sometimes i just want to cry

or scream, or sleep, or work, or something, but i just don't know where to begin. i'm tired. i'm really, really tired and that's in spite of getting good work done last night and going to bed relatively early and mr smear sleeping twelve hours without a feed and giving us actual rest for once. gd and i spent the morning managing mr smear and running around trying to get ourselves ready for airplane's wedding, but once we were finally on our way gd experienced a panic attack so bad that we turned around and zoomed (my mom was driving) to the hospital where it took four (four!) ativans, a couple of doses of an anti-nausea, intravenous painkillers and breathing into a bag before she could finally slow down enough to be stoned and sleepy the rest of the day. once we put her to bed, mr smear woke up, and my mom and i took him to visit my great-aunt (who'd fallen and opened her head a few days ago) and cousin for a while; by the time we got back the grocery store was closed and we picked up HOT hot fusion and tried feeding mr smear dinner before saying goodnight.

putting him to bed the first time wasn't too hard, but when he recently got up it became an hour or so of torture - i'm not certain he has any idea why he wouldn't sleep. and every moment carrying him became tougher and tougher.

i should be in bed, but i needed to write this, and post the rest of my notes for the last weeks and then maybe - hopefully - pass out.

---tuesday 9th:

sleeping good hours and dreaming intensely when i'm on my back but either the quality of sleep is poorer or i've come down with something

dropping off mr smear and crashing on returning home, reading more rebirth with my last-chance coffee (what a brilliant book, what a shame they haven't made the rest), picking up mr smear and shopping: buying a knead bread while waiting for the manager to replace the empty sanitary wipes and becoming immediately addicted (the three of us polished off the loaf by the time we hit the checkout), getting home with a passed-out child and lots of bags, lying down immediately and getting about an hour before returning to standard parent high-alert

chilly evening walk and playground time before stopping by my mom's for a quick tea, then dinner and bedtime and oh my american gods is incredibly well done and i can't believe how much i've forgotten

early to bed,

wednesday 10th:

up early for a few hours of work before climbing into bed for one last hour, dropping off mr smear and doing a quick baby city run, a fast coffee and my first private session with the therapist; pulling over on ocean view drive for a moment on the way home to stare at the sea and signal hill and just breathe in the cool sunshine air

a little command & conquer, picking up mr smear and battling the awful collective nursery school poop smell to change him

"i don't know what they were playing at at preschool today but we've just picked up adolph glitter and he is ADORABLE" - said after wiping a particular glitter pattern from under mr smear's nose

an exhausting afternoon

mom's visit before her long weekend and a short night

thursday 11th:

a difficult night for gd and me, finally getting up when i received a message from SxS that the boss's wife passed away

gd giving me a (really nice) haircut before picking up mr smear
a later nap giving me a little space to work
a short but sweet aquarium visit in an unpleasant wind
mr smear's delicious blended leftovers dinner, his hesitation to try it followed by the funny relief of his "oh no! i wasted all that time" tucking in once he did
mr smear's long goodnight, followed by the end of american gods episode two
what a strange pleasure looking at myself in the mirror after finally getting a haircut
struggling with node-mssql's documentation, then my laptop so going to bed while it updated

friday 12th:

a sleepless night and dealing with a 3am wet bed followed by an hour and a half of wet eyes and cries; i sat down to get some work done (omg, emulating azure storage is easier than getting node to connect to mssql), eventually climbing into bed for an hour which soon turned into half an hour and ended with a nightmare in which i lost mr smear at a crazy festival and then misjudged a drop and fell to my death

pokemon xy and eating mr smear's breakfast; dropping off mr smear and working hard (figuring out that microsoft's azure-storage documentation is either incomplete or incorrect (grateful that it's open source and i could read the code myself)
picking up mr smear: working to get him to return a toy, and his singing "the gift-giver's lament" after realizing that his mother's day gift for gd wasn't coming back to him

---how i disengaged that day:

"<idiotjerkface> it's angry ideological vegans like you who put ordinary people off going plant-based, you're incapable of rational debate and have no concept of how many meat-eaters you turn away. me? i care more about my health and the animals and the environment than i do about being accepted into your circle. i can acknowledge that we're omnivores whilst simultaneously advocating an animal-free lifestyle because being an omnivore doesn't invalidate any of the principles of being vegan. you can thump your gorilla chest and yell into the ether, in my opinion you're as much a part of the problem as an uninformed carnist. have a great life, enjoy demonstrating your power and virility by kicking honest vegans out of your little echo chamber."

this came after explaining that after being sent down a rabbit hole i've learned that the terms carnivore, omnivore and herbivore are fluid and meaningless in a debate over what we're supposed to define ourselves as.

---the smell of gd's chilli when hungry, the chiropractor, eventually taking mr smear out in the cold wind and turning right back around

a kind-of traditional non-dinner and shannara

saturday 13th:

an awful night, waking up at 5am to an interesting email from SxS and completing phase one of the task i've been struggling with; starting mr smear's day with pokemon xy before driving out to join airplane and co for the start of his bachelor's weekend
returning home excited to have spent good time with old friends and wired-tired, preparing to go back out and amazed to watch mr smear actually eat a whole apple instead of his usual tasting and spitting
back to canal walk for a few hours of shopping and a break for vegan pizza which mr smear insisted on eating upside down (like pringles, flavour side to tongue)

returning home with my cranial nerves pinching again, an hour or two manipulating my neck until shower and bedtime, when it eased a little; mr smear had been snuffly and sneezy since the previous night but it became progressively worse

shannara, leftovers, bed

sunday 14th:

dream before mr smear's stuffy nose: SxS singing modern talking - you're my heart you're my soul karaoke at a reunion gathering pre-midburn and i had to do hyper-sexualized backing vocals

a full night's sleep, although not high quality, and waking up to crash bandicoot and pancakes for mother's day; the second day of weaning, and mr smear still not feeling great so napping early and long which we took advantage of, then a brief lunch before getting ready to drive out to my sister's for a mother's day sit-down

a fun evening, busy and enjoyable. "kevin" is racist and not justified by more racism, weaponized "organic tortillas" and heavy dog drool

returning late with mr smear wide awake, shower and bed and falling asleep myself, getting up just after 11pm to deal with an asthma attack and then his shivering while wearing thermal pyjamas

monday 15th:

the fun early hours with an overheated child singing himself to sleep

dreaming cleaning a bullet hole through my toes with tissue, transferring tau credits, and then a bunch of interesting things i've forgotten

pokemon xy and mr smear investigating my breakfast (how strange that he would choose brown syrup over peanut butter :P), managing him and his nose until the cleaning lady arrived and then spending most of the following four hours getting some work done

a short nap, a little inspiration (world wars), a little shannara (gods, the character writing is infuriating), and then working on and off until my mom came over for a visit

a shower and bedtime that lasted hours and involved a lot of hoarse crying

a deserved and much-needed cider and chocolate in lieu of actual dinner, test-driving simcity 3000 (it was a good deal), and a little work while my nose became stuffy

tuesday 16th:

an easier night, but mr smear still struggling in the morning so another day home; eventually getting out to town and turning right around because he was falling asleep but then the drive home woke him up :(

gd making a great lunch while mr smear and i polished off rice cakes and humus za'atar and i chatted with another enthusiastic headhunter who doesn't know when to quit

long nap time, work time, and a productive text message meeting with an airborne SxS

an aquarium visit turned food court dinner and grocery shopping experience (gd and i both arriving at the waterfront feeling bloated), back home to shower and bedtime and a disturbing but good thai movie P (i passed out halfway, gd said the ending sucked) and going to bed early with a sinus headache

wednesday 17th:

waking up 4am with the same sinus headache and a still-stuffy mr smear

dreaming invisible demons and after parties, running through a strange house and into the kitchen of people i was trying to avoid, shouting at strangers for staring at me when trying to purchase an stm month pass at a new station, one stranger recognizing me from facebook and trading numbers, lots of montreal jews and quite a few israelis

still stuffy (both of us) but ready for school, a day grinding with iis rules and regex, a chiropractor visit and a walk around the mojo market, grabbing a delicious seed loaf and picking up mr smear and spending the early afternoon alternating between work and entertaining him; he went down late for a big nap, solid work hours before we woke him and taking him for a sunset walk

just too late for the sunset so we visited my mom instead, great russian tea and weekend wedding strategizing, back home for dinner (developing a practical method of disciplining when the food throwing begins - i make him pick it up himself), a milestone shower (soaping himself a little *and* he enjoyed sticking his head under the stream for once), a routine good night (but still stuffy), a little bit of shannara (why are we still watching?) and then diving into work

thursday 18th:

finally going to bed around 2.45am with a sense of accomplishment

first wakeup exhausted (left nostril blocked), second wakeup good (right nostril blocked, i think i'm seeing a pattern)

dropping off mr smear a half hour late, him rushing me crying to hold him while his classmates all stood around staring until the teacher carried him out to the sandpit

a quick coffee and command & conquer before the therapist arrived and i took off to sort out the car rental and rock out to tool and nin, stopping at a small beach on the way back (forgotten sunnies, so beautiful but painful), then score another project task before picking mr smear up again

the shock and sadness of chris cornell's death :(

no naps, but lunch over animal fail videos and work and repeatedly cleaning mr smear's nose for the next couple of hours before taking him to the doctor; he sang the whole way there and the whole way back, stopping only when we ran into dirk diggler's mother. a minute before that i developed what would quickly become a really nasty cough which is still plaguing me, and even with medication i'd spend a lot of the night feeling like i had a band tightening around my throat.

mom visiting, dinner and shower and not even finishing my tea before needing to drag myself off to bed

friday 19th:

a glorious 3.30am wakeup when neither myself nor mr smear could breathe properly.

mr smear spaced out listening to music on the couch, good work after dropping him off, picking up seed bread and losing my family with no phone

trying to get work done while mr smear refused to have anyone tend to him but me... and my being his horse, "up" and "ta" are all i was worth

mr smear starting to fall asleep just as we arrived at the park after an afternoon refusing to nap - i made sure he stayed awake and we enjoyed a fun couple of hours with a few moms from school, one kid wanting to play and one little hooligan walking over and punching me in the leg, one of the mothers turning out to be an old friend's sister, "you're doing it wrong" plastic bike riding, mr smear being hit in the head twice by the swings and seeming to learn his lesson (we'll see)

col'cacchio double fail: wrong address and the food arriving cold and a confused delivery man and one possibly not vegan pizza

watching split: the issues i had with it were minor, and the bottom line is that it's absolutely brilliant

from possibly not vegan pizza to probably not vegan pizza in a very short period of time

a productive meeting with my teammate followed by a bit of work and random

saturday 20th:

getting into bed around 1am, mr smear waking us up around 6.30am after a solid twelve hour sleep

the wrong music for gd and mr smear's improvement playing crash bandicoot and what i saw of arthur christmas was a really cool christmas movie.

---so now i've posted and it's 2am and i've seen my cousin competing in master chef uk (and he's awesome) and i'm ready for bed. i think.

@#!$. i think we might have fleas again.