and the worst part is knowing that feeling like this is the basis for my making my situation worse than it needs to be, one bad decision at a time.
thursday 8th:
half an hour learning about earn.com instead of crashing and finally going to bed completely bombed at 2.20am...
vivid visual hallucinations on falling asleep and on waking up
... a painful start to the day with mr smear's early nightmares, getting through the morning alright and delivering him successfully before settling into mom's coffee shop to complete the crowdfunding campaign, open it up to the public and start spreading the word
the school phone call confirming that mr smear is not ready for potty training
picking him up, getting him home to bed, trying to nap but struggling so lying down and coming up with a series of shit jokes
"working": watching azure videos and coming away with an insight that cost twenty minutes of boredom to acquire: why does anyone think video is the way to learn coding techniques?! or that i should be watching hours and hours of video with no assurance that it's valuable to me?
strolling mr smear to the gym and back as the weather cooled, getting him ready for bed and leaving him with my mom while gd and i went to her class
creepy stalker guy and the latkes, sweatman so cigarette-smelly i couldn't hear what he was saying, nobody appreciating my jokes (like purim being the equivalent of "jew pride")
coming home late and mr smear still not asleep (he'd been giving my mom a hard time and continued with us for a while)
watching a bit of the winter soldier before work but even the tea and chocolate weren't enough to get me doing anything but sleep until the morning
friday 9th:
mr smear waking up with a nonsensical tantrum, getting him halfway to the school before deciding his cough was too bad for that, dropping him off at home and going to my mom's to work
my campaign's first contributions!
a coworker calling me just as i was leaving for lunch and needing enough time that i was under serious pressure to rush-eat and run to the bank to print a statement and pick up lego strips from the post office and arrive back at my mom's *just* in time for an hour-long technical interview
switching tasks and merging branches taking forever, a locked file forcing me to restart when i was already late going home and eventually needing to start from scratch anyway
a tough afternoon / evening with mr smear acting out, marketing / marketing fails and a beer and battlestar galactica while i consumed all the leftovers once everyone had gone to bed
saturday 10th:
a relatively good night's rest, a long morning campaigning, taking mr smear out to the aquarium and getting about a third of the way to the bus before he began a tantrum that would go on for about two hours, needing to take a walk up the mountain alone after getting him back home to calm down
a little tekken for my nerves, more campaigning, lunchtime with a suddenly relaxed mr smear
nap time for him, an afternoon of campaigning (somewhat successfully, i think), suddenly feeling ill again, taking mr smear out to pick up a lafa and spending the evening with him eating and playing or watching music videos before an average bedtime during which his heavy cough returned followed by dinner in front of battlestar galactica and eventually settling down and spending a few hours on one of my evaluations (the actual project was straightforward, but they mentioned migrations with node.js and mongodb and that's *annoying* - isn't the point of mongoose and nosql to not worry about schemas too much?)
sunday 11th:
2am to bed
mr smear up around 5.30am but thankfully gd handled it and i got to sleep almost until 8 - waking up with a very sore throat
breakfast, a little more evaluation (effective practice for using the MEAN stack), taking mr smear to kirstenbosch
a very cool hour or two, lots of lovely moments, and then mr smear not only calling my bluff when i tried to take him home, but i hid completely out of sight for a little while before giving up and the mother and grandfather of the little chinese boy he was playing with reported that when they told him "daddy has gone" he responded with "i don't care"
trying to pee before we left (i think it was a delay tactic), lots of heavy coughing until he fell asleep, getting him home and into bed and crashing myself for a couple of hours
making evaluation progress, mr smear eating with tangled and then me taking him and his bike to the park: the mission began and ended with tantrums, but i think i handled it better and overall we had a good time. mr smear was following a bigger kid on his bike and was visibly shocked (even wiping himself off) when he turned around and gave him a hug; another bigger kid with a LOT of energy took a liking to him and pushed him around on his bike for a while - he was taken aback when he got mr smear to the edge of the promenade and mr smear just carried on without bothering to so much as look behind him... mr smear wanted to say goodbye so we returned and waited for him to get off the roundabout, at which point he pushed mr smear around again and stopped by the public toilets, where it looked like he was inviting him inside. needless to say i took exception, and it's hard to explain to a two-and-a-half year old not to go anywhere with strangers without his parents' permission...
home, mr smear rocking out to black sabbath's iron man (his new favourite song), an easy shower and an average bedtime although his cough was worrying and went on for a long time
battlestar galactica before evaluation time, an amazing campaign contribution from scrapper, my own cough becoming hectic
monday 12th:
completing the first of four evaluations around half past midnight, then spending an hour trying to find a reasonable solution to a work problem
finally going to bed just before 2.30am, being unable to sleep for over an hour and waking up at 7am exhausted with stuffy sinuses
a message from gd's brother turning me into the gatekeeper
dropping mr smear off at school and enjoying witnessing him playing with a new friend
my runny nose and painful sinusitis becoming progressively worse throughout the day
struggling with work but advancing, mom picking up mr smear, taking a break to fiddle with currency when suddenly i discovered that i'd somehow missed all my alerts (thanks, apple watch!) and was late for my anger management session
half a session with a runny nose and headache, but generally positive
remembering to take a sinutab when i got home, rushing back to my mom's to pick up my stuff then back to do an emergency shop and spend the next few hours trying to work in spite of the distractions
mr smear being iron man, then breakdancing
investing my christmas party money in
an easy shower (mr smear soaped himself for the first time), and a pleasant bedtime, then diving into work - a lot of uncomfortable debugging with async azure authentication and the older version's sync methods not behaving much better
horseman agreeing to help out with my brother-in-law and the telling of the story just making it more surreal
tuesday 13th:
working until whenever the meds stopped working (probably early, felt late), getting a relatively good night's sleep
waking up to a HOT day (and humid and lightning-stormy), dropping off mr smear at school, working at my mom's because i was too disgustingly snotty to sit in public
a technical interview that would've been funny if it wasn't sad (he said SOLID principles, not salad), watching zuma refusing to resign (just like mugabe), picking up gd for a quick post office mission but sitting in the car was too sore so she missed getting stuck in crazy traffic as they'd blocked ALL the roads around the mall for construction
my birthday email to godmother being acknowledged with as much warmth and affection as it was sent (not much)
picking up mr smear and swelling with pride as his teacher excitedly informed me of his musicality and coordination (triangle and tambourine), a little sad that he got scratched again but both the teacher and principal assured me they were handling it with the parents
the unbearable heat in the car (40 degrees) and mr smear not sleeping - almost, but not - resting a little in preparation for the interview with the au pair who we were immediately happy with; we're were already ready to hire her and i hadn't yet found a job that pays enough but our current nanny has been taking advantage of us and we can't afford that at all
mr smear needing a bath after playing with his pens, then running right back to the pens we hadn't put away and needing to be cleaned again - fortunately not at bath scale, but we triggered a tantrum by taking the pens away which i immediately stuffed with dr horrible's sing-along blog
taking mr smear to the post office, he fell asleep as we arrived. i carried him upstairs, managed to extract my wallet with my opposite arm without waking him and paid with cash which i practically never carry; the clerk was kind enough to supply me with a plastic bag for the heavy bundle which i held under his bum (so its weight plus 15kg) as i bravely went to the pharmacy to purchase what gd needed... not only did i find it without too much hassle, but when it came to paying i had precisely enough cash-back on my card and small change from the post office to pay without waking him!
getting him into the car with only minor disturbance (i sang him back to sleep pretty quickly) and arriving home JUST as the looming thunderstorm broke... the fat drops of rain and lightning and thunder woke him up frightened as we left the car, and that was the end of his nap :(
a pleasant late afternoon (he LOVES the original theme music that goes with his justice league shirt: the flash, superman and batman), leaving him with my mom as i dropped gd off at her class
after my mom left mr smear decided he wanted to go grocery shopping. he refused the elevator, and two stairs down decided that he needed his cap. then he agreed to take the elevator, and the shopping was fine; he helped me carry and i helped an older visitor having trouble finding non-dairy products for her husband. then mr smear insisted on walking up the stairs.
a lot of stairs, a break to explore and then more stairs up to the boxing studio which he HAD to enter. everyone (including him) enjoyed his visit immensely. he got one of the trainers to put gloves on him, and after watching a woman doing pad work he decided to give that a try, and for the next while would alternate between hitting the pads, exploring and squaring off with his reflection in the mirror. the receptionist hopped in to the ring to sweep it, mr smear (with gloves on) dived in and the guy got on his knees thinking mr smear wanted to spar - meanwhile, he was only interested in the broom so he just slid right back out.
it was all fun and games until he realized we were leaving, i got smacked in the face three times before i managed to throw him over my shoulder... during his second timeout i set up the shower and put my music on, the moment i opened the door he went from yelling and tears to striding into the shower ("music soothes even the savage beast"), a mostly pleasant bedtime experience and gd arriving home in time for the last stretch
work, campaign, struggling with my summer cold in spite of the medication
wednesday 14th:
into bed around 2am after mostly being distracted - although i did learn some basic go (golang) before crashing
feeling a bit better in the morning, a good conversation with gd about the circumcision thing from my previous post, not giving the nanny her notice
the mechanic examining my car with a stethoscope, a quick and painless cop shop copy certification procedure, starting to get into a new task
my mom arriving very upset about our new arrangement, making a couple of valid points, stressing all the while on my way to pick up mr smear from school (he didn't want to leave, his teachers now know what his squeaky scream sounds like)
freaking out on the way home because i forgot i had an hour to get to my interview; a difficult and highly stressful discussion with gd ending in us deciding not to fire the current nanny and to put the au pair plans on hold until we know what's coming
getting up dizzy and feeling awful even after taking all the meds, driving through heavy traffic (for the third time) and arriving just in time to load up on pre-interview caffeine
a very positive interview experience, feeling good about it even though they'd let me know a couple of days later that they were entering a hiring freeze
failing to pick up boxes for the move, an evening spent working and playing and eating, a positive shower and bedtime experience although i was falling asleep while reading to mr smear so i lay down after saying goodnight and spent the following the-gods-know-how-long hacking and coughing and not actually resting
up for work and then starting on the go project
thursday 15th:
my first foray into go rather successful, waking gd with my coughing, zuma resigning!, crashing around 2.15am
waking up choking at 4.30am, a long an uncomfortable time getting back to sleep, then something bothering mr smear so being woken at 7am having passed out on his bed
tough getting up, still a bit chesty, dropping mr smear off and trying to put sunscreen on in the car while he listened to iron man - putting it on in class is easier - dropping him off and witnessing his new buddy running up to him wearing a spiderman shirt and the two of them laughing loudly when i joined in with my pretend web shooters
meeting sailor for surprisingly strong coffee, mom's coffee shop and a little go, picking up a very happy mr smear, car phone nerves (i was shouting to my watch, neither gd nor myself could end the call)
mr smear not sleeping, a half an hour resting then driving out to bergvliet for gd's first session with a hypnotherapist that turned out to be a whole different animal (gd really being in the right place at the right time)
an hour waiting for gd with a very awake mr smear, hammocks and ashtrays and his favourite music
coming home utterly exhausted, emergency shower and showing the apartment and crashing on the couch until it was time to go to gd's class
excited for the jewish history class by my grade 7 homeroom teacher who didn't show up
home to mr smear having just gone to bed, rushing out to the bank to try to move money in time for debit order drops, a long chat with gd and leftovers dinner then hitting the evaluation project hard
friday 16th:
going to bed around 1.30am: evaluations shouldn't take this much effort, but for the two recent ones i've actually learned a lot of cool new stuff which is exciting
a relatively decent (albeit slow) morning, dropping off a happy mr smear then spending a few hours almost completing the go evaluation
picking up a happy mr smear who arrived at home with no intention of napping
SARS mission with mom:
1. arriving together
2. after fifteen or twenty minutes in the queue, my mom was asked to go inside in deference to her age
3. a long wait later i was allowed through security; the security guard didn't tell me where to go so i lost a few places because i started at reception
4. filing a complaint with the sensation that i was dropping it in a rubbish bin
5. my mom being informed by a manager that the numbers are random
6. a long wait to the front of the section with no book or battery
7. the evil poster at the front warning people that they'd have to come back if they didn't have all their documents, a poster not visible until you've waited a couple of hours
8. still no tickets as we moved down the hall, beginning to suspect that hunger games rules might apply
9. a long wait to get to a whole other section, no tickets until we got to the front row - i wondered out loud if anyone without tickets was willing to gamble on musical chairs for better position
10. my mom finally disappearing about halfway through the new section's wait
11. finally! sitting down and establishing a) just why my details were corrupted and b) that i absolutely should have been able to fix them myself online (the phone rep lied)
12. at least i got a favour out of it, she checked my return status for me
13. leaving ("i'm not a number, i'm a free man!"), finding my mom and learning that not only had she finished only ten minutes before me, but after all that she not only didn't need to be there but they weren't able to help her (O_o)
a quick stop at baby city and then home to devour random food and get ready to go to the temple; mr smear waking up from his nap in fake tears, a long tantrum and me stepping in something gross before i was able to determine that his "owie" was in the ipad... getting him out to the car and explaining to him the way of the world (vis-a-vis crying and ipads) of which i hope something went in
a good temple experience, towards the end mr smear climbing up to the platform and going from funny-embarrassing to oh-my-god-get-your-fingers-out-your-nose embarrassing before i could get him down
redeeming himself after the service by singing along to shalom aleichem at the top of his lungs
a nice dinner with my mom, a really special kiddush with mr smear singing with me
getting mr smear ready for bed, gulping down coffee and a sudafed and heading out to home town in woodstock for protoplasm's birthday bash, a really nice evening with great music and a lot of the people i met on new year's 2014
saturday 17th:
home at 1am, in bed by 2, up before 9, everyone tired and lazy; grocery shopping by myself around noon, taking mr smear with me to meet an old friend at lekker vegan; he fell asleep as we arrived and gave us an opportunity to have an adult conversation, the food was good and the service and atmosphere were too
mr smear waking up seeing a mural of a boat, but for some reason demanding to go to the blue train. about halfway to the train he decided he wanted to go on a boat, and i happily obliged - we passed through an enormous flock of busy water birds at one stage and it felt like we were in a documentary :)
a little playground time with a schoolmate, then home to hurriedly eat and shower before my mom took over so that we could go to spier for "an evening with amanda palmer"
leaving a little late, crazy traffic and accidents but arriving *just* about on time, picking up drinks and coffee before they closed the bar (?!?), finding better seats when we couldn't locate ours
opening friend: a very cool nate maingard
rhianna clone: wtf, amanda palmer, wtf. tasteless and cheap with nothing lyrics and why so much of the audience seemed to enjoy the experience hurting my brain
amanda palmer herself: phenomenal, thoroughly enjoyable
rhianna clone collaboration: omg wtf bbq, utterly mortifying. i felt embarrassed for them both, but more for patty monroe when she blurted "you can buy my music outside" before getting off the stage
unknown author: a reading from a book that went on for far too long, didn't involve a single original or interesting thought and simply channeled sjw rhetoric
neil gaiman: what an absolute treat! his first public appearance in south africa (apparently unplanned) and he read us a wonderful short story
a tribute to the victims of the most recent school shootings that got political and under gd's skin
a silent and mercifully quick drive home
sunday 18th:
a long day spent mostly indoors and either feeling sick and exhausted or completing the project in go - overall, i enjoyed learning go and i think i would be happy to work in it
watching a bit of blade! and finding it a bit boring, walking to my mom's to drop off recycling, mr smear singing "i am iron man" all the way to ninety one, an indian restaurant with barely any vegan options
mr smear not interested in the delicious lentils and rice, watching bbc's planet earth until bedtime
resting until 11-ish then getting up to be productive; after struggling with a tender neck all day being very conscious of how badly i was sitting
monday 19th:
aaaaand working until 3.45am, just a little longer than planned having gone from wasted and barely capable of sitting upright to enthusiastically wired
struggling (surprise!) to get up and out on time, dropping mr smear off at school and then taking gd to her chiropractor who needled me and let me crash on his floor; back home for an unpleasant disciplinary conversation with the nanny, lying down for half an hour then slugging coffee and driving back to town to pick up mr smear
that wonderful moment before we left when he turned on the cd player and LOVED the psytrance
putting him into bed and then lying down until lunch was ready, reading a bit of the long earth while eating and still feeling stretched out so lying down again, only to find myself feeling worse and worse and suspecting later that the pillow height had been off
feeling a little better after getting up and being taken by surprise by an emergency shower after mr smear's haircut (i hadn't known that was happening), then entertaining him until my mother arrived at which point we all sat down to watch grease and marvel in what an awful* movie it is.
* the misogyny is quite appalling, but it's packaged so well that it's still fun to watch
gd's first ice-cream success being one she couldn't participate in (what made her choose a flavour she's allergic to, i'll never know)
a chat with SxS after handing mr smear's bedtime over to gd and then diving into work, taking a quick break for this and now returning...
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