good thing i'm dating my notes

tuesday 13th:

beginning a discussion between israelis of distinctly differing views and a palestinian i studied with and being pleased with the (mostly) good behaviour and dialogue

a rushed day with partial success, too many meetings, zombie fluxx and an intro to the totally intense zombie counterstrike mmo, learning that hac's new employer just went under only a couple of months after he joined

visiting the doctor for gd's foot, making an appointment in spite of their phone-only policy, shopping, the awesome power of hot peppers in my salad, the flash and going to sleep slightly past bedtime

wednesday 14th:

2am feeding, still up debating at 3am, cookies and vanilla chai followed by sleepless indigestion resulting in a 6am throw up; the rest of the day with a sore throat

the final touch to the big, contentious project before sending it off into oblivion, getting the hang of counterstrike: global offensive and really enjoying the lunch break, long meetings, weird meetings, and turning a vagrant failure into an opportunity to play with something i've been wanting to fix for a while

home, rushed to get to the hospital for gd's MRI after she's waited so long only to discover that MRIs and breastfeeding don't mix

a tight squeeze car seat to a tight squeezed heart

thursday 15th:

5am wet-wipeout and cookies

mr smear's excellent behaviour while gd was away, calling in sick

a pharmacy run, some self-discovery, some rest thanks to the babysitter

possibly too much evil apples

an unexpected visitor when expecting horseman

suddenly feeling sick, and the ugly throat sensation diagnosing it as sinusitis

bottle-feeding difficulty

friday 16th:

easy feed, easy change, impossible burp

moving to a desk with a view, a day full of gremlin warfare and an excellent lunchtime cs:go session

the last hour spent giving guidance to the lead who's just replaced me; we're definitely on the same page, so that's quite a relief

mr smear couldn't be put down, dealing with "that's not all he smeared" alone, worst cooks in america inspiring a shameful veggie-burger

saturday 17th:

a good chunk of sleep for mr smear and gd, rls and general restlessness for me, better sleep after the (late) midnight feed and change

a morning of alter bridge, hunter x hunter, nerve pinching and having to hold a noticeably heavier mr smear for most of it

the rest of the day disappearing in the blink of a tired eye, the worst time to go shopping, no energy for dinner and a restless bedtime for a child who only wanted his mother

sunday 18th:

a happy shitstorm wakeup

trying to get some interview prep done but mostly just keeping mr smear calm; it's really hard to solve problems with an irritable baby on your shoulder.

night screaming

monday 19th:

screaming during changing and a lesson about "not a morning person" and my lack of finesse in grooming my nails (and my fear of nail files); mr smear's first subzero experience and a double doctor's visit

not a bad day, followed by a bad non-voting experience (at least harper's been ousted!), followed by exhaustion

tuesday 20th:

a depressing morning followed by a distracted day (minus anger over gross negligence and satisfying cs:go), wasted work hours feeling sickly slow, coming home to some warmth and respite (even if beck's non-alcoholic is crap), mr smear deliberately grabbing my nipple ring, a great 90's alternative singing session with him, solving a problem with mr smear in my arms, feeling a bit super-dad considering my exhaustion

wednesday 21st:

hoverboards? self-lacing boots? flying cars? weirdly anachronistic fax machines?

waking up to a choking child, a cancelled cut allowing us time to fold laundry, problem solve and make some calls

struggling with symfony and project direction, finding a decent solution, an interesting introduction to our new lead, rushing home to accompany gd to the doctor, ordering too much (or not) pizza, post-bathing shit-swimming and mr smear managing to pee all over me after i cleaned him up

a long garbage day procedure, a hangry, hangry mr smear followed by the blissful peace of being able to do chores after he passed out on 10ml of formula (i don't get it, but okay)

thursday 22nd:

almost five hours of sleep, but his post-feed hyper-alertness turned into a flood of pee while changing him and we had to bathe him with soap and water after his self-administered urine bath. thanks, 5-6.30am, we love you, too.

there's nothing like oversleeping (!!!) and waking up five minutes before you're supposed to arrive at the clinic for blood tests...

... it's weird to be sitting between people fighting in the waiting room and not being able to figure out what it's about...

... easy tests, rushing home to slurp down a practically unpalatable shake (our ninja keeps breaking down), scarf a cold slice of pizza and rush out late forgetting my security card...

... more struggles with symfony but getting things to work anyway (it's really more hindrance than help), awkward cs:go due to the pushap exodus, leaving with a headache, rushed leftovers, getting ready for a pharmacy run when *WARNING: UNPLEASANT IMAGERY AHEAD* mr smear started choking on his saliva, then i started choking on a sliver of apple after extricating him from nanny carseat in a panic, which got serious enough to see me regurgitating the entire apple almost in its original form and scoring splash-back to the face to boot

yesterday:

dream: *WARNING: DEEPLY DISTURBING IMAGERY AHEAD* after an epic battle, we follow an alien porn crew that's been scavenging bodies. a big, tough humanoid gets himself ready for a scene, puts on a condom and sharply responds to an offer for help with "this isn't my first rodeo".

he walks into a small spaceship's cockpit where a giant grey-green corpse has been stretched over the chair and some equipment with its large mouth or wound visible. as soon as the film starts rolling he gets the bottom half of his body into the corpse, finds whatever he's looking for and begins to thrust; seconds later, looking stricken, he rushes out warning the director not to waste the shot to ejaculate a bucketful of sperm in a smooth arc into another wound on the other side of the body. when he's told to get ready to go again he curses, explaining that he's empty without more of whatever he's been taking to generate that much sperm, at which point one of the crew yells "you're dirty".

in a later flashback to the dream (after waking and dreaming other things), i realized that however i'd gotten myself into that situation there would be no hope for escape - for these types, filming a crew member being raped into a death machine would be all in a day's work.

...

rewarding myself with a cookie at 3am in lieu of mr smear because he was a relative pleasure to change

leaving almost as early as i needed to because of another of gd's clients being interesting to talk to, a long and mostly productive day of work, the weird "omg I just lost a piece of my foot" message in the middle of the day, excellent cs:go that was so much fun that i only realized that i'd forgotten to eat my lunch when i found myself really hungry just before 7pm (a good time for a snack break), leaving at a reasonable time only about forty minutes short of my hours; the excitement of the workday was in convincing my manager, my lead, and hac's replacement that the way forward includes a framework-independent library containing the database abstraction layer i implemented for last quarter's tragic failure of a project.

home to relieve gd, a few hours with my boy and a lot of chatter

today:

most of a night's sleep, the joy of a large, well-timed poop (i had just decided not to change him and lifted him off the changing table), feeling good going back to bed but then waking up to mr smear's post-formula discomfort and rls. now to begin the weekend with foo fighters and evil apples.