a stay in the hotel hospital suite

friday 17th:

the new hospital issues (signage, parking, elevators, and wtf is up with hospitals not having ANY places to buy something to eat that isn't going to make you sicker?!), a really great radiology experience (even though i'm nervous about having my small son x-rayed)
a pharmacy run and mom coming over for a drink and to help administer meds
pleasantly putting mr smear to bed after he became drowsy after his enthusiastic racing around the apartment after we finally got him breathing comfortably and eating again
jim norton - mouthful of shame is pure genius
iron fist is AMAZING [note: it starts off awesome, and goes quickly downhill to omg-wtf-is-this-trash]

saturday 18th:

writing love poetry on the way to bed, then, unable to sleep, writing an intervention letter to hcc and clearing my virtual desk until 3am

up for a feed at 4.30, then properly getting up around 7.30 restless and tired. rewriting the intervention letter and sending it, being much relieved after receiving a positive response

missioning: mom, the doctor, the petrol station, the car rental agency
back home then out to the farmer's market; crazy crowded and mr smear swinging between extremes of cool and uncool
home, gd taking over while i dropped out for a desperate nap as i felt that i was starting to come down with something, getting up a couple of hours later and going to check out the carnival with sailor, walking and talking for a bit before bringing him home for dinner

not feeling well, going to bed early

sunday 19th:

my back really hurting during the night, getting up a couple of times and dreaming strange dreams

a lesson in mode / animal control and actually crying tears while fighting my fight or flight response

water documentary, waterfront mission, crowd stress exhaustion, a tiring afternoon of mr smear being destructive and defiant and outsmarting me on a number of occasions

mom over for dinner, putting mr smear to bed and then settling in to read mindblowing things in edible: an adventure into the world of eating insects and the last great hope to save the planet

monday 20th:

a reptile dysfunction at 5am (lizard warning sounds) [gods i don't remember this at all right now]
waking up tired with a particularly needy mr smear
pressure to get to school on time to see that it was a holiday and turn around
work, play, and taking advantage of nap time to discover that we should have applied for gd's residence immediately and not waited on mr smear's status change [just learned that the stress was for nothing, we don't need to apply for residence for another couple of years]
feeling awful while waiting to leave for the gym
my turn for a sore tongue
a good run (although a painful minute after accidentally pressing the emergency stop button)

giving up on the gym crèche, coming home desperately hungry, feeling progressively worse with a bored mr smear behaving progressively worse to match

mom arriving and giving me a chance to rest, waking up to put mr smear to bed and eat dinner and watch an episode or two of iron fist with gd

finally back to my big project at work

tuesday 21st:

finishing work at 3am excited about completing an important part of the puzzle

dairy IS fucking scary

mr smear smelling like the vinegar on fish 'n chips after skipping a shower
have you ever lifted a toilet lid to find a bath duck floating in it?

crazy kids party, mr smear being frustratingly clingy at first, chilling with friendlies, back home where mr smear dropped out for a surprise nap which was enthusiastically embraced; quick shop (a supermarket with no cauliflower or broccoli?!)

muizenberg on a public holiday, crowds as far as the eye can see; someone or someone's dog taking a dump next to us while we were setting up

returning home for a quick post-beach shower, joining my mom at the synagogue for my grandmother's yahrzeit, then prepping for dinner at my aunt's and hitting snags (like an asthma attack) on the way out when we were already late...

hand-foot-and-mouth disease making my tongue swell and hurt from the time we arrived at the synagogue and becoming progressively more painful until i gargled salt water and cried for five minutes; that held the suffering at bay until dessert time when the fruit salad set it off again

a lovely dinner, albeit with a couple of arguments that really didn't need to be so aggressive, mr smear being testy and refusing to eat, and staying up until we got home at 10-10.30pm

news of my boss' father dying while his wife struggles with stage 4 cancer just adding weight to an already long day, crashing on the couch for a minute and then dragging myself to bed in the middle of the night

wednesday 22nd:

up just before our alarm on a beautiful misty morning, a fairly efficient breakfast, dropping mr smear off at school and then researching phytoestrogens and soybean safety (safe in moderation, fermented is healthier), crashing for a bit then working then picking him up

he acted embarrassed while i was learning that he'd been pulling another boy's hair and smiling when in trouble... *sigh*

gd sending her brother a goodbye message

reading xamnesia and passing out while mr smear napped, a couple of hours working (banging my head against an invisible wall)

the gym: another unpleasant crèche experience, a coffee while compulsively reading xamnesia, a great bag workout until being surprised by hcc because we'd completely forgotten that we'd agreed to babysit and had lost track of the time; picking up mr smear and rushing out to take the two kids to the park, which was a fun and interesting experience, then back just in time to pick up gd, retrieve my gear and get home

gobbling down the new végépaté, showering and getting mr smear fed and into bed
iron fist and dinner
bad rls plus hand pins and needles and nerve pain down to my toes

thursday 23rd:

the enormous guilt after realizing that i've generated a food issue for mr smear

mr smear kicking another boy *groan*

storming out of sportsmans warehouse enraged by the fact that the people i care most about on this planet are the people who ignore or dismiss me the most; a shitty afternoon but at least managing to get some work done while mr smear napped, then taking gd for a haircut and finding that cbd's wellness warehouse has shut down its food operation... eventually picking up a good kauai wrap before rushing home where hcc was waiting to drop off her son (and we thought that they were paying us a visit)

busy babysitting

dinner time struggle, showering and prepping for bed; iron fist and cider and a big dinner that burned my mouth but was still bearable relative to the previous couple of days

rls exhausting me, passing out on the couch early

friday 24th:

another night down, waking up tired and struggling to get mr smear out of bed. thank all the gods for utopia cashew yoghurt, he ate breakfast and we dropped him off particularly clingy... we were barely back home when they called to ask us to pick him up again, he didn't seem well at all. a visit to the chiropractor for both of us while the cleaning lady took care of him, then walking him to the doctor who looked him over thoroughly and suggested that he might just be stoned from a badly timed antihistamine...

meanwhile, i was utterly bombed and crashed when we got home; it was 4pm when gd woke me up informing me that the cleaning lady had stayed an extra two hours and put him to bed... and i still felt awful so i took two panado and finished reading xamnesia (i don't know why i picked it up in the first place, but i'm very glad i did), wondering if i was sick, still recovering from hand-foot-and-mouth or just in shock from the chiro

mr smear waking up stoned and a bit wobbly, throwing up just after my mom arrived for dinner and forcing an early shower; finding a weird little bruise on his chest just as we decided that all day he'd been a) reacting to the new antihistamine and b) coming down with something new

parenting fun.

gd stuffing us with a delicious dinner, giving my mom access to our digital library (no thanks to amazon, their household offering is shit), watching a little iron fist while icing my neck then crashing

saturday 25th:

nothing like being screamed at by an angry child at 2.30am for taking him off a breast to clean his nose which was so stuffy he couldn't feed

not quite the relaxing recovery saturday we'd hoped for: mr smear did eat a little breakfast with me, then there was reading and playtime and even a nap, but while gd and i played eco fluxx he decided he wanted to feed and we ended up in round two of serious vomit...

resting / sleeping / restlessly reading (edible still - phenomenally interesting stuff) / taking mr smear to the pharmacy and following him out and down the road where he threw a tantrum and head butted me twice for not letting him run into traffic

introducing my mom to bill burr, then icing a spasming / pinching neck and shoulder
the iron fist writing is inconsistent, sometimes riveting but mostly just pathetic

it's been a long time since we've had to change a leaky poop diaper in the middle of the night, miraculously clean sheets [in retrospect, that was the first real hint of c. difficile]

sunday 26th:

constantly waking up throughout the night, finally up to shouting from the living room as mr smear once again let go of everything he'd taken in and we began worrying about weight loss

magi: adventure of sinbad and prepping for the hospital (during which time he ate some toast and a banana, which was encouraging)
lacking hospital emergency signage but a very professional staff and an overall positive experience even though we'd arrived at the wrong hospital

parking ticket fiasco, home and nap time (killjoys, very cool concept), our own nap hour then mom coming to take over while we went to the pharmacy and did some shopping (discovering a new asian takeout in our building)

the difficulty of seeing mr smear in pain and struggling to eat

a hardcore time switching diapers until eventually he was ready to sleep, grabbing the opportunity to eat a little, suffer rls then pass out

monday 27th:

strange dreams, relatively good sleep and then a 6.30 wake up with mr smear in a pool of vomit (we forgot to give him his midnight anti-nausea meds) and a 7am call from the emergency unit letting us know we were dealing with a strain of c. difficile - all this and a back spasm to boot

a long, tough morning organizing meds and keeping mr smear as comfortable as possible while becoming progressively sicker

laughing at the awful writing in sinbad: legend of the seven seas but it did spark a chain of inspiration for my own writing

the cleaning lady coming over and giving me time to rest, spending a late-march morning in cape town wearing a hoodie under a blanket

when you're sick (feverish) and every movement is painful and draining but you need to lie down and be able to hear your charging phone so you invest heavily in hunting down the right combination of plugs and cables only to realize that your room that you were freezing in earlier has become a sauna so you hit the couch instead and render all that effort wasted

mom taking over and giving me a few hours to be uncomfortable and sore (and experience serious chills), getting up to struggle through a cup of soup before putting mr smear to bed

10.30 bad wakeup - mr smear still vomiting and me almost passing out a number of times - mom driving us to the ER where i was put on a drip before mr smear was...

tuesday 28th:

3.30am breakfast after mr smear finally fell asleep

a not unpleasant night on the fold-out couch, mr smear waking up unimpressed to still be hooked up

two breaks to go home and get organized, otherwise spending the day comforting mr smear and trying to rest; running into sandman's father in the hospital cafeteria, being upgraded to a double room with an ensuite bathroom after another vomit episode, carefully managing bedtime

...

2.5 hours of putting him to bed later, feeling awful and forcing down gd's végépaté purely because i'd barely eaten anything else the whole day...

wednesday 29th:

1.30am up for mr smear feeling as awful and passing-outy as before, self-diagnosing c. diff just as soon as he finally went back to sleep and taking myself down to emergency [fortunately, i was wrong, but i was still messed up]

lesson for the day: i do not like morphine. #no_pain_no_brain

back to the room in time for another tough session, back to emergency for review and a conversation with a doctor whose only interest in nutrition is trying to wrap his head around the banting idiocy

a long morning and a scary number of diapers, a quick home visit and then back for a rest; being asked for a stool sample after being given morphine, getting a little rest before following health insurance advice to alienate mr smear's doctor (i hope i didn't, he's a great doctor), feeling awful again but improving considerably after saying goodbye to lunch and breakfast (and praying i'd already absorbed my antibiotic)

mom giving us a chance to recover, leaving us with mr smear just about ready for bed - his spirits dramatically improved during the last few hours of the day and ours along with them. bolstered by an outpouring of support and good wishes, and even my system had calmed down a bit although i attribute that to not eating at all and hydrating much more than usual

thursday 30th:

midnight surprise: waking mr smear from a full leak and gd having the presence of mind to call the sister; a needy boy refusing to let go when i desperately needed the toilet and a risky last-ditch feed attempt by gd

another long day, an informative pre-g-scope meeting
"i know you have diarrhea, i'm prescribing you a laxative anyway"

a quick mission home and the shock of missing meds because i didn't realize how late it was already, a busy afternoon and a vomit-poop-poop-in-bath combo and nobody else seeming to care how contagious c. diff is

my first laxative experience: so disconcerting that if i hadn't consciously taken a laxative earlier i would have shit bricks. not literally - i usually get plenty of fibre and i already had diarrhea to begin with - but that's a joke that really doesn't work without a setup. anyway, i think if it wasn't for those two points the experience would have been much less pleasant.

not being able to drive and suddenly realizing that we'd hit month end without my managing our finances; of course the banking app will let me do every type of transfer except the one i needed to so my mom had to drive to our apartment to fetch my laptop...

... and then i struggled with ios hotspots until understanding that our carrier doesn't allow it. HUH?!

when your toddler understands just enough to realize you want him to sleep without dinner but not enough to get that it's to prevent him from throwing up: trauma for the whole family

ultimately, a third night where we should have just played with him until he passed out by himself

friday 31st:

my sleeper chair really messing me up, a tough night with nutty dreams, an antibiotic on a single sip of water and mr smear waking up with a dry tongue

7.15 up and straight to the bathroom, signing the roofie clause, last minute rush to the toilet and locked out of paediatric ward so awkwardly using a public facility

the robe

omg what a trip - not only was the experience a pleasure (great sleep, super comfy bed) but between the positive results and news of mr smear i cried like a baby for about five minutes.

an ungentlemanly act followed by "see you tuesday!": the previous crying like a baby in front of them didn't bother me until i "let one go" on the doctor's couch and it turned out not to be gas.

mr smear's first day off the drip, roaming a little (and a bit wobbly)

mr smear and the wrap that had touched feta: a severe allergic reaction that caused a full meltdown, fortunately eased out of by professional staff who not only sorted mr smear out quickly but who addressed the issue immediately (the kitchen had ignored the allergen list we'd provided)

mom running out for delicious miso soup and preemptively buying us dinner

a long afternoon of discomfort and fatigue and dizziness to end a week of the same, suddenly realizing that my weakness and nausea and feeling faint all began right after my visit to the chiropractor and was actually caused by pressure to my cranial nerves

hospital discharge, driving home cautiously in the dark in our rented tin can after the rain

the relief of being home, everyone happier

saturday 1st:

a good night's sleep, a good start to recovering from the hospital experience; a joyful mr smear and gd's mushroom tofu scramble, being woken from a short nap on the couch with fingerpaint

that instinctive thing that cats and small children do when you try to pick them up and they relax every muscle in their body

discipline plus not giggling equals stuttering

an epic forty five minute tantrum over antibiotic administration

the discovery ambivalence, an improved post-nap parenting experience, shopping with my mom and purchasing the studio version of iggy pop's the passenger to mr smear's delight, family dinner and a successful antibiotic strategy, two goodnight feeds and louis ck's hilarious while finishing edible (the former is even funnier when you can relate to parenting toddlers, the latter is brilliant and important but takes a scientifically uninformed stance on veganism)

sunday 2nd:

a good night's sleep, followed by an extremely slow recovery day; no rest for mr smear meaning no rest for us (although i did let my guard down and got bashed in the head for it), finishing the green beans just as he decided he finally wanted to try them; at least he enjoyed the wazoogles

eventually getting a short nap, enjoying brooklyn nine-nine and picking up panda express dinner (the eggplant was only potato), ffix grinding after bedtime

monday 3rd:

a good night's sleep
mr smear eating well all day
big shopping and managing a couple of tantrums
colcacchio vegan pizza, mr smear's first pizza and the amused discomfort of watching him pick avocado off the slices before eating them from the centre
teawesome teas are awesome.
keeping mr smear awake for his meds
unable to nap
too misty for a walk
a good chat with copywriter
iron fist
setting my alarm to nap for an hour...

tuesday 4th:

... waking up around 2.45am...

post-feed gas bubble fallout

5am to bed, dreaming R1 coins falling everywhere and a sudden riot inside a woman screams and throws herself into a puddle and dies; an acquaintance stalks creepily and then comes back from the dead

mr smear suddenly HEAVY, not just putting his weight back on but growing significantly literally overnight

waking up in a foul mood with the cleaning lady knocking on the door two hours early, a redefinition of "drama", breakfast, a little work, leaving mr smear with the cleaning lady to do a big shopping run, back in time to leave for my scope follow-up appointment

super positive scope review, no mention of my ungentlemanly behaviour, being recognized at the hospital pharmacy

mr smear passing out as we prepared to take him for a walk, working a little and then waking him up to hit the promenade and turn around because of the cold; quick shopping and getting home a minute before protoplasm arrived for a drink and dinner, mr smear starting off shy then taking a shine and generally being amusing and mischievous

bedtime ritual, putting myself to bed early

wednesday 5th:

up at 1am, struggling with bullshit IIS configuration issues until 3am, switching to my project and working solidly until 5.30am

slight panic attack over finances

getting up after three hours, taking my ppi and waiting half an hour before eating and being hit with acid reflux anyway (which i haven't been aware of for a little while), introducing gd to samurai jack and watching a brilliant dave chappelle special (the age of spin)

chiro visit, rental breakdown fix just as it began raining
work, nap, gym turnstile fail, the park with mom
dinner throwing anger, shower, falling asleep waiting for mr smear to nod off

thursday 6th:

hours failing to resolve the iis issue, crashing just after 5am

up at 9.30 to have mr smear mix peanut butter, banana and strawberry yoghurt to throw at me (although this time he ate a lot first, much easier to keep cool)

more farting into the thunder (iis configuration), a first visit with an older doctor who welcomed us to 2017 asking if we give our child cannabis and if we ever consume marijuana mixed with sleeping tablets?!! i was horrified to be asked the questions, even more so to think that there might be parents who can answer yes to that sort of thing...

... an afternoon feeding mr smear until my mom arrived, resting an hour or two (and getting up feeling wasted), drinking a cup of coffee to power up for a walk that it was way too windy to go out for, sending microsoft an SOS and mr smear passing out unexpectedly early, getting a little "us" time for the first time in weeks (dragon fruit and iron fist, and louis ck 2017 just not as good as his usual material / delivery)

the end of iron fist: we're not keen on seeing a second season, the writing's awful and the overall sensation watching it was one of disappointment

reading a little further into the first heretic while updating all our devices

friday 7th:

working really well until 2.45am (nice and early)

thought for the day: i've given up on getting "enough" sleep in terms of hours. i'm now judging whether i slept well or not based on how i was feeling the moment before waking up.

some more good work, keyboard stickers arrival, a visit to the hardware store, most of the first episode of the man in the high castle (incredible) while mr smear napped

a baby city mission in the wind with gd's keys on the car roof (how they didn't fall off is beyond me)

blowing mr smear's little mind with butterfly videos (his new favourite thing, he's been saying "butter" - for butterfly - for over a week now) and playing shape and colour games with him on the ipad while trying not to pass out from sheer exhaustion
pre-shopping candle-lighting, a really nice dinner followed by a painless bedtime procedure

totally recalling how beautifully rendered the reboot of total recall is before going to bed early-ish

saturday 8th:

5am up for wordbrain (my mom got me into it) and rls and eventually just getting up and posting this, now it's 6.40am and i'm going to see if lying down for a bit is constructive...