waking up hours too early to look after mr smear and try to eat breakfast simultaneously; at least the music was awesome, because mr smear only wanted what he couldn't have and refused food
knocking things off my todo list, getting gd to acupuncture then coming home to feed mr smear before returning to pick her up, a short break for lunch then going to my great aunt's where mr smear went wild and i spent an exhausting hour and a half chasing him around a tiny lounge full of fragile items
getting a bit of a nap in before rls set in just before my mom came over
mr smear needing a lot of dancing before finally falling asleep, dinner and the intense end of jessica jones, chased with most of get him to the greek which i found surprisingly funny
tuesday 8th:
heaven is the morning's first hug from your child. hell is them waking you up ridiculously early to give it to you.
a meeting with an insurance broker that made me very sorry that i didn't use one before - the amount of money could've saved over the past month or two has been weighing on my mind
a big nap followed by a big shopping expedition with my mom; mr smear "wetting himself" for the second time in a row but we determined that a faulty sippy cup was to blame
gd and i feeling wiped out, mr smear enjoying his shower and his new fluoride-free vegan toothpaste and all of us enjoying gd's dinner
ali wong is amazing: funny, clever and tastefully shocking
wednesday 9th:
finally finding decent documentation for edge (unofficial, sadly)
the trump presidency horror and the gratitude for being in africa
operating on three hours of sleep as usual, unable to take advantage of our cleaning lady / nanny being around, dragging mr smear out of bed to take gd to the chiropractor, briefly home for lunch, meeting with a not-doctor who's peddling a good product but also some half-baked theories - mr smear struggling and screaming - and then the big mission to hout bay for the unofficial launch of an exciting new vegan restaurant. both of us exhausted by the time we came home, dinner and almost straight to bed
thursday 10th:
there's nothing quite like jumping out of bed with the sensation of something crawling over your feet; is it spiders?? fleas?? mosquitoes??
the realization that i've missed my 2016 deadline for launching my graphic novel
slow progress with my work but progress nonetheless
first attempt with new rls med seemed to work
missing pilates again
rushing to the hospital with maps giving terrible directions
a long but informative couple of hours
exhaustion, napping on the couch and being woken with angry cursing (dropped food in a playpen), herding mr smear the kitten until my mom arrived to rescue us and dropping for an hour's rest during which i had weird dreams ending with a child being elected american president and gushing "oy vey" before greeting each celebrity who came to his victory dinner, hugging michael j fox tightly while a sinister looking child prepared to trap him with mistletoe; as soon as he stepped under the mistletoe i expected the menacing kid to kiss him but instead he dropped the mistletoe and the two walked out of the marquee together while he matter-of-factly began saying to the new president that "we all know that most children hate their parents..."
herding the cat until bedtime, then getting in a solid night's work and becoming excited about microsoft's entity framework now that i've seen how it handles migrations with code first
friday 11th:
a couple of hours' sleep, then up for vaccinations; running into a girl i once knew who's just had a kid, mr smear playing nicely
the post office fail - "old school" means backwards, they have computers but they use a physical ledger instead - then dealing with the old woman locking up (and stinking up) the baby changing station who "didn't know" that she should respond to someone knocking on the door
quick shopping, a delicious knead lunch, rushing home to pay the cleaning lady, actually napping! then chasing after mr smear and getting a little work done simultaneously before going to my mom's for a really nice dinner with my aunt's family, mr smear tearing around until late and passing out only after we got home
feeling awful, going to bed as soon as i could
saturday 12th:
sleeping all night but waking up still feeling awful
rick and morty and a busy toddler, caffeine to the rescue and a fun swimming lesson, the food market in time for the great food, repeating the mistake of hitting the waterfront on a weekend and being trapped on the way out by the colour run
exhausted, being stood up by copywriter but getting started on my campaign (and it's related social media accounts), gd's facebook friend's faux pas in sharing a personal photo, jack the giant killer (pretty good!) and a bit of sherlock before crashing
sunday 13th:
another full night, waking up stuffy and tired. thought on waking up: "stenogasaurus, the dinosaur that sits quietly in the courtroom recording everything being said"
a slow start, a run at the gym and drinking coffee to stop the dizziness, mr smear playing well with the other crèche kids, knead for lunch joined by my mom, home for a quick stop that turned into we're-not-going-anywhere, campaign building including a couple of hours talking to copywriter, a bit of a louis ck special we'd already seen then more sherlock then back to work
finding an urgent email from my boss that had been waiting for me since the morning, some quick debugging and then finally hearing that my first project is a success (and praying that it stands up to stress testing)
monday 14th:
working hard and late on the prototype project
another insanely tough morning, looking after mr smear while gd did pilates then getting a nap in before heading out to renew the car rental; returning in time for gd's physio, picking up my mom and going to the bank to learn that they're not going to give me a credit card until i've been here for a full tax year. walking with the stroller against a strong wind to fail at the post office (forgotten slip), a very quick run through the pharmacy and back home
avoiding the rls medication due to stuffiness / headaches
becoming progressively more tired as the evening went on, getting up groggy from a short nap and making some great progress
tuesday 15th:
until crashing around 2.30am
waking up feeling MUCH better off meds, shopping mission and my excitement over installing tekken 6 disintegrating as my hour of playtime went by while it failed to install
taking mr smear for a walk to the doctor to pay a bill that had already been paid and ending up at a park enjoying watching him navigate a play area and interact positively with another kid, picking up sorbet on the way home and working and prepping mr smear for bed before dinner and finishing an episode of sherlock and
wednesday 16th:
working into the night
mr smear's horrible midnight hours (lots of frustration and carrying and tantrums)
a few good hours of sleep
gd joining me on a mission to retrieve our copy of the neverending story while the nanny looked after mr smear alone for the first time
a very positive and interesting therapy session
mom bringing car sun shields, taking advantage of mr smear's nap, visiting the telkom store to have them call billing on my behalf; it turns out that their landline billing is completely separate from their mobile, so signing up for a debit order for one doesn't have any effect on the other and while one billing department kept telling me i was in the clear the other was running up a large bill with interest.
wow. well done, telkom.
taking mr smear for a windy walk, being amused by him chasing a little girl for a bit, mom visiting, dinner and showing gd what rick and morty's s02e02 psychedelic number is an homage to (malice in wonderland); sherlock and paperwork (finally!) and a little work and then...
thursday 17th:
an actual night's sleep
waking up to the end of shrek 3, a tough but good pilates class, a hearty breakfast, showering, mom coming over to babysit and rushing off to the chiropractor a day early so going for lunch at simply asia and doing a big spar shopping instead
mom staying on so that i could nap, joining her and mr smear for a quick shop and a walk while gd cooked
prepping for bed, dinner and sherlock
friday 18th:
good work, going to bed at a reasonable hour (2am), waking up feeling alright enough that we could start the day at the gym; getting into trouble with gd over my cracked heels
have i mentioned mr smear's apparent growth spurt? eating lots and really learning fast
a good run playing angry birds on the treadmill, then pad work with gd which went very well, then rushing home to hand mr smear over to my mom and rush out again to the chiropractor (right day this time), picking up hot fusion curry on the way home (great food, crap naan and not the best attitude towards their staff), mr smear eating half my spicy chickpea curry and running between me and my mom because he didn't think either of us was feeding him fast enough, rick and morty and exhaustion and coffeeing up to help gd with mr smear and getting a little work done and prepping for dinner
mini-school reunion friday night dinner, coming home late with an exhausted mr smear, a little bit of sherlock and then passing out
saturday 19th:
and almost sleeping the night through, getting up still exhausted, running after mr smear and then being sent out to the doctor's because faxed scripts don't get renewed
mr smear napping instead of swimming, taking the opportunity to get comfortable with c# unit testing
rick and morty over lunch, then a long but pleasant insurance consultation (no way i would've managed those forms alone), gd cooking, taking mr smear to my mom's to undo the damage from installing adobe reader, driving there because the wind was far too strong to walk, then putting mr smear to bed as soon as we got home and eating and going straight to bed
sunday 20th:
early up to a happy boy and rick and morty, visiting my uncle with mr smear needing to be reigned in at every turn; back for a nap, then a mixture of work and managing mr smear before taking him out for a proper walk. shopping on the way home, working, showering and prepping mr smear for bed, patton oswalt: talking for clapping and a bit of sherlock and then fighting with unit testing asynchronous entity framework
monday 21st:
until 3am, waking up to mr smear being exceedingly loud, not going back to bed because we had an early appointment with a pain specialist, an afternoon working and looking after mr smear; the excitement when his new duplo blocks arrived and he now has enough for us to properly enjoy playing together with him (it helps that he's figuring out how to put things together); introducing a coworker to code-first in entity framework, hours of effort going into discovering that entity framework doesn't handle linked objects very elegantly, dinner and a bit of green lantern, crashing early after a long two days
tuesday 22nd:
trying to get some midnight work done but the words were all swimming in front of my eyes
mr smear falling asleep between us with intermittent cries for an hour and a half, getting up excited when his nanny arrived and running right past her
full day indoors, helping my mom with her website and breaking my head over an entity framework problem that was entirely due to a lack of accessible documentation, lots of taking care of / running after / entertaining mr smear (including introducing him to the graphic novel adaptation of coraline), being exhausted, working and documenting and watching penn and teller's fool me and the rest of green lantern and the tail end of the fundamentals of caring
wednesday 23rd:
kathleen madigan is really funny
waking up before the nanny arrived and being unable to go back to sleep
the pharmacist making gd feel bad about her prescription and then messing it up
a nap, at least
mr smear drinking my wazoogle's out of a cup
an afternoon fighting to get my websites up and running again after i broke them trying to fix a bad design decision i'd made when i originally configured the box
sorting out my mother's business email, struggling because google's documentation leaves out the most important step!
mr smear almost brushing his teeth and rinsing by himself
gd's neck going while getting ready for bed just as her back finally started feeling better after days of struggle
trying the oil for rls again and feeling like shit
thursday 24th:
waking up at 6.30 to take care of mr smear while gd slept in and really struggling to stay awake, the joy of seeing him wolf down a large quantity of the maize meal i made for my own breakfast
the exploding glass jar and the saga of the pharmacy manager
mr smear passing out on the way to the gym
hitting the bag pretty hard and hoping i wasn't injuring myself
post-gym dizziness, rick and morty and hot fusion lentils and leftovers and emergency espresso coconut water
the chiropractor and walking mr smear to the toy store
learning just how many facebook "friends" i really have by individually inviting all the relatively relevant ones to the page for my mom's new venture
walking mr smear to the lighthouse playground with my mom
showering mr smear and dinner and his bedtime and work
friday 25th:
getting into my work groove and excitedly breaking through a wall, going to bed at 4am only because i'd need to wake up early
7.30 up to take care of mr smear until the nanny arrived, then unable to get back to sleep. cancelling the preschool appointment, a long and difficult day, a nice walk with my mom and mr smear who loved the playground time, picking up hot fusion on the way home, the surprising relative expense of pad thai, staggered timing for friday night dinner, gd going to bed early and taking advantage of alone time to play an hour of ffix (focus on the card game)
saturday 26th:
working through 4am and finishing strong before my vacation; waking up three hours later to be dragged through mr smear's morning ritual (being angry with a kid's show - max and ruby - for pushing eggs for breakfast), taking mr smear to his swimming lesson where i was so tired that i was hallucinating and i was not impressed by the teacher attempting to comfort me instead of showing me what i was doing wrong
exhausted to the point of moody, gd managing to give me a couple of hours napping then taking mr smear for a big, tiring shopping expedition, a bad response to him sticking his fingers in the cup again, and throwing toys out the window, prepping for bed and delicious dinner and sherlock
sunday 27th:
does going to bed at midnight count as early? getting a solid six hours, waking up to kulipari, olive and a visit to the pharmacy; a very sore wrist, a mission to kleinsky's and a walk with my mom before rushing back so she could get to golf, a very tasty breakfast bagel, nap!, a little ffix (failing many times to impress the audience with blank and zidane), monitoring mr smear for a while then going to dischem before taking him for a long walk to and through the park; if you want to lose faith in humanity, the park on a sunday evening is pretty efficient.
was terry pratchett's dwarven bread a play on artisan bread? i haven't seen any that doesn't feel like it was intended to be used as a blunt weapon.
artisan bread. the gift that says "i really want to hit you in the teeth with a brick but this is the closest legal option available"
sharing a delicious bread with mr smear while walking him backwards into the wind; i couldn't see his face so i don't know know what he was doing to make the bicycle couple passing me go "he's so cool!"
feeding, showering, setting up business emailing with my mom (very grateful for mailgun's services because the tutorials for configuring smtp servers are all awful)
going to bed early
monday 28th:
getting a good night's sleep, a little bit of work research on waking up and then diving into the emailing, enjoying mr smear's nap then preparing (for ages) to hit my cousin's swimming pool
department of home affairs: a few unanswered calls and one misdirection, but eventually getting through and being put on hold for a few minutes before being (VERY) pleasantly surprised to learn that it appears that they're not interested in continuing to question my citizenship status and my son's south african birth certificate can now be arranged! this was the first and most important step in making sure we can stay in cape town, so we're extremely excited ^_^
an angry altercation at the end of a blocked road with a distant cousin and neighbour who didn't appear to recognize me
swimming and chilling, a lovely afternoon; mr smear really going wild as evening drew near, shower and hot fusion dinner and a personal chat with SxS for the first time in months
powder: i'm sure i've seen at least some of it before, it's a great movie although the ending didn't do it justice. it made me think, though: when dumb jocks watch movies where the bullied comes out on top, do they feel like the bad guys won?
tuesday 29th:
mr smear waking us up every hour for a long night of poor sleep
ffix: giving up on the minigame. fighting with chrome (my dns settings were fine, but chrome kept loading the wrong page even after cache flushing)
email tweaking, post office fails (it's possible my mail's been redirected to somebody else's box?!), shopping too cold for gd and returning a beach kit, getting mr smear to bed for some dev time, sudden exhaustion and nerve pinching
an expensive cash-only doctor's visit, walking into my sister on our way out, home for a bit then out for a sunset walk, mr smear vacillating between joy and frustration, hot fusion for dinner again, an efficient showering system, bedtime, thoroughly enjoying sherlock's best man episode, then spending a good few hours grinding in ffix as a birthday present to myself
wednesday 30th:
mr smear's tough midnight feed, a little work to relieve the gaming guilt before 4am
up early to messages and the end of legend of the guardians, a mission to pick up clothing for gd and the off with my mother to obs to check out dolce, the vegan friendly bakery that does great vegan pizza and delicious cake and crumble
a kiss from my son on my birthday, fighting with the bank on my birthday, troubleshooting an installation with SxS on my birthday, running into my niece on our walk, too chilly to continue, bedtime ritual
dinner and david blaine's real or magic, tired and struggling; going to bed stressing because my bank account wasn't being updated in time AND it became apparent that i'd need to borrow money to get through the month
thursday 1st:
waking up stressing after a full night's sleep; mom coming over to lend a hand, advice and serious assistance; pilates, doing well until i shifted something and triggered a neck spasm, though it would take a while before becoming a problem...
... the enrollment interview for mr smear, a surreal experience revisiting the nursery school i went to, hours of phone calls getting my mobile phone sorted out - lesson learned: stay away from me&you mobile - and determining that a visa direct stuff-up might delay my urgent transfers two more days, clearing my virtual desk for a while, getting some progress made when my mom came over in the evening to spend some time with mr smear and join us for dinner, the good wife
friday 2nd:
waking up around 4am and making some progress, an at-home health examination, an afternoon at the pool (bees, poetry), shadowslight waiting for us for a catch-up, posticino run and a laffa on the way back and mr smear's bedtime and sherlock and hours on the phone with my canadian bank trying to find my money and learning that my access card had expired, but they'd issue me a new one that expires in about 35 years - of course, to get my details the native english speaker had to transfer me to her supervisor who only speaks broken asian english and couldn't tell r's from l's or c's from p's and t's...
saturday 3rd:
tired again after another full night's sleep, waking up to find the first of my missing money in my account after all the stress and panic and expensive hours on the phone... godsdammit, end of 2016, could everyone PLEASE move to bitcoin?!
the continuation of the pharmacist sage, last swimming lesson for the year, driving to the vegan market and being forced to turn back because of gd's back, getting in a nap on the couch and my mom and a cousin arriving and then my nephew arriving for a lovely, busy afternoon
mr smear's nose trouble begins
ffix and lost eye drops and showering and more ffix and sailor coming over and walking to get dinner, catching and releasing the large cockroach in gd's mug, talking until it was way past our bedtimes
sunday 4th:
a couple of difficult wakeups with mr smear's stuffy nose, getting up at 7am feeling like shit, resting on the couch with evangelion 1.11, getting up when mr smear took his nap and playing ffix, getting shit done and really not feeling like it, a long walk with mr smear and my mom
monday 5th:
the 2am revelation that our son is 16 months old tomorrow and we still haven't gotten him used to self-soothing, mr smear really struggling with a runny nose and a long time getting him back to bed
trying to work on one of my projects but getting stuck with sub-par service providers...
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