unmeditation time

i wish i knew why my subconscious feels that 2am is the right time for wrestling with all the things that cause me anxiety. i've spent the past hour trying to get back to sleep - have i mentioned that i've been tired? - but instead i've been trapped in a dark and unconstructive loop dissecting the past week in context of the past four months, determining what went wrong, who's at fault, and where to go from here.

it's weird to be stressing so much after the week ended as well as it did. my workday yesterday was generally positive, taking mr smear to the temple for the first time in months was fun and highlighted just how much he's matured, dinner was nice, and playtime with his action figures was interesting because when megatron shot sideswipe we learned about the finality of death: mr smear was distressed, but has a new understanding of why the decepticons* are evil, and he recovered well once we established that our "game" had boundaries and that we could play again later.

* how is this not in my phone's default dictionary?

second night in a row reading alice in wonderland to him, and i was especially entertained when i realized that he'd fallen asleep with another book in his arms ^_^

the real llama

i posted before about the "drama llama" on our team, and here i am approaching 5am wrestling with how to deal with the fact that yesterday she literally couldn't hear what i was saying because she was so busy imagining me as an idiot, and when i finally got through to her she walked away with a condescending remark.

jesus.

but i also had a positive experience strategizing with a couple of people in our sister team which was cool.

this past week has been mostly good, but exhausting. doing my physio exercises is hard work and time-consuming, last night i couldn't bring myself to complete them. i'm supposed to be going to the gym today and i'm not sure how i feel about that.

a part of this week's exhaustion and stress is being back on coffee again and working long hours...

i've finally made some real progress this week on a personal project, so that's nice. i think it's in part due to our mornings being a little slower while my mom's away...

last night i went to say goodnight to mr smear while gd read to him, and he made it very clear that he didn't want kisses. then he clarifed: "mommy likes kisses. i like hugs." i can live with that.

supposed to be

wow, today was shocking. i learned just how wrong i've been doing my job, primarily because i've essentially been trained by engineers who aren't supposed to understand what my role is. i had my first encounter with my newly assigned mentor, and then shortly after with a co-worker who in no uncertain terms made it clear to me that my inability to answer his questions was disappointing.

so now it's time to back up, and switch modes. at least this has happened four months in and not way down the line...

better and worse

thursday was also tough, but i finally scored a win and was so excited i would have done a little dance if my knee was better.

friday was supposed to be a "hackday", but by the end of the morning i didn't feel i'd contributed much to the team and i really wasn't excited by what we were doing so i got back to work and handed over to my teammate, whose positive response indicated that the week's drama was over, even if only for now.

i enjoyed a great beer o'clock chat with my new teammate, friday night dinner was really nice, mr smear really enjoyed a new book with me.

the storm was incredible, but i couldn't sleep because of my knee.

yesterday was pleasant, my mom took gd and mr smear in the morning (after we rediscovered an old book) and i did my exercises and watched most of the big short which is literally amazing.

we had a big lunch at knead, dropped gd at home and hit the waterfront to find pants for me, mr smear passing out as we arrived.

i'm on crutches, they're visible, and on multiple occasions people walked right in front of me and stopped. wtf?!

i think i napped, coco, ffviii.

this morning started well, our friend came over with her son for pancakes, everyone left for the aquarium and i did my exercises watching captain marvel. i don't care what sparked controversy, the details bored me, but the movie was awesome!

a long nap, watching pinocchio until my mom arrived, a remarkably unpleasant evening but getting over it, getting back into one of my personal projects after two months, an episode of jessica jones and now i'm finally going to try to sleep.

oh. and my knee's been hurting unusually this evening, even though in general i've been adjusting quite well to a single crutch.

4.30am anxiety

yesterday was a LONG day. a lot of the tough stuff was due to following my teammate's instructions where she'd left out critical details that i couldn't have figured out for myself. hours and hours playing sisyphus trying to get something to build and run when she knew it was broken.

it's now clear to me that the drama we experienced before i left for my surgery wasn't all caused by the problem dude, there were two "drama llamas" tangoing.

well, so be it. i'm trying to calm down because i know, intellectually, that i don't need to play stupid games if i'm not interested in winning stupid prizes, but i'm going to have to be cool in the face of toxic behavior and that's never easy for me.

in other news, once i got the nameservers set correctly my services went up without a hitch, so i'm very happily off godaddy.

i finally got my new physio exercises (at 10pm last night i realized he'd sent me a new code in an email, so... whoops), some of them are tough to do and they take a LONG time.

a little ffviii, a little fighting ignorance online, getting to bed around 1am blissfully unaware it was only for three and a half hours... hopefully after dumping this here i'll be able to make the most of the next hour before my alarm goes off.

the dumbest shit

i wasn't going to post this evening, but it's half past midnight and i've been waiting for half an hour in the queue to chat with technical support for my new domain name registrar. and then, just as i hit first in line, my internet connection went down. which almost *never* happens.

everything about hover (please use this link for a discount) is better than godaddy, and i was all excited until the transfer went through this morning and my site went down. i've tried a whole bunch of different things, but i've finally learned - or at least i hope i have - what the problem has been: it doesn't update your nameservers, so none of my dns settings were in effect. phenomenal.

anyway, my tuesday was pretty cool: the surgeon's really happy with my knee, i'm now on a single crutch at home and the plan is to be on a single crutch outside pretty soon. i can carry shit! i actually got a bit emotional while practicing at the physio.

the evening was fun, after mr smear passed out i did my exercises, by the time i joined gd she was ready for bed and so i spent some more time playing ffviii. it is *incredible* how much i remember, how much i missed, and how well that story has aged. so far, of course, i never did get past the second disc...

right, bedtime.

wedding rings

literally and metaphorically.

a beautiful morning turned suddenly sour, a tense remainder of the day but with a few highlights, finally working on the article i'm being pushed for and coming up with a really feasible business proposal for my mom, a little bit more ffviii (totally back in the groove, those first few hundred hours of game time really made an impression), great bath and bedtime, finishing i am mother which is *excellent*

days going by

the week ended pretty well, although one of our team mates seems to be becoming progressively distant and i'm beginning to suspect that the problem engineer from before wasn't the only "drama llama" in that scenario.

amusingly, we both reported an incident to our manager and the outcome was very positive.

gd was well enough to go to the temple on thursday to help put talitot together, i had an easy time getting mr smear to bed and she enjoyed her evening which was gratifying.

mr smear's been learning hard lessons about politeness and listening, but overall his trajectory is very good. gd went to her course this morning for the first time since her surgery, leaving the two of us to an entertaining morning of psytrance, jungle oats, cool animations, playing outside for a bit and a little bit of final fantasy before she returned... i played again when it was her turn to read to him (after i spent 45 minutes reading him three books), and i'm really happy to be starting ffxiii again. i missed it.

oh. we finished the second season of happy tonight. i was attacked halfway through by a nightmarish episode of rls.

downs and ups

weekdays are easier than weekends for me, at present. this afternoon we received word of my teammate's promotion, which i'm especially glad about because in the evaluations i posted before my surgery i suggested that he's ready and that makes it pretty clear that we're all aligned. the past week or so of work has been a real struggle, today had some rough spots but a couple of productive conversations were had that (metaphorically speaking) made the sun come out. gd lost her temper with mr smear this morning, but the outcome of the unpleasant event seems to be relatively positive. i have a million things that need doing, but after a bit of mucking about i'm ready to do my physio exercises and go to bed early again. i'm not sleeping well, but i'm sleeping a bit and i'm grateful for it. gods, i really can't wait to be off crutches.

restless leg

i'm tired of being tired. my knee's generally doing alright but not when i'm supposed to be sleeping, and my hips and back are sore from the exercises and from compensating. i can't really get comfortable when i'm not in bed.

the last week was a bummer, i didn't get much in way of a sense of accomplishment and i fell off the caffeine wagon right back into heavy coffee drinking - which i suspect is partially responsible for my being on edge and restless. speaking of restless, i've been suffering from particularly bad rls the last couple of days.

the new bed was delivered yesterday, it's great but not enough to beat all these other contenders for my attention...

i'm actually finding weekends more difficult than workdays, to be honest. i've spent a lot of time alone with mr smear and it's frustrating not being able to play with him or take him out to do stuff. it's also hard dealing with a boundary-pusher who knows i can't chase him around.

having said that, i've found a few great games for the ps3 and he's been playing really well with me. at least that.

gd and i had a fight the other day that i found quite demoralizing, in that i've been re-evaluating since and i'm really not sure how to be effective in communicating the things that are important to me. i feel like nobody cares what i have to say, even when they know i'm right, and especially if they're close to me.

suboptimal

today was a long day. some of it was immensely gratifying - in particular gaming with mr smear* - and some of it was exhausting, in spite of me doing very little. i tried to be productive, i tried to make some progress with the next podcast episode, but when i wasn't trying to keep mr smear occupied or looking after my knee i found it very difficult to focus.

i did make a couple of health insurance claims, though, which was a big deal.

things that got me through the day: returning to braid, fiddling with a couple of levels of 7 billion humans, and a little bit more of a song of ice and fire. and the unframed ice-cream that my mom brought home. and a hot shower when i was freezing.

and now to do my exercises and go to bed. hopefully i'll sleep.

* i find it very sad that mixed-up mother goose no longer works on a mac. i really loved how mr smear responded to it and because we're forced to play the html5 port i was worried that we couldn't save our progress. while writing this i realized i hadn't actually tried, and lo! progress saved. i don't know how they made that work, but i'm very grateful!

back to the office

one week later. feeling better, we might possibly be returning to our home today. still barely sleeping, although last night was an improvement.

gd and i have had some frustrating fights over the past couple of days, but i think we're doing okay. she's been sick as well as recovering while i've just been recovering, which has introduced some unnecessary tensions...

... it looks like we'll be renewing our apartment lease, which is good. it was my mom's birthday this week, we took her to balducci's and had a really good evening. now praying that the spa i bought her a voucher for honours our agreement and lets her go whenever she actually wants to (if the voucher you're selling online expires, shouldn't you mention that before the purchase is complete?)

my physio seems to be going well, but some of the elements really hurt. and i've been promised that it's going to get a lot more painful before it gets better.

i've been back in the office since wednesday morning, and i'm SO much happier. not only does sharing the same physical space with my teammates make a big difference, but our temporary offices are beautiful and we have an excellent view of table mountain, in contrast to the view of my last three weeks (and right now) which is the buildings across the road. by tuesday evening i was starting to lose my mind and i actually had to hobble outside and spend five minutes staring at the sun. and being jealous of the beachfront joggers.

we got a message from mr smear's teacher on thursday morning that seriously upset me: not only did they have what was effectively an easter egg hunt for lag ba'omer - wtf?! - but "the dairy lady" is visiting the school on wednesday to indoctrinate the three and four year olds into believing that dairy is good for children, which it most certainly isn't. it's sheer insanity, it's 2019 and there's no need to push unhealthy, unethical and unsustainable habits on defenseless kids.

ah, mr smear and i have been playing old-school computer games together since yesterday and really enjoying ourselves! in particular, mixed-up mother goose, super solvers midnight rescue, pac-man and stunts.

most important takeaway for the week: i'm really, really happy with my new job. i've been doing it for three months already, i'm getting a bit more of a handle on things, and they seem to be happy with me too. i'm feeling particularly fortunate right now.