delayed linkage

first: do you have an iphone or ipad? do you have unlimited data? if not, read this now!

i've become a fan of barry schwartz: the way we think about work is broken and our loss of wisdom are inspirational.

just as important to see: everything you know about addiction is wrong.

on a related note: john oliver is being recognized as a hero.

oh, and if you think you're so smart - you might not be. and vice versa :P

vw cheating epa?! i don't know if those penalties are big enough. at least some companies are moving in the right direction.

here's an interesting article against industrial farming. on the other side of this, this old article contains some good news for animals in quebec!

capturing light almost at lightspeed? whoa!

the responses to swine/11 killed me.

the only good news after the AIDS drug price hike is that anonymous hackers leaked his phone number and address.

sharks attacks vs selfie deaths: damn, world.

ad-blocking irony is delicious.

i don't know if the hyperloop can follow through on such big claims, but it would certainly be a huge improvement! i hope they're planning on installing underground intercontinental lines.

yeast mimicking marijuana? how curious.

i'm no longer a fan of banksy due to his political irresponsibility, but his cinderella piece is marvelous.

if the republicans could stop their anti-obama-at-all-costs bullshit for two seconds, the world would be a safer place.

a gopro going to space is beautiful.

robin williams' daughter's post on depression is beautiful.

i'm not sure how i feel about parents snooping on their kids, but if they are going to do it (instead of investing time in raising them well) then they're going to need to be ahead of the tech curve...

scott kurtz makes a couple of good points against facebook.

canada's finally updated their vitamin d guidelines! well done, canada.

two weeks back at work

i'm very angry right now. VERY angry. partially at myself, for caring enough to be angry in the first place, and mostly at my coworkers who are unprofessional, irrational and full of pettiness. i learned a new word last night watching gotham: lackadaisical. the only thing any of these guys are interested in is dodging bullets and drawing paychecks.

i guess what really gets under my skin is the fact that they (unofficially) promoted me to lead a team that i completely overestimated, and in addition to a tough quarter in that position, getting a terrible review and going through the awkwardness of stepping down, i'm being punished for my team's lousy performance so far; to pile insult on top of insult, i've been informed that i have yet to prove myself technically and that i shouldn't be making suggestions until i've demonstrated my skills to the entire team's satisfaction.

i really need to get out of there as fast as i can.

---so aside from all that, our boy's been very uncomfortable and caring for him has obviously overtaken my ability to post. but here goes!

---friday 11th (two weeks!):

of *course* i'll run into nox when dressed nicely for a job interview... and of course there'd be a woman filing her nails on the metro right across from me - for me that's the equivalent of nails on a chalkboard.

polyester shirt + hot metro + wrong street at the right time - thanks google maps for showing me "east" when i wrote "west" - a seemingly positive interview, but should i have explained that the reason for not sharing my salary expectations is that i'm a bad negotiator? i wonder if that's why they never got back to me.

diaper service fail, exhaustion, heavy shopping, good microwave vegan burgers,

saturday 12th:

midnight feed and change turning into a pest hunt and nature watch (good catch, spider next to our bed!), not sleeping as my pinched nerve got progressively worse. temporary painkiller relief, a mission in the rain for formula, becoming really tired calming the baby and almost falling asleep so responsibly putting him in his bassinet which woke us all up and sent me on another mission...

i like to think of french fries as my "guilty pleasure", but the ones i bought were so bad that each bite punished the guilt right out of them. of course i finished them, but i didn't *enjoy* them. and it was such perfect french fry weather too...

a long afternoon turning into a horrible evening, finally getting some sleep

sunday 13th:

and then waking up around 3am to deal with a mouse that we'd caught that wasn't dead. what an ugly, ugly business... i drowned the poor bugger, because the alternatives were worse, and spent the next day seeing its little face in my mind's eye.

some sleep, cartoons and coffee
double shopping day, almost losing my umbrella to the metro butterfly doors
daddy daycare while gd put together an excellent experimental dinner, doing the traditional jewish new year's thing and enjoying it for the first time in a long time

a tough cleanup with mr smear

monday 14th:

two night wakeups but otherwise a good night's rest, feeding, chatting with mom, getting to work on time, being unpleasantly surprised to find that my team had continued to miss the point and made no progress in the five weeks that i was away, in spite of their apparent efforts. suddenly in a position to be providing pregnancy / parenting counselling, exploding kittens satisfaction, the unfortunately unnecessarily candid discussion with nem (his choice of words led me to believe that nox had talked), designing the correct "quick fix", home for dinner (and fatherly responsibilities), the surrealization of really being a parent in every sense

tuesday 15th:

a rough night, in addition to getting up early to return the diaper service equipment and have my fingerprints taken. everything was fine until i arrived and realized that in my hurry i'd forgotten my passport at home and of course gd was in the shower and my call woke up mr smear so that was a bit of a disaster.

getting stuff done, including baby clothes shopping, offending my manager, managing nifty

the joy of holding my son at the end of the day turning into weariness after five hours of not being able to put him down

wednesday 16th:

apple music playlist curation and heavy miscommunications

...

the first notary wanted $50 to provide a certified copy. the second wanted $40. i went to the third, who wanted $25.

huh. a cash only notary. she accepted twenty when i looked like i'd struggle to find the other 5, perhaps i could've gotten away with paying her only $10 per minute instead...

...

what felt like productive paired programming with nox, leaving early and missioning to a fedex / dhl store that led to the discovery that that would cost about $100 to mail a piece of paper to my mother...

shopping, chores, leftovers, an early night

thursday 17th:

mid-night counting, quantifying and measuring

struggling to wake up at 5.45am with an uncomfortable baby on my shoulder, managing to tidy up the kitchen and brush my teeth before leaving almost ten minutes late

thought for the day: the pop genre is the musical equivalent of soda pop: it tastes good to an unrefined palette and is full of artificial shit that will ultimately cause parts of you to rot

there's nothing like starting your day with a questionnaire and then peeing on command. aside from some disappointment with my right eye's performance during the eye exam, everything seems to be in order and none of the physical exercises bothered me in spite of the fact that my nerves are still pinching enough for me to be losing sleep.

grabbing a quick cup of coffee and wandering a bit until i found a post office, then off to work reading treasure island

more progress, learning about some surprisingly demotivating behaviour from the executives on down, overeating at pushap and back at my desk, a little bit of nerf

a popeye's mission and back home to carry and change and clean and feed and eat

friday 18th (last week!):

midnight clawspiration
surprising recruiter timing
a slow morning wasting formula, practicing french with duolingo
remembering that i needed to leave early when i was already leaving late with a significantly drained battery

a long, humourless morning; great fluxx, a slow but positive afternoon being taken by surprise when nox actually admitted that he was unable to wrap his head around what we were doing: i'd spent most of the week explaining, drawing diagrams, writing pseudocode on the board, writing code scaffolding to make his life easier...

leaving early to take care of mr smear so that gd could make an appointment. becoming progressively more traditional for shabbat and holidays.

saturday 19th:

not an easy night, followed by a morning invested in the ideas of crowdsourcing low-quality in-copyright audiobooks and shaving gd's head. french lessons, hangry baby, hunter x hunter (the 2011 remake, omg it's amazing and it covers a lot of the manga!)

a quick shopping mall run to discuss my laser treatment disappointment, pick up gd's glasses and buy a safer diaper bin, then back for baby care before a family outing inspired by our new favourite tongue twister: "she has an unprecedented passion for pasta" (try that one ten times fast)

light rain, heavy shopping, coming home with a bubbly boy and exhaustion

late night discomfort, followed by

sunday 20th:

early morning discomfort, a 6am wakeup and a suddenly sore throat
private parts is an excellent movie!
blackfish is horrifying and i only watched a few minutes of it
hunter x hunter and gd hitting a pressure point that resulted in my headache disappearing to the sound of shattering glass

a kind-of-restful afternoon, then some shopping on a cool evening (14 degrees in montreal feels like a cool summer night in cape town) followed by a chat with my mom and some online debating and kitchen cleaning before getting ready for bed.

which involved almost an hour of waiting for mr smear to be ready to feed, about fifteen minutes of feeding and burping, putting him down on the changing table and getting his little trousers halfway down his little legs before he projectile vomited straight up into the air so that it landed right back down on his face. my panicked response wasn't bad but it wasn't ideal either...

monday 21st:

from a 4am wakeup to finally returning to sleep around 6 because i kept waiting for his discomfort to turn into hunger cries.
some days it's tough saying goodbye to him when going to work, even if half the weekend was spent wishing i could just put him down already :P

sweater weather, ultimate demotivation, ios9 installation and doing good work in spite of the monkeys flying around me

coming home after a long day to a little boy who's only calm when he's being held and with a serious need to vent. hunter x hunter, cheers and a rough session of rls.

tuesday 22nd:

a few hours' rest, a busy hour, then some more rest. a relaxed start to the day, getting back on the right foot with my manager while simultaneously reinforcing (more tactfully) my previous sentiment, a solid day of work which would have been more successful had i not gotten stuck with some really stupid external issues

wednesday 23rd:

a rough night... you know you're exhausted when even yawning tires you out

it's nice to have a nurse come into your home, check out your kid and tell you you're doing a good job and that your kid's development's quite advanced for his age

a serious family outing via metro, great copper branch burger, and the woman who helps with mr smear arriving just fifteen minutes too early to be comfortable.

sleeping like the dead, fatherly responsibilities, the great chocolate distrust, two hours of struggle, heavy shopping, general hostility and an identity crisis (well, the same one i've been struggling with for months), getting mr smear to sleep very late

yesterday:

one relatively easy night session followed by waking up early to take care of mr smear alone for a couple of hours - he was either asleep or angry - with gd returning late due to another 20+ minute taxi wait

a little bit of work and then an hour having it out with nifty (see the beginning of this post)

a long afternoon of hard work resulting in beautiful code that really works well, leaving late but having done enough hours to take advantage of the last "summer hours" and feel a big "fuck you" today at lunchtime.

a calmer evening and some good sleep

today:

and a pre-6am wakeup (the thought that i love him so much in spite of these hours amazes me), chatting with my sister, gd's client offering us a steal of a great apartment (for next year), much cooler weather and a very awkward non-greeting to someone who seemed to be certain he recognized me (one of gd's clients)

...

i really need to not raise my voice no matter how stupid my coworkers are being. and i couldn't be more offended by nox's sarcastic tone when referring to me spending ten minutes identifying legacy / test code and removing it instead of wasting at least half an hour rewriting the same code in multiple (irrelevant) locations. i left at 1pm, and now that i've got all this out of my system it's time to get in touch with the recruiter for a company that would actually appreciate me if they'll have me.

demotivation

most software is coded as a stream of consciousness filled with half-understood constructs, scratched out mistakes and a vague sense of direction with lots of shortcuts and loops. conversely, most programmers seem to derive the most pleasure from the act of piecing together another developer's puzzle code to understand what they were thinking and why things work when they're 90% tape and glue to be exciting and rewarding, and lose sight of the fact that their actual purpose is to engineer solutions with good design and parts that do the job they're intended for.

i'm currently in a team where neither management nor the developers have the minimum level or technical competence to (a) get a job done well or (b) follow the most basic instructions when those instructions might assist them in achieving (a). i have agreed to keep my nose out of others' affairs (trying to insert some level of professionalism and make their jobs easier) and in turn i asked to be excused from working on anything where i am not the sole person responsible for the results. i was only barely more polite than saying: "if you want me to produce shit code, then that's what i'll do".

i'm a professional working with amateurs at every level; what these people are doing is closer to gambling than it is engineering. it takes me a fraction of the time to produce exponentially better code than these (wrong kind of) lazy bums, i'm on a low salary and until my papers are sorted out i'm locked in to putting on a (relatively) happy face and making the best of a bad situation.

i know one thing's for sure: from the minute i have an open permit, i'm done with working for a salary. it's contract or self-employment unless the incentives are impossible to refuse.

smoking crap

i've started thinking about smoking outside building entrances as being analogous to defecating in those same spaces. i'm almost certain that most smokers would agree that if someone would make a habit of defecating right outside their home or office entrance they would want measures to be taken to prevent such behaviour.
one difference though: second-hand smoke is carcinogenic, whereas shit can be cleaned off your shoe.

instigator one: while i agree mostly with your perspective, the one thing that always bugs me is how no one rants and raves about getting stuck in carcinogenic traffic jams. smokers contribute a fraction of the pollution but remain a constantly criticized group while here we are daily sucking so much exhaust...everyone needs an easily identified scapegoat, i guess.

no, the fact that i detest walking through clouds of smoke with a pregnant wife or a newborn child does not mean that i don't have a problem with vehicular pollution. but smokers hanging around entrances to buildings is not a necessary evil, it's a choice borne out of laziness. and i firmly believe that as many people as possible need to get off the roads. we need to reduce our consumption (going electric, going nuclear, increasing the use of public transport, sourcing local), and we need to stop consuming animal products. but also - and this does not compare with those things - we need to stop blowing smoke in other people's faces. and stop flicking cigarettes that are still lit.

instigator two: i will come crap outside your building and tell me what you prefer

the point of the analogy is that forcing people to suck in your second-hand smoke is offensive. your response to that is the equivalent of "well, if you don't like me punching you in the shoulder i'm going to kick you in the shins and see how you like that"

the other opinion: this comment reminds me of my theory about parties. everyone loves to stand in major traffic arteries like doorways and hallways regardless of the amount of space in an open area adjacent to the hallway or doorway. if people just paid attention to their surroundings things like this wouldn't happen. it's like that guy in traffic who insists on never looking at his/her rear view mirror while he is sitting in the fast lane, driving slower than the pace of traffic. my opinion, we should just have a campaign about paying attention, then we wouldn't have to be specific, it can cover all the things that annoy us people who actually pay attention to our surroundings...

absolutely! but i suspect that that's a campaign better targeted at young children, i fear that adults require more precise focus.

rush job

saturday:

a little bit of project progress, family shopping, trying and failing to rest, some more chores

revenu quebec solidarity tax credit special: we've both been notified that our solidarity tax credit has been revoked because our spouse has claimed it. when we got hold of them, we learned that that had nothing to do with anything and that as a family with a combined income we simply weren't eligible.

mr smear's birth certificate arrived! which meant that it was time to get started with the permanent residence application. which meant learning that i could've and should've begun weeks ago...

half-and-half caring for mr smear and caring for my project, some wonderful moments with the former (dancing to country joe and the fish) and some good successes with the latter. catching my mom for a quick chat and watching a bit of the code which is a fascinating documentary.

sunday:

it's incredibly disturbing trying to wake a slumbering child to feed when he's so tired that he keeps falling asleep while eating.

broken wakeup, sleeping in, starting the day trying to listen to the joe rogan experience. the latest episode began with eight full minutes of adverts for his sponsors. seriously? and what followed was boring as hell (granted, it was jay leno, i was curious). restarting the day by checking out phineas and ferb - awesome! - and then discovering that the classic winnie the pooh is on netflix ^_^

finally faxing israeli social insurance to update my residence status (and praying that they'll be decent about it and reimburse me for the two and a half years of payments i didn't need to make) followed by an afternoon of baby care, delicious smoothie-making, and good project progress.

monday:

the midnight grind, followed by finally getting to sleep at 3am only to get straight back up due to rls

mr smear's screams invaded my dreams but didn't wake me :(
really crazy dreams, a long struggle to wake up and discovering radiolab podcasts

the forgotten horrors of completing immigration applications compounded by mr smear's never-ending needs. trying to rest but too stressed, the big floor cleaning mission and learning how to set mousetraps: those little things are bloody terrifying once you've almost lost a finger to one :P

an evening entertaining / changing / feeding mr smear while gd rested

tuesday:

6am *joy*, eddy grant, inspectors with comfy boots, catching up with dirk diggler, a long afternoon placating our little one and getting minor things done while watching ethos (see previous post), gd pseudo-baking vegan cookies, increasing confidence with the residence application, shopping being my first excursion in days, chatting with my mum, getting to bed early-ish

wednesday:

waking disaster at 2am, then another at 7am
arranging a job interview, filing tax returns, our first meeting with a babysitter and learning that while mr smear has become heavy... he isn't *too* big, but he's definitely getting enough food from gd when she feeds and we might have been over-supplementing

finishing both outstanding tax returns in one day! stepping out to print and mail them and happening to look in the mailbox and open the letters on the way; one of them was from revenu quebec and upon reading it i realized that i'd forgotten to check a box on each return that it appears would have cost us around $600...

gd and my big sister: a spooky tale

shopping, feeding and tipping over a glass of water onto my phone and my most important documents, barely managing to rescue them, scarfing down a quick dinner then trying to do a garbage run and feeding simultaneously - my boy does NOT accept substitutes, so no pacifier for him while i prep formula - and finally changing him and being treated to a seemingly interminable real-time pooping. so much for getting an early night's rest before my government medical exam in the morning...

yesterday:

2am business as usual - although it's quite gratifying to feel like for some things mr smear just needs his daddy

defeated by a mouse

after getting up early and rushing off to my medical examination at one of the few facilities authorized by the CIC to do so, handing over my documents and filling out the form, the secretary asked me if i had any tattoos. yes, i replied. she informed me that the CIC demands an extra $55 in that case. whatever for? i asked. there's additional bloodwork, she told me. are you willing to pay?
i told her to wait and went outside to call another office i happened to have the number for. after i was told the cost - slightly cheaper - i asked if there were any other charges i might need to know about. no, sir. what if i have tattoos? no, sir, the price includes everything. right. so i booked another appointment and went back to the secretary to cancel my examination and tell her that maybe, just maybe, they should tell people about extra charges on the phone before they've made the effort to arrive. and not lie about who's doing the charging.

more spooky sibling shit

almost losing copies of my passport and work permit because the metro's butterfly doors are so badly designed

trying and failing to get hold of prince interactive, a chicken replacement snack that wasn't bad, but wasn't really chicken-like either, tax return filing part one, the setup, the excursion (gd meeting nox on our way out), tax return filing part DONE, exhaustion plus relentless baby with a short break for dinner

today so far:

a rough night with an unhappy little boy, getting ready for a chat with a recruiter for one of the big companies who actually seemed to know her shit, an introduction to montreal's diaper service (simple, eco-friendly and cost-effective? we'll definitely give it a try!), and now getting ready for an interview.

the wrong conspiracy theory debunked

holy cow. we just watched ethos, hosted by woody harrelson and edited by members of the illiterati*.

this documentary, combined with hot coffee, fahrenheit 9/11, ungrip, the century of self and a couple of others, paints a phenomenally bleak picture of the united states, its motivations and its influences.

for the longest time i've found myself infuriated by 9/11 conspiracy theorists. i usually take a skeptical view of conspiracy theories because conspiracies are difficult to pull off and there aren't many organizations with that kind of intelligence, reach and discipline; in the case of the 9/11 conspiracies, the evidence supporting it was utterly refuted early on and there really wasn't any reason to go on and on about how the planes couldn't possibly have caused the amount of destruction that they did.

but what i never heard from 9/11 conspiracy theorists was how it was entirely plausible that the powers that be (presumably the wunch of bankers behind the federal reserve farce) arranged for the attacks in the first place: al qaeda could easily have been inspired and assisted in their attacks without involving so many people that someone would be able to spill the beans. i buy into occam's razor, and that's a fairly simple explanation that doesn't defy the evidence.

anyway, that's not really what ethos is about. i found the ending pleasantly surprising and warmly inspiring. there is hope! and as long as we don't let anyone limit the power that the internet has bestowed upon us, there are ways up out of this subterranean tunnel.

* the subtitles were surprisingly wrong a lot of the time and some of the quotes had spelling errors, one would expect a production like this to be slightly more serious about quality control

tuesday:

absolutely wiped out by lunch
k'tan sizing and boxing fail: it's too large for gd, too small for me and its box appears to have been thrown out so returning it is no longer an option
mom / godmother distress
chatting with SxS about his surprising big news while on a shopping mission
a rough evening,

wednesday:

followed by a long morning, about four hours of sleep and getting up to find gd and mr smear playing on the floor of his room
family judaism 101 and planning for rosh hashana
a great lunch at P.M. with my mom and mr smear's godmother (msg)

last peaceful minutes before a farewell photoshoot and saying goodbye to my mom
my pinched nerve really getting to me at the same time as mr smear became loudly inconsolable

waking up for garbage collection (and to throw out more unused formula, its room-temperature lifespan combined with our child's unpredictability and lack of communication skills makes for a really wasteful product) and to be pleasantly surprised to find that the two articles i took outside earlier had already been snatched up by neighbours instead of going to the dump.

thursday:

dreaming. my parents being neglectful when they were supposed to be taking mr smear home and i had another physical fight with my father and put him in the hospital (again), only this time at the end he was making a show of his bravado. without the car seat's base i had to carry him home myself, and he was tucked in a bag which couldn't have been safe. being chucked out of the house by my mother i went to her sister, and the minute i put mr smear down there he began to pee until he literally flooded the room and i struggled to rescue the carpets before everyone got home. then we were on the road with tool while they were coming up with their first album.

waking up 2.30am to a chilly apartment and the desperately hungry mr smear. falling asleep on the job and needing a protein bar just to keep myself going until he finally went back to sleep. a pretty good morning, excitement at every fart and putting together most of a swing / mobile set before heading off on a shopping expedition.

i can't stop thinking about the shit nem keeps repeating about parenting; how his whole life changed and how he forgot about his love for his wife the minute he picked up his child. what a loser, to have spent his entire life up until that moment unaware of how his efforts (or lack thereof) would affect his progeny and legacy! doubly so, that in the time since he still hasn't figured out better priorities other than making as much money as he can. as for love, there's plenty to go around so i strongly suspect that there wasn't much in the way of it before... anyway, i wouldn't care as much if i didn't have to face him when i return to work with the compulsion to tell him what i think.
...
i probably shouldn't.

infant hats are bloody difficult to find, serious shopping finding all manner of things we need, getting back in time to relieve gd so she could eat before our doctor's appointment

a dirty taxi with difficult seat-belt clips driving off with my foot still out the door

just trying to settle him so that gd could rest and i could go to the pharmacy to get some things to make the night easier took more than two hours of feeding and changing and burping only to have him constantly screaming into my ears.

the sad discovery that we bought a new remote control because the old one stopped working after it was dropped and that magically happened to be the exact moment at which the batteries gave out.

severe nerve pinching due to bad posture while holding him

yesterday:

i guess the main lesson i've learned over the past four weeks is just how unevolved we are.
we should have four arms and hands, two are simply insufficient when you're holding a small child and trying to get stuff done.
otherwise, everything could be voice activated or we could have robot servants. i'll take anything at this point.

swollen / spasmed area around pinched nerve and extreme pain standing and sitting and walking

feeling a bit better after a few hours of cheers (my first time seeing it) and some rest
acupuncture: filling out a medical questionnaire that doesn't hurt my brain or require guesswork is pathetically motivating.

it turns out my pinched nerve was lower than i thought, and after a half an hour that flew by (and just as my rls presented itself) he began to massage along my spine and tailbone, digging into surprisingly intensely sensitive spots. he started late and finished late and gd started losing control at home just as i got off the table...

stiff legs from holding the same pose for hours while mr smear and gd rested; getting up when desperate to learn that we were all out of food (but thankfully in time to order pizza)

this morning so far:

early morning drama over lost time and differing memories, followed by waking up at 6am to wake mr smear up to burp him and struggling for over 20 minutes before achieving nothing more than having woken him to discomfort.

mars time

i've been given a tetanus shot that's good until august 2025, so if mars one isn't a scam then by the time i'm ready for another one there might be humans on the red planet.

last wednesday:

a long day with just the three of us. the only time mr smear rested was when he needed to be changed, and after we changed him he wanted to be fed and whenever he fed he pooped. slipknot - duality settled him down temporarily and he let us enjoy most of gd's amazing veggie ramen lunch while watching bits and pieces of star trek and mash and the 4400...

thursday:

2am semi-final fight.
ikea travel fail day, no sunscreen or shade, trying not to breathe concrete dust and impaling my foot on an exposed construction barrier, a worrying bus driver shift change with a route explanation

long shopping, last minute computer rescue after we learned that we didn't have the bin locations, taxi driver winning over delivery
foot treatment, new furniture start, star trek: the next generation and sore legs
a long couple of hours feeding and changing then passing out for another couple and waking up ravenously hungry and tiptoeing around the kitchen afraid to wake him

friday:

tears in the fabric of our universe. autopsy and resurrection. waking up to another day. cancelling the long drive for a shorter one to learn that for the past week mr smear has been exceeding the expected growth rate of 20-30g per day by 50g per day and we've gone from not feeding him enough to overfeeding.

a surprisingly successful urine sample* followed by a surprise guest with a dog at three weeks. the former was greatly appreciated, the latter not so much.

* i don't know if this is done in other countries, but i find that one of the strangest things we've been expected to do here as new parents is mailing a urine sample in an envelope.

walmart mission, falling asleep on the metro, big shopping and pushap and manual labour, getting a tetanus shot (falling asleep in the waiting room), desperately needing to rest but getting

saturday:

a long night of discomfort and wheezing and mucus and difficulty burping instead

sleeping late and waking up still feeling like i had a concussion
harry potter instead of crib construction

of course, the first laser technician to inform me that i've been listed for the wrong treatment - hence the less-than-impressive effect in the desired region beneath my chin - would be the technician performing what *should* have been my last treatment.

sometimes it's difficult to remember that it's impossible to tell how hygienic someone is just by looking at them. don't touch other people's children without their permission.

a good rest but then waking up to freak out about an ignorant breastfeeding consultant who might cause us trouble with social services - gd's doctor warned us about uneducated busybodies, and our reward for being honest about what meds gd's taking (prescription meds!!) is a request for a house visit, a blood test and a call to stop medicating for chronic (severe) neck and back pain. the stress caused by this idiot has (temporarily, fortunately) reversed the effects of the prescription meds she's been taking to get her breastmilk production back up.

rushing off to buy emergency formula and diapers; it appears that there's an eco-friendly / parent-friendly diaper service in montreal so i'll have to call and see what that's about.

sunday:

1-2am feed and change followed by a laundry run that served as a good excuse to do the fudgee-o / vanilla chai thing and leftovers.

4.45am literally jumping out of bed in physiological response to my wife's cry, finding myself immensely relieved to learn that the cause was a mouse running over her foot and not anything to do with our baby...

late start feeling guilty even on a sunday morning, our first proper outing! crib building and vomit panic and relentless diaper soiling
mom making a delicious dinner then feeding mr smear so that i could eat while gd rested

yesterday:

and then a midnight feed gone wrong after what's clearly been too much effort spent trying to breastfeed. did you know that lots of new parents develop relationship issues? we've learned that it really, really helps to be aware of them.

constipation, resolving breastfeeding consultant issues - turns out this vile nurse has been causing trouble for many parents and her clsc was already aware of it...

gd seemingly enjoying a vega smoothie, lots of child care and a visit to a new consultant, a shopping run, delivering a bassinet, a short nap and a visit to the clinic to be exposed to viruses and learn that the wound on my foot will take a few weeks to heal

a pharmacy run, returning home to colic and dinner and finally a couple of hours' rest

today so far:

a colicky night, waking up exhausted with my mind somewhere far, far away and trying hard to check off tasks from my list

the idea that today is my mother's last day before she goes back home makes us quite sad, she's been an enormous help in so many ways!