the wrong stuff

the last couple of weeks have been full of ups and downs, and the ups have been great but the downs have been heavy. primarily, our family got hit with hand-foot-and-mouth disease - which is awful when it happens to a child who can't communicate. it took us over a day to realize what he was complaining about, and there were three days of him refusing to eat (thank all the gods he's breastfeeding). secondarily, while i'm finally done with the legacy stuff i've been working on it's taken all this time to do it and cost me many, many hours of bashing my head on the brick walls that are incorrect official documentation, unreasonable and arbitrary restrictions of a code framework and costly hacks by previous developers. oh, and my neck and back have been all over the place, possibly caused by a heavy, twisty little creature who now shouts at me whenever he wants anything or whenever i answer the phone.

monday 6th:

pedantically, thoroughly testing the legacy codebase to store it efficiently in git (i'd made mistakes the previous two attempts) and going to bed around 3am
mr smear sleeping soundly most of the night, then becoming agitated just after i finally passed out - as usual - and all of us exhausted again by morning

he-man wakeup
sea point in the mist
the strange, joyful experience of a couple of mr smear's classmates running up to hug me

the shock of meatonomics (episode 216): whoa. so much for vegans not supporting the meat and dairy industries.
more proof that few people operate under capitalist systems.

understanding the pain in my foot and figuring out how to stretch it

good news from the accountants followed by hard work getting all my introductory documentation together with pauses to pick up mr smear and struggle with a tantrum in between

joint nap time, a pleasant afternoon when my son wasn't being mischievous (there were a few moments), mom coming over to pick up a raffle sheet and chat, putting mr smear to bed on time (which means putting him in his crib and then reading in our bedroom until i'm more or less confident that he's asleep)

tuesday 7th:

getting a job done by 1am and going to bed "early", mr smear sleeping relatively well

mr smear's vigorous "no" meaning "in a minute"
running into our previous neighbours at school

a little work, then meeting with my mom and my nieces but not at the same time because they were spending half an hour just missing each other (by a few metres). picking up mr smear by myself - who needed a particularly difficult diaper change: the teacher's assistant didn't think i was qualified - then finishing my coffee and taking mr smear home to feed and nap

the dropped phone panic when my home button stopped working (but it resumed later), trying to work with a busy boy

a very naughty, busy boy pressing all my buttons (beginning with deliberately damaging a book), getting him ready for and into bed then meeting with my teammate who not only helped me a little with a problem i was mystified by but also boosted my confidence as he was just as mystified...

dinner, a bit of cristela alonzo's mediocre standup, then "me time" hunting down games to use my $10 credit on; it was a tough call, i could take deathtrack resurrection and the golden axe, or motorstorm apocalypse. in the end i opted for the latter and i'm not unhappy with my decision.

trolley shame: we'd gone shopping and i'd forgotten that i'd left the trolley outside our front door until i heard a security guard moving it in the middle of the night

wednesday 8th:

an early night (1 or 2am) after making big progress, a pretty good night aside from hurting my back by carrying mr smear awkwardly around 5am

big breakfast, not knowing what to do about the quiet tearful kid in the school entrance, good work while listening to danny gilboa (that man is a national treasure), early pickup for a no-show purim outfit seller, picking up my mom for a canal walk mission
mr smear eating more than my lunch and breastfeeding, the asshole using the parents toilets: advice and support from the guy waiting, i'm very glad i didn't say half the things that came to mind as the day wore on

another altercation on the way home (taxi driver), an afternoon of work and play, disappointingly expired scene points, starting fences, tired and working

thursday 9th:

going to bed after hitting a nonsensical brick wall, sleeping a few hours but not breathing properly so waking unrested

just passing time until the therapist arrived, a very interesting suggestion for both of us (filtering out negative stimuli), picking up mr smear and having him fall asleep on the way to the waterfront

a little quiet coffee time until he woke up, then an exhausting while trying to feed and amuse him before doing a quick grocery shopping and heading home; a visit to the costume shop, then the library (he's too young, but they would like to use him for promotion anyway), then a night filled with struggle after he ate a piece of onion skin which we would only later find out had nothing to do with the faces he was making (he was just getting sick)

friday 10th:

temporary tattoo fail
mr smear unhappy until we dropped him off at school
passing out on the couch with fantastic beasts and where to find them playing (meh. entertaining, but the writing was inconsistent), trying to work a little and getting caught up trying not to get caught out by what looked like a tax scam (but actually wasn't)
shopping in the middle of a friday stampede after picking up mr smear, getting home in time to pay the cleaning lady
a tough afternoon thinking that mr smear was fake-crying when he was really suffering
squeezing in a last minute doctor's appointment
an excellent dinner, thank all the gods mr smear could eat the cashew yoghurt!
deep exhaustion and trying to go to bed between mr smear's cries

saturday 11th:

nobody sleeping, aside from just enough time to have a short nightmare about mr smear missing a foot
whale rider: my second viewing, gd's first and we were both emotional
the drool bath
gd's tofu scrambled egg success, jim jeffries, a long afternoon until my mom arrived, a severe talk about my response levels and a little rest, just getting through the day trying to find ways to get mr smear to eat *something*
some work, enjoying crazy, stupid, love while mr smear got a proper block of sleep

sunday 12th:

mostly a restful night, but the wakings were tough and the later morning (approaching 7am) was particularly frustrating; mom arriving in the afternoon and giving us a break, a quick spar grocery run and gd making delicious vegan not-eggs again
mr smear going down for a nap just after my mom left, getting some work done while gd watched pacific rim (gods, i love that movie) and finally getting the functionality sorted out
mountain fire ash followed by helicopters overhead, an awkward stop while picking up bread because the homeless guy i think is autistic doesn't get the "i need to leave now" social cues (including the direct verbal ones)
good work and mr smear doing much better, although getting him into bed was unpleasant

an inexplicable unfriend notification which later turned out to be the social fixer plugin

motorstorm, baked beans, cider, bed

monday 13th:

a good night until 2.30am, a tough couple of hours before getting back to bed; mr smear waking up with a fever again, so no school and us exhausted. being rescued by the cleaning lady and grabbing a couple of hours of rest, waking up just after mr smear passed out and needing two cups of coffee to be able to work on some exciting ideas for a novel i've been outlining

a tough, long afternoon with a sick wife (we're learning about scintillating scotoma) and a busy boy, my mom arriving in the late afternoon so i could go to buy diapers and baby wipes (they only had diapers) and then needing a coffee just to be able to shower mr smear and prep him for bed

SxS's endorsement of my legacy modifications and setting me to repeating my efforts on some more of it before returning to the interesting project

an unpleasant waste of a few hours because the code is so inconsistent

tuesday 14th:

1.30am bedtime and sleeping relatively well

mr smear back at school, me being awkward dropping him off (beginning with greeting a friend from a distance only to identify them as a stranger as we got closer)

from feeling like teenagers to feeling really old, a day of hard work (with little to no payoff) and chasing mr smear and neck-to-hand back-to-knee nerve pain and a surprise play date (even more surprising when we arrived to find we'd mixed up two moms with the same name)

feeling sore and sick and going to bed early

wednesday 15th:

up at 3am for a couple of hours work and giving up on trying to convince vegan fluoride conspiracy theorists to look at scientific evidence

a little rain and sleeping beautifully, trying and failing to sleep in after mr smear decided that it was daytime. he ate a hearty breakfast, at least

trying to help out our teacher who'd been left alone, finding some hebrew books from the shaliach's wife, returning home and watching the end of the equalizer: denzel washington starring in a grownup remake of home alone

extreme frustration at work, picking up mr smear, shopping, the discovery store and suddenly realizing gd was late for her chiropractor appointment; knead lunch with an irritable mr smear (shouty), though he fell asleep at the grocery store and his nap lasted until just after we got home when i said the magic words: "i need to get some rest while he's down"

mom's visit, conversion conversation.

why is it so much more upsetting when he puts food in his hair just after i've washed it than if it was the next morning?

thought for the day:
a) is it okay to pee in the bath when you're a baby?
b) is it okay to pee in the bath when you're an adult?
c) is it okay to pee in the bath when you're an adult in the bath with your kid?

bigfoot files (surprisingly interesting) and work, finally getting one of the two pages done around midnight

thursday 16th:

working through until 2-ish, going to bed having finally sorted out the second page and with a minor one left to go

another tough waking: i'm not getting enough sleep, but i'm sleeping WELL and dreaming almost constantly

another danny gilboa appreciation morning, dropping off mr smear, getting through most of the last page, doing the health exam with gd (we had fun and we're both healthy - although i'm a little overweight and my good cholesterol is so low that i've been instructed to eat lots of oily, fatty foods)

picking up mr smear (gd having a proper coughing fit at the school), then heading home. working most of the afternoon, taking mr smear for a walk cut short by the wind, him passing out just before my mom arrived for a quick visit, dinner and the first episode of grimm, finishing the legacy work, then...

mr smear waking up into a coughing nightmare

friday 17th:

that lasted a couple of hours, then slept for about four. i got up to use the bathroom and on the way put a light blanket on him, which woke him up and led into four more hours of him coughing and crying unable to breastfeed and refusing water and to be held by anyone but me - which is flattering but hard - eventually falling asleep again only to wake up half an hour later.

i managed to get an hour or two of sleep - i think - and then held for a short while before he napped again for another short while and we decided that it was more likely allergic asthma again that actual illness

after 13+ hours of horror, and almost exactly two hours before his emergency doctor's appointment, his situation improved dramatically, at least for a little while...