some up, some down, some being blown around

monday 13th:

a full night's sleep! mr smear's nose cleared up! dropping him off at school and excitedly buying up loads of fruit and vegetables and coming home to clean the kitchen! and play ffix instead of nap when we realized we had less than half an hour to return to the school. back home for lunch and mr smear's nap and the cabin in the woods, then busy until it was time to take gd to the acupuncturist.
the company gardens' rapeman (young dude exclaiming how he's a sex bomb and then pointing at women and informing them that he would have sex with them), a big wind forcing us into the national library (nice, but with eerily empty shelves), then the wellness centre for a very berry smoothie that mr smear and i shared before picking up gd and coming home for bedtime prep

dinner: we all loved gd's homemade lentil burgers, mr smear saying "skeee" when he means squeeze

a little telly (the hurt business) and some sql scripting (haven't done that in a while), a surprise migraine but some great news to ease my discomfort - a raise! not nearly as much as i need, but considerably better than what i've been getting. hopefully the project i'm working on will help bring in a bigger one...

tuesday 14th:

hours fighting iis and restify (no PUTs allowed), crashing at 3am

pre-school shopping, rushing out to a cigarette-smoky corridor that fired up the morning in a very bad way
ffix while gd made her first vegan chilli (delicious! but hot enough to take the roof off your mouth)
picking up mr smear, him trying to run away while we searched for his shoes and i think he and the boy whose party he's going to might not be friends. i'm pleased that he's not scared of anyone, but we're a little concerned that he might be testing the other children physically. he's definitely getting more verbally communicative, though, so i think (and hope) that these things will be easier to manage soon

a little bit of a nap and then being woken by my boy climbing and falling on me and gd: a fun family moment, it's amazing how energetic little people can be!

gd knocking mr smear out with breastmilk, the two of us down until 5pm and me woken from a deep sleep and big dreams being ripped away and taking a while to readjust

too lazy to go out but the wind came up and a) became a good excuse and b) blew our front door open letting us know it had been unlocked for hours. when you live in a shopping centre, that's disquieting :/

showering and putting mr smear to bed - teaching him that pinching's not okay - and then vegging out to internets for a while before rejoining the battle of CORS

wednesday 15th:

finally getting it to work but not sure what precisely did the trick; taking the opportunity to clean up and optimize until 3am

mr smear up and down during the night, fitful sleep until 7am, getting through the morning and dropping him off and coming home to sleep; picking him up by myself still dazed and confused, him full of snot (apparently sinusitis started just after we dropped him off)

nap time refused, busy time instead; a canal walk mission that took longer than expected and cancelling gd's acupuncture appointment that we might still have made on time, waterfront shopping (mostly successful) and back in time to prep for mr smear's bedtime

mom joining us for gd's chilli and bringing news and books from our cousin, winding down with john oliver and the rest of the hurt business (great documentary), then struggling to get into work

thursday 16th:

a good sleep but a tough wakeup, another stressed morning turning tense, installing appcelerator and fighting with the playstation store while learning about body language

visa direct transferring within seconds... why did that stop working for a few months?!

picking up mr smear and learning about some of the other kids' security blankets and being grateful we don't have to deal with those kinds of dependencies

haircut stress and disaster and fixing, awkwardly wearing an lsd shirt to see a hippie doctor, rushing to get gd to her acupuncture appointment and arriving early in a high wind with him fast asleep so chilling at clarke's while waiting

i'm trying to understand something: parents concerned about the mercury content of vaccines (after thimerosol was removed in '99) but who consume seafood while pregnant or breastfeeding and feed it to their children.

mr smear waking up just before gd joined us for olives, then going home to an unpleasant and unsuccessful attempt to feed mr smear vegan meatloaf

and a horrible evening ensued for all

getting mr smear to bed easily enough

friday 17th:

working on a security system until 3.30am, mr smear up a few times during the night, coffee to get me through taking him to school, shopping and then playing ffix until the coffee wore off enough to nap; sleeping deeply enough that i'd need another to go pick him up again

a couple of hours of chasing mr smear while gd cooked, then heading out to his first class birthday party. mr smear passed out on the way there and woke up as we got back in the car after an awful twenty minutes hanging around in the hot sun with no adult refreshments and people who don't interest us in the slightest and who gd felt were rude to her

an uncomfortable ride home through rush hour traffic, realizing that i hadn't been feeling well for a couple of days at least, another couple of hours playing with mr smear before getting ready for shabbat dinner

a really nice dinner with my mom and sailor, mr smear throwing food that gd had spent hours preparing, uber to the super romance arcade indie game expo

not a lot on show and lots of indoor smoking, but a couple of great ideas on display and it was fun seeing that capetonian nightlife hasn't fundamentally changed

french stand-up (gad elmaleh, amusing) and ffix

saturday 18th:

a few zombie-state wakeups, an early morning, some of that 70's show and an argument over song lyrics getting serious

a more peaceful morning going forward, a lazy day inside aside from a brief excursion to the pharmacy, neo-nursery rhymes on the wall, a beautiful sunset walk with mr smear until the wind picked up dangerously; a couple of leash incidents including a grazed knee

stopping by my mom's for a short while then scrambling to get home unscathed by the intermittent blasts of wind

a bit of x-men apocalypse (bad mastering as usual) and an early night

sunday 19th:

a mostly decent night's sleep, joe rogan live and struggling with playstation redeem codes; fortunately i can get a refund on the south african card, but now i need to offload a US one and all because the playstation store uses ip location detection to determine whether i can put money into my own wallet (so i finally paid for what i wanted directly once i figured that out)

curtain shopping minus looking for curtains, chair shopping and picking up toys and kitchenware, driving out to pay the car rental with mr smear passing out on the way, returning home and doing absolutely nothing (aside from watching the rest of x-men apocalypse) because there was still a heavy wind and gd wasn't feeling good. mom joining us in the evening for a drink and everyone getting an early night.

monday 20th:

another decent night's sleep, mr smear not liking the new maize meal, dropping him off at school and come back home to work but watching videos on body language and terry pratchett instead. picking him up and heading straight for the gym, a pretty good workout and feeling the fact that it was our first time in weeks. mr smear passing out on the way home and sleeping straight through my mom taking over while i took gd to acupuncture, returned, picked her up and returned again. mr smear wired after drinking his wazoogles but blowing gd's mind by going to bed without a fuss, remembering my wired magazine subscription, nap, alarm, nap, alarm, nap alarm and then getting up to work feeling much better

tuesday 21st:

midnight horror - discovering that i missed an important email from the canadian revenue agency a month ago and now i owe them money. it's that time of the year again...

the wind still pumping and birds singing at 2.20am.