the pregnant lady sings

today did not go as smoothly as planned... it went really badly, in fact. but in a constructive way? time will tell. my toxic teammate (toxic crusader) rolled her eyes at me again this morning, and i asked our manager to ask her to see if he could get her to dislike me less visibly. instead, he put us in a room together and told us to work it out, and in retrospect i think it would have been better if he'd hung around to hear what we had to say.

it's hard to hear someone tell you you're no good, even when you already know that's what they think of you. but she did admit that she felt that i'd improved a bit, and she said some things that tied in with what i'd been hearing from other sources but which came across more clearly. i felt like shit for a while after we talked, even contemplated some of my other options, but then i realized that this is an organization that i have a lot to learn from - in particular in terms of how i approach my work - and some of the things that have been getting under my skin are opportunities for me to bring value.

the way we frame things matters, and by the end of the day i realized that the work i'd been doing since yesterday morning was actually above and beyond what my original task mandated, and that the task i'd been stuck on for weeks was actually a long series of tasks the scope of which i'd naively assumed the creator had understood from the get-go. what comes next is not going to be easy, it's way out of my comfort zone, and in my little world of ideals it shouldn't be necessary, but here we are and here i need to adapt.

i also realized that the main reason my last two days have been unsuccessful is that toxic crusader screwed up months ago, removing a critical component of our project and replacing it with a hack, and now the original design no longer fits back in. it's satisfyingly disappointing :P

i came home, giving gd such a fright (she didn't hear me come in) that her response hurt her :(
my mom picked mr smear and me up and we went grocery shopping, came home for kiddush and dinner (delicious vegan dumplings bought from a coworker's wife's business), i read mr smear some alice in wonderland to sleep (it's really cool witnessing the exact moment he drops off), and i've been tooling around (playing exapunk, waiting for the new tool album to be released) since my mom left and gd went to bed.

thank f*** it's friday

thursday was long. i was somewhat successful with work that's been dragging on forever, but i left disappointed when the thing that was supposed to be the last thing didn't work. a meeting with my manager went south, i found myself feeling quite defensive because the way our code quality is evaluated by management sucks, but otherwise i guess everything's alright.

i've put in for some leave, which is cool

i was really tired when i got home, but at some point got back into working on my mom's project and aside from pausing to eat, put mr smear to bed (twice, first time failed) and do some of my exercises, i've been pushing through and have made some great progress.

now for bed. on the one hand, i have a busy friday coming up and i want it to be over. on the other, i'm excited to be continuing with my project to tattoo representations of sonnets 5 and 6 on saturday afternoon!

six hours of nothing

well. this morning went relatively smoothly, i got into work and after a short debate got stuck in to the seriously repetitive task of getting our infrastructure management software operating as expected. six... hours... with a break for lunch and a chat with my new mentor.

but at least i walked out happy with what i'd done, i walked home for a mostly pleasant evening (minus a couple of tantrums) and after putting mr smear to bed i did some important groundwork for my mom's service, smashed a level of exapunks, and finished watching dave chapelle's sticks and stones.

keep trying, you'll get better

jesus, my physio exercises took me two hours on sunday night. fortunately i could entertain myself with hyperdrive, which is fun.

yesterday was a day heavy with meetings and very bureaucratic work. it wasn't a nice day weather-wise, either. i did some grocery shopping on the way home, and then playground politics for a spell: it took a while to get mr smear to talk to me about it, and we had a Very Important Talk about bullying that i hope was productive.

the theme of the evening was reminding mr smear that you don't become good at things without trying and failing. it took him a while (and an episode or two of daniel tiger's neighborhood) to get the idea, but by bedtime he'd gotten the hang of basic driving with disney's cars and crash bandicoot 3's hog and jetski levels!

today was less tedious, i didn't get mr smear out of bed in reasonable time but i was quite proud of myself for getting him completely ready and us both out of the house by 8.15. i dropped him off at school, and was saying goodbye when he yelled to his friend across the courtyard "hey! yesterday [bully a] and [bully b] were really mean..." just as [bully a]'s mother was walking right past us! if it was *my* kid i would have been super-embarrassed and stopped to say something, but she just carried on and i think that's quite telling...

i walked to work, had a mostly productive day, had a surprisingly candid lunch with a couple of my teammates, took the stairs for the first time, walked home to work a little bit more while the rabbi visited, patiently suffered my dramatic teammate wasting my time and making an ass of herself on our team channel.

my mom picked us up and we all went grocery shopping, then came home and mr smear got stuck into crash bandicoot and black hole apocalypse before showering, dinner, and then more crash bandicoot before bed. on the one hand, i now agree with gd that we shouldn't let him play before bed. on the other, it was freaking AWESOME to see him getting so into it and having such a good time! and his hand-eye coordination is improving rapidly ^_^

three short books and some poetry to bed (i love that he enjoys my poems), and aside from this i've been doing housekeeping... i'm really pleased that after my complaints from saturday's crypto experience the exchange has investigated and discovered a bug and a bunch of issues that they weren't aware of, and the toy company that tried to con us has admitted to receiving the goods back in good condition and they claim to have refunded the money.

early up

i woke up with a coughing fit at 5.30am, i can't believe this shit is STILL going on. i occupied myself for an hour and half (mostly watching james acaster) until i was ready to try to rest again, at which point my son yelled "DADDY!", and when i went to his room i found him pointing at the window. "it's morning, right?"

shit.

so up we got, beginning the day with peter gabriel's sledgehammer video (how have i never seen that before?!), followed by transformers so that i could rest my eyes a bit. kind of. for the next couple of hours, not quality sleep.

i then coffee'd up to take mr smear outside, we walked through the company gardens and ran into our friends walking the other way, so they joined us on a mission for vegan belgian waffles which was really nice. we then went to my mom's coffee shop, and my mom dropped me and mr smear off at home after a quick stop at the jewish museum. i put on labyrinth and passed out for a bit while gd took over, woke up with coffee and an interesting chat with nystire about encryption, spent the evening keeping mr smear occupied before dinner, shower and bedtime, then decided to do my exercises and go to bed.

well, it's now two and a half hours later, i'm not quite finished my exercises yet and it's after midnight. i'm going to bed wishing myself luck for the morning, but i do feel really, really good about how my weekend went.

a holy sabbath

a relaxed start to the morning (minus an extremely frustrating experience transferring crypto), taking mr smear to the company gardens to tool around on his skateboard, visiting the national gallery which he really enjoyed until we got to the room with the uncannily realistic demon sculptures (he was understandably terrified), lunch and random games at the big box, picking up adventure time - guess who? on impulse, bringing it home and actually playing as a family (although it took a while for mr smear to understand that it's no fun if you don't keep your choice a secret...), kind-of napping while mr smear watched adventure time, my mom paying us a short visit, finishing my coffee before taking him downstairs to splash our feet in the pool and kick a ball around, showering, feeding him and watching hotel transylvania 3, putting him to bed and finally publishing a new version of my encryption tool which enables file encryption... a little more progress after a week of small victories feels pretty awesome! doing some server housekeeping and playing exapunks, which is brilliant, and now it's almost 1.30am and i'm going to bed on a fantastic note ^_^

finally friday

two work days ending on a great note, last night staying up late to figure out how to funnel emails into a website, a really tough physio session in the morning, mr smear bravely entering the freezing swimming pool by himself, generally feeling good about the state of the world

whoa, nelly

it's only wednesday. i feel wrecked.

sunday:

the playdate was great, but i wasn't feeling too well and mr smear and his friend were both being annoying / demanding. i'm glad we all got together but i was relieved when we finally got home.

monday:

dropping off mr smear with the nanny
the relief of being back in the office

tuesday:

a 7am page followed by a two-hour confidence-crushing nightmare that coloured my day
a therapy session to review my mixed feelings of inadequacy (in some respects i feel like an imposter, in others i feel totally validated)
getting my own pizza for the all-hands because they never think to cater for vegans
positive meetings
finding a pharmacy that delivers!
a last bit of work after getting home and discovering that my team dragging their feet to deploy my code had caused havoc
my brother rabbit, more pizza and spaghetti and vegballs

wednesday:

being frustrated by the difficulties in getting mr smear's lunch together, not helped by my mother being rude when i told her i was struggling
a truly exciting school q&a, but only relevant for 2021
another day of meetings at work, a vindicating deployment to my team's rescue
good news from my mom about a business we've been discussing
booked my next tattoo appointment!
emergency shopping and a fight

home healing

i'm exhausted and about to crash. also, very grateful. friday was a long day, our team finally established credibility but about halfway through a meeting my phone started ringing and everything went sideways as my wife informed me that she was leaving the hospital. a few days early. everything became a blur, i ended up taking an uber to the hospital in the middle of friday rush hour to deliver juice and a banana, then rushed home to relieve our nanny and take care of mr smear until my mother could bring gd home.

...

we played my brother rabbit until they arrived. my brother rabbit is GORGEOUS. but as a parent, it's a really tough game to play with my son, mostly because he keeps being distracted by clever little mechanics when I JUST WANT TO SOLVE THE DAMNED PUZZLE ALREADY!!!

thank jobs i have a phone to play with while he's doing his thing.

also, i'm a bit miffed because he managed to make some progress while i wasn't paying attention and now i've no idea what i missed... i guess we're going to have to play this again afterwards :P

...

friday night was pretty chilled, my mom helped out a lot and we all tried to go to bed early. unfortunately, between gd's back and my allergies we were both up half the night, but it was as good an excuse as any to get into exapunks, which is excellent.

mr smear and i began yesterday with more of my brother rabbit, we played for ages but eventually got stuck on a difficult puzzle after clearing a level and i needed a break. i did some of my physio exercises, then took him across the road to the gardens to kick a ball around and "practice his taekwondo" (he's basically doing lunges, but it's fun so whatever). we had a pretty good time milling around, but on our way home to get some food he was unpleasant to a toddler who wanted to play with him and dealing with that just sucked the joy out of the excursion.

and then we got home and he did *not* want to eat anything, anyway. i really tried to get into elevator saga, but it's more irritating than challenging and i think i'm over it.

around 4.30 my mom took me and mr smear to the mall, i was just in time to pick up emergency stuff for gd and managed to do the grocery run pretty quickly. our friends met us there - all sick - and came home with us, we all seemed to have had a miscommunication regarding how long they'd be staying and instead of visiting for an hour or so they stayed for dinner. hanging out with the adults is always pleasant, but running after our two kids who constantly switch between playing nicely and fighting and keeping tabs on their kid who's... not very unhygienic... was utterly draining.

the curry club dinner was amazing as always.

i seem to have sorted out the new web service's email blacklisting (one day, if i ever have the bandwidth, i'd love to get involved in the email server projects and try to get them to be less inaccessible to normal people).

getting mr smear to bed: after showering and brushing teeth we were both enjoying the songs off the usual playlist, i picked him up to dance and he almost fell asleep in my arms. he's a bit too big for that, but so much nostalgia and i put him to bed reading the magic pudding and feeling really grateful.

i played exapunks until late,  went to bed, and mostly slept well. i'm thoroughly exhausted this morning, i was a bit resentful when gd decided she needed us to join her outside in the wind before breakfast but then got over it, and now we're off for a playdate across the road.

im-patients

my mom was surprised this morning to find that i'd gotten mr smear and his lunchbox ready for school before she'd arrived. dropping him off was fun (his friend had dressed himself and his outfit choices were highly amusing), and the first hour at work felt productive. i was planning on calling the hospital to find out when visiting hours were, but before i did i received a call from a visiting rabbi who'd decided to make an early round... turns out gd had had an awful night, and one nurse in particular had been downright mean to her (with witnesses, fortunately a really kind male nurse stepped in).

my team quickly stepped up to take over from my on-call duties, and i stayed with gd until i had to return to the office for an interview debrief at which point the rabbi was kind enough to come back and stay with her.

of course, the mean nurse was put in charge of the move from the ICU to gd's ward, and took the opportunity to remove gd's self-administered pain-meds which she was supposed to have for at least the day, and once removed they can't be re-inserted.

i chatted briefly with my manager on my way out, he told me a horrorspital story about how he effectively saved his wife's from her surgeon and nursing staff's negligence

i picked up gd's pillow and returned to the hospital, helped her interface with the nursing staff for a couple of hours and then went back home to pick up mr and the nanny, drop her off at the bus station and bring mr smear to see his mother - for less than a minute, at our own risk because he's too young to be allowed in the ward...

my mom was a trooper, she came to pick up mr smear then turned around to bring cough syrup, agreeing to take mr smear to sleep at her place while i stayed to keep gd company, read to her from the ocean at the end of the lane, assist her, encourage her, chastise her, and spend the last couple of hours refusing to leave until she had some confidence that the night was going to be okay... which the staff did not make easy.

on the way home my uber driver, omar, told me about his daughter. born 810g in the wrong hospital, she needed to be transported to one with the right equipment and picked up a virus that prevented her from being able to use her hands. but she's clever, and she's a compensator, and by holding a pencil between her palm and her cheek she writes more neatly than any of the kids in her class. thank you, omar and mrs omar, for being phenomenal parents.

i'm exhausted, i'm wired, i'm still struggling with my sinuses and throat. oh! spring has arrived... it's quite possible my body's been telling me that for over a week already.

the key is in knowing when to stop

i can't believe i've only just finished my workday, it's past 11pm and i have things to do but i know i need to go to bed. so i will. but before that:

1. gd's big op seems to have been good, but i don't have real details and she was so drugged when i went to see her that i couldn't bear to ask her more than "are you okay?", which is such a pitifully meaningless question...

2. i'm still struggling with the sinuses and the post-nasal drip-induced coughing. i'm *so* over not being over it.

3. i've finally gotten a handle on receiving and forwarding emails using the server i spent the weekend upgrading... and the biggest lesson so far has been to leave smtp to the professionals and pay for someone else to experience the headache.

4. i'm still struggling to get the toy i didn't order back to the toy store that duped me. i'm praying they'll get it tomorrow so i can begin reporting them to whatever authorities will listen (including the authority of internet reviews)

right, it's now half an hour later and i keep being distracted by emails. i have *got* to go to bed.

the night is long and full of mucous

christ, *another* night being inexorably ground down by the snot monster. WHY?!

big

this past week has been intense. i worked from home on wednesday because i was sick, and while my cold seemed to get better by the afternoon it didn't really slow down until today, and i'm really hoping it's over because i've spent most of the past week struggling with my sinuses and throat, and feeling both exhausted and wired simultaneously because of the sudafed.

thursday afternoon i left work with a bee in my bonnet, and after mr smear fell asleep i continued working until 2am,then continued again in the morning. friday was a public holiday, i spent most of it helping my mom get ready for our big family dinner in honour of mr smear's birthday, which was a really nice evening.

i spent a large amount of the weekend putting together a website for my mom's new venture (which is unofficially mine), which forced me to finally - a year or two after i originally decided i needed to - replace apache with nginx on my server. it took a lot of work to get all my services up and running correctly, but i'm extremely satisfied with how everything worked out and it's given me a great sense of achievement.

i've been walking quite a lot with mr smear lately, and on friday i actually took him to the garden with a real soccer ball and the skills he demonstrated were a really great surprise!

a pity the waffle place was closing when we arrived yesterday.

oh! but i published the corrected page 3 on sonnetcomix.com! it feels good to be making some progress.

today was long, involved a lot of frustrating work, and i learned that the biggest issue i struggled with a couple of weeks ago was caused by me mistakenly following the damned instructions :/

another satisfying success this evening with my phone control service, a pleasant bedtime routine, pickle rick, and now an early bedtime again.

snivelling

i don't know what time i got to bed last night, but around 2.30 i was up and struggling to breathe and that's how i remained until our morning alarms went off and i could swallow a sudafed. that helped, certainly, but i still spent the rest of the day with a running nose and a mountain of tissues. it's just started calming down a short while ago, i'm praying that i'll be blessed with some rest tonight and can go in to work tomorrow. i probably shouldn't have gone in today, as it was i shadowed an interview and constantly wiping my nose did *not* feel very professional.

mr smear's birthday went well, the lack of a gift from us didn't seem to bother him, which is gratifying. i wrote a letter to the purveyors of the interim gift that we had planned, they responded saying that i had bought from an "assortment" without specifying. wtf is this "assortment" shit? i go to a website, i see a toy with a picture, i purchase the toy, and they get to decide what to put in the package? when did this become a common practice?!

tool news

i've been a gushing tool fan for about fifteen years now, i've bought all their albums - most of them twice because of all the moving around - and the fact that what is arguably the greatest band of our generation is finally, in mid-2019, available to stream legally makes me feel like a great wrong has been put right. add to that the idea that their new album is on its way, i'm little-kid excited to get my hands on it!

😊🤩🤪🥳🤸‍♂️🖖🏻🤘🏻🤙🏻✊🏻🙏🏻👏🏻👂🏻🧠💥🌋🔊🎼🎵🎶🎧🧫🧪⚗️🧬📡☢️☣️▶️

who's shakin'

me. jesus, these exercises are something else. for me, in my present condition. compounded by my difficulty breathing. but i've done a fair approximation of lunges, some serious stretches, the side planking was oddly easy and i'm now lying in bed waiting for my adrenaline to go down enough for me to sleep.

bum-mer

1. the new page (the redo of page 3) arrived today, with only one fix required: still too much bum showing...

2. it's my son's 4th birthday tomorrow, and we've been jumping through hoops to deliver the bumblebee transformer my wife so brilliantly promised him. on friday we were awash with relief when the miniature one arrived, but i just opened the package now and they sent us a goddamned optimus prime by mistake. f*** f*** f*** f*** f***.

otherwise, it was an interesting day, my nose and throat have been awful and it was strangely slow but for some reason i'm feeling like my credibility's growing with my teammates, especially the drama queen.

the highlight of the day was mr smear's eyes lighting up as we watched amazing taekwondo demonstrations on youtube. *this* i can work with ^_^

oh! and i've finally release an alpha version of my free anonymous q&a app.

itches and scratches

my throat's scratchy, mr smear's cough's a bit better but his lips are horribly cracked, and i've been meaning to go to bed for an hour or two now but i got caught up in finishing a release-worthy version of a piece of software i've been fiddling with for the last while. it needs lots of polish but it's functional and i'm satisfied with its progress!

this morning was great, mr smear and i got up early and we spent the first half of the day playing, listening to good music and building a really cool model-type toy he got, then gd got up and made slime with him. the big outing was going shopping with my mom, otherwise it was most definitely a pyjama day.

i just *know* i'm going to need to take sudafed in the morning :(

they call me drama

big: trying and failing to figure out how we're burning through so much money so quickly, and freaking out because it's money we don't have

small: office culture / management trouble, our team vs the world... also, moving desks to get away from my toxic coworker and missing my reminder for an interview i was supposed to be shadowing

other than that, mr smear's birthday party today went phenomenally well, the transformers cake was incredible and other parents loved my idea of putting puzzle pieces in the "pass the parcel" parcel. having said that, it cost us a lot, as much in stress as in money. it did spawn an important conversation with gd at 1am this morning that i hope was impactful.

i needed to rest when we got home - mr smear passed out on the way - and was woken up to unwrap presents. mr smear's haul was AMAZING, i don't think he has a real grasp of how grateful he should be.

humpday

good lord, three days down and my worldview is warped. backwards:

today:

good progress on a personal app.

dinner with our brazilian friends for the last time before they leave the country, carrying mr smear to bed after a late but enjoyable evening in the primi play area.

freaking out about taxes.

finally completing a project i've been juggling for three weeks! half a vegan cake slice to celebrate.

potential teammate's visit.

my drama teammate has made it abundantly clear that we are not going to be friends.

needing an hour to recalibrate after my physio hurt me.

yesterday:

finally getting my new visa card, lots of service updates.

new rule: never promise a kid something you can't deliver. my wife broke that promise and the struggle to acquire a bumblebee transformer for my son's birthday is real.

a weird day full of distractions.

a positive follow-up with my surgeon and finally taking off the brace.

another interesting therapy session.

monday:

money management, and discovering (one step too late) that we can finally use crypto currency for international transfers! which is a big deal because i've been forced to declare credit repayments as "foreign investments", and that's grossly unfair...

not a clue what happened, too far in the past.