but that is a different train of thought) I want to reach more people. I want other people out there to know that they are not alone, or don't have to be in that strange way I defined it. And alone is a strange beast, too.

It is not bad anymore. I have learned the difference. It has changed the way I see depression, and how having a place to talk changes the view, changes the very basic definitions of words. Alone is not so scary anymore. It has come around to mean resilient. It means unafraid. It means ope to happiness. I will write more about this side of it soon, today, I just want you to know you are not alone. How can I help you?

Hope Floats

Personal growth and responsibility for my own choices: I usually fight them, feeling sorry for myself, pouting and indignant that everyone around me just can't see it the way I do. This is the way I feel about having to explain to someone why I still "love" all the people I have ever loved, even if I don't want to be with them. This is a story about why hope floats to the surface, and becomes a life vest.

Patience.

Yep, time for me to explain the story.

The first man I fell in love with (and mean that in the adult sense, and not the crushes I had during school) was a wonderful guy I met my senior year of high school. He was brought to my class as a subject matter expert in the Church of Jesus Christ Of Latter Day Saints. Yep, a Mormon boy stuck in a room full of Catholic girls. I was *lucky* enough to have picked LDS as the religion I would write about, and he seemed like a really good source. We exchanged phone numbers after class, and made arrangements for him and his companion to meet one day to talk.

Many things happened, not the least of which was getting to know his room-mate, who hated the Church and was only on his mission to be away from the beatings his father used to give daily. I learned about the church, wrote my report, made an actual choice not to let these two men out of my life. The room-mate was candid and funny and for some reason trusted me enough to know that I would never tell anyone about his plan to disappear after the mission was over, and never come back. The man I fell in love with was shy, sweet, a pleaser. He had his whole life already mapped out with a fiance back in Idaho whom his parents had arranged for him, and a job waiting. He would be an elder in the Church, a good husband and provider, and would settle into a routine that would create harmony for his life and Church. He hated every minute of it, and though his faith seemed certain, he was questioning, the way I was questioning my Catholicism, that there had to be something more.

During that five months, while I played softball and ditched my extra religious studies classes so that I could spend time with him, I learned about faith and pressure and love in a way I never had before. I knew I was not really a Catholic (in my mother's definition of the word) and he learned he was not really Mormon. The difference was that when he talked about being together it was based in his definition of the future. I would move to Idaho, we would live far enough away from his family to not get the dirty looks from having dumped his fiance, but we would join the church, work in a family business, and have a bunch of kids.

He had been devastated to find out I was not a virgin when he talked about saving ourselves for the wedding night. He was overwhelmed to learn I was not moving from California any time soon. He was grief stricken to be confronted with my new found enlightenment on religion, and that I had no intention of joining the Mormon church, then or ever. He left, begging me to go with him. I said no, I could not become how he expected me to be when that version of the future would doom us, and I would end up hating him ,and hating myself in the process.

So why write about this now? It happened 27 years ago. It is because I still carry the guilt I feel over not complying. Over promising love and then backing off when it seemed to get too hard. Shouldn't I have been able to withstand being in a suppressive religion, popping out babies to satisfy a church directive? Shouldn't I have been willing to sacrifice my education, my family, and my roots for the sake of the love he was offering me? Shouldn't I have been grateful to have a man say he loves me and that be enough?

Turns out it wasn't enough, but that hasn't seemed to keep me from holding on to it.

The next man I loved that deeply disappeared in the middle of the night because of baby-momma drama. I was at his house one day, and heard from him again 6 months later. We had been together 2 years. He had moved to Nebraska, was working as a carnival roadie and wanted me to drop out of school to come on the road with him. He said I could make a lot of money and he had a wonderful trailer and room in his bed waiting for me. We would be on the road during the season, about 8 months, and could drink beer and have sex the rest of the time. When babies started coming (and he is now the father of 7, but that is a different story) we could buy a bigger trailer and maybe some land in Omaha. I said he would have to come to California to get me. He never did. I never went.

I fell in love with my drama boyfriend because dancing and sex was a priority. I left that relationship because, well, the drama, and his desire to have a boyfriend as much as I wanted one. It was complicated, and heading nowhere.

I fell in love with my first ex-husband while being stood up for a date. When, 7 years later, he left with a pregnant mistress, I did not try to get him back. It had zip to do with loving him. I just could not see my future as anything but hurt and pain.

When I left my children's father, it was for the same reasons as all the others. My need for stability and love, growth and happiness, a future with hope and desire was met with something I could not wrap my brain around. In the last case, it was alcohol and despair and, for lack of a vocabulary word, it was the opposite of fulfilment and connection.

Through all of this, and maybe why I still hold on, is that there was, and still is, this sense of longing. I want to be in love. I want to feel needed and desired. I want to share and give and find the goodness in a single man, in a single joined life. I want to know that there is value in differences without there being predefined roles that must be lived. I did not want to be a metal-worker's religious baby maker. I did not want to be a carnie's trailer whore in the middle of nowhere. I did not want to be a fag hag with a lifetime supply of condoms in a box under my bed. I did not want to be the nurturer to a child that was not mine, constantly reminded that the child came from a devastating infidelity. I did not want to be scared ever day that I might come home to a drunk, mean, abusive man who could not plan Thursday, much less the next 20 years.

I did not want to be alone, and yet I am because honestly I was already alone as each of the relationships took me into, or tried to take me into, roles where I could not go. And the guilt of that selfishness still finds a way into my world. Not as much as it used to, granted. It was never because of potential, it was because of reality. If I could have changed to be what they wanted, then we could have been happy, right? If I could have just been happy with what I was given.

So my task is to figure out the balance between letting go, and not giving up hope. How to still love all the things and future and brightness, while accepting the darkness but not letting it swallow me. It is about loving on all levels, but mostly about knowing who I am in the process and not regretting the choices to not stay when I was sure staying would not change anything. It is about growing up, and still finding wonder. So when I tell you, and mean it honestly, that I LOVE every single person that I have ever loved, do not take it as a bad thing. It is trying very hard to hold on to hope, not with them, but with myself.

The Universe is a stand-up comedian.

I get to have my wishes to the Universe tested.

I have been sending out, almost to the point of mindlessly, the idea that if I could just have my children's father in the same room for a conversation for, say, an hour, we *might* get to work some things out regarding our children. I asked for this as an intention on the Solstice in June. I wrote it as a wave wish a dozen plus more times over the last five months. I have written about it here, and even added it to recent court documents.

The universe answered my desire by forcing me back in to court mediation, where my ex will sit, papers in hand, in front of a mediator, with just me, for a little over an hour, at an appointment next week. The humor of it being on the Winter Solstice did not escape me. It fits, to the day, the timeline I had asked for back on the Summer Solstice. It is also humorous to note that the Solstices are the two actual "holidays" I truly celebrate, and asked for through the courts, only to have them denied as too complicated to work into a schedule (Like somehow June 21 and Dec 21 each year comes at a different time on the calendar, but I digress.) So this "meeting" I have wanted seems like a funny-ha-ha way of getting what I need.

Need, you say? Yes, it is my need. It is going to give me a chance, not to bash my ex, but to tell someone, anyone who matters in the legal system, why I am a good mom, and why the stability I provide my kids should continue. I am going to do my best to work on my tone, and not come across as a selfish bitch just because I put up my big-ol-fear wall to keep from getting hurt. I am going to explain our schedule and routine, talk about how we bond and reconnect at the end of each day, and on the drive home on visitation weekends. I am going to show the report cards showing perfect attendance and good grades, and praising my children as social and creative. I am going to also talk about sleep and friends and play that will be lost if the schedule changes.

At my attorney's urging, I will also talk about my ex's inconsistency with decisions, with desires, and with routines. I will point out that while he has good intentions to participate in his children's lives, he has had 63 opportunities to come to their counseling appointments, and has managed to make to only 1 in 2 1/2 years. I will have to tell the mediator that while he says he wants time to volunteer at the school, he has picked up the kids on Wednesday 89 times, and has yet to stop in to volunteer in the classroom. I will have to tell the mediator about the missed Parent Open House, and the missed School Festival, and the missed field trips, all known about in advance since I give him the heads up, the paperwork, and the sent-home notes every single time.

I will have to talk about my children. I will need to talk about how my son hates transitions, and about the crying at drop off time at preschool, and the whining at pick up time at the youth center. I will point out the counselor’s report talking about consistency for him in everything from schedules to meals and bedtime, and how he functions on the premise that if anything needs to change he needs days to assimilate it before a tentative change can occur.

I will need to talk about my daughter wanting to be a beautiful fashion diva. I will talk about her bathroom time, and her bedroom being decorated, and about the jewelry box. I will tell the mediator about how she doesn't like baseball curtains and sharing a bunk bed with her brother. And about how she feels about her body, and her hair, and her nails, and her clothes. I will talk about her best friend moving to Singapore as part of her father's military job, and how much my daughter has been worried about this for months. I will talk about comfort and sadness and desire. I will tell the mediator about the day my ex's new wife decided to euthanize the family dog, and how my daughter called me for comfort, even though there was 7 other people in the house. I will talk about loss, and memories, and why she loves her life now.

I will have to talk about alcohol. I will have to talk about vicious emails. I will have to talk about broken promises.

I will have to tell the Mediator that the kids already told this to their father, not only once, but multiple times, in Family meetings he had to be forced into attending, and in notes about things they want changed, and to their counselor, and while sitting on his lap, very specifically, while simultaneously being ignored. I will have to point out that he doesn’t really know anything about his children, because how could he. He doesn’t have that skill.

I will have to keep my cool, show why I am stable, and not give in to my usual temptation to try to fix things for the abusers in my life. Yes, I said that: Abusers. I have done this consistently for such a long time that it has often felt normal. The role I accept and continue to feel outside of as I stand up for myself.

It will try my best not to cry and hold my ex’s hand (that was what I did at the last mediation, 2½ years ago) and remember just how much better my life is now. I just need to be myself and allow all that I have learned and become to be the guiding force.

But here is my Universe, answering for me, that maybe being in the same room will help. I don’t expect my children’s father to suddenly come to his senses, stop drinking and start a twelve step, and begin praising me as the good mother I am. I don’t need his approval or acceptance. What I do need is to have him be himself in front of the mediator, and let the actions of the last couple years be what comes through. His and mine both. It really does speak for itself, if the people who matter can listen.

I think the Universe is sending me a signal. It is saying the test is coming, but it is coming at a time when I am at my strongest, with the most support. Blessed Solstice. I will try to make my wishes more specific though. How about I ask for comfort and ease, blessings and virtue, friends and love. Can’t go wrong with those.

millimeters and miles

When my phone rang yesterday, with the ring tone I have set for calls from children's father, I knew my daughter had won a small victory, and that my ex is doing some saving face in the process. I think it is a win-win, in everything except how it might play out in court.

I know, more about court is getting old. It is for me, too. This time, I am being dragged back in because somehow the first six times the court made a decision must have just been practice, and not the real thing. It must be my singular definition of "permanent" that is getting in the way.


I am grateful. My children are amazing. They are bright and intelligent and well mannered. They are creative and funny and loving. They make me smile by their presence and their hugs and their unrelenting love. I am thankful because it has taken me until very recently to realize that I can take a lot of the credit for that. They are polite because I taught, and expect from them, manners. They are creative and intelligent because I read to them, and let them explore and encourage them to try things a little outside their reach. They are funny because I show them the less serious sides of the world and pay attention when they show me and tell me the things they create in their hearts and minds. I know them individually and as collaborators. I teach them daily through modeling and touch and smiles that they are loved and how to love in return. This is my definition of permanent. It is who I am, and who they are, and how we are connected in ways that are so far beyond what a stack of sorted and filed papers say. I am their mom.

So why was the sound of the ring tone exciting to me? It means that my daughter gets it. The stuff I have been doing since before my children were born is working. My daughter can make a phone call to her mom on this "odd-year" Thanksgiving, against her dad's wishes, because she knows the connection is there, even when we are not in the room together. She knows that saying hello from 43 miles away is exactly the same as 43 millimeters away. She knows that my heart and her heart are big enough to not only survive, but to thrive. It is permanent. We no longer have a choice, as if we ever did.

How this translates into court is anyone's guess. Oh, I have a good attorney, who cited case law, and pointed out the obvious to a potentially overburdened and feeling-neutral court. I got the fun job (said with as much sarcasm as I can muster) of telling the court why I rock as a mom and why my children's father is all talk and no walk, and the plethora of examples of why his already filed statements to the court are either exaggerations or lies, and not in the "best interests" of the children. It sounded harsh as I wrote it, but truth often is, especially from me, a woman who usually pleases and never takes any credit for a job well done. Touting my own virtues is new. I do it with more frequency these days, but it still leaves me shaky. This time, with a potential change in visitation , and thus my time with my kids on the line, tooting my own horn has become completely necessary. I want it to keep being exactly who I am, and who my kids are in the process.

Here I go with the whiny part though: all this is in the "nothing to lose" category for my children's father. If the courts decide he gets what he asks for, he "wins". If they decide to give me what I asked for in response, everything stays the same, and he"wins". The things he could gain won't happen because of "extra" time spent with the kids. He could have the hugs and the manners and the amazing creative wonderful relationship with them right now if he wanted it. He doesn't. He could see and foster a loving relationship daily with phone calls and emails, and reading to them, and paying attention, and listening. He won't. What he doesn't realize, and never will is that he "wins" nothing. He will not suddenly become a good father because he gets an extra Sunday night. But more that that, (and what I already know is the "real" reason he drags me through this) is that I won't stop being a good mom. I will have the same connection with my children no matter what. He doesn't get that. He never will.

So it was a gift this Thanksgiving in the form a phone call, confirming for me what I already know, that my kids do understand. It is the part where my singular definition of permanent doesn't change, and I get to be thankful that "permanent" for them doesn't change either.