better

yesterday: i had a good meeting with a friend in the silo district yesterday, and gd and i began the process of tidying and rearranging our apartment in order to be able to work from home. i took mr smear to the pool for swimming lessons twice, the second much better than the first, during which i realized that he's struggling to use his arms properly because he's so used to the water wings.

today: i got up really early, and actually stretched my back for the first time in a long time. which turned out to be a mistake, because i subsequently put my back out installing a wall panel heater. 

oh, and we unfriended our "friends" who left for australia without giving our kids a chance to say goodbye, after a lot of their shady behaviour compounded into massive disappointment. 

we did a very big grocery run, after which my mom and i took a bunch of things to her storeroom, she then returned with me to help us transform mr smear's bedroom into a proper little boy's room (he's super excited) and light the chanukah candles, eat dinner, play jenga with mr smear, and then eventually talk shop before going home.

i've just watched the first episode of the witcher (i mostly enjoyed it), i've played a fair amount of sudoku and unrollball and unblock me (mr smear's good at it!) , and i'm finally going to get back into leviathan wakes now before getting some rest. it's been a tough few days emotionally, figuring out my next steps, and cleaning my room (metaphorically) seems to be helping. 

merry christmas! 

celebrating gratitude

it's hard to feel relief over the very real terror of having your son almost drown without you even noticing. the details are irrelevant, but a bunch of outlying circumstances led to a moment that shouldn't have happened, *couldn't* have happened, and did. if it wasn't for our crazy neighbour who just happened to be in the pool at the time... we might have lost him.

our lives have not been easy, but fairly often i encounter moments that make me understand that i'm living on a timeline that is infinitely better than an immeasurable number of its dark alternatives. it's tough being grateful when caught in a maelstrom, but here we are. 

all we can ever do is continue trying to do better, and make things better.

...

the morning was nice, pancakes and pirates of the caribbean, a really nice and uneventful hour or so at the pool, making some progress with my online store, a good start to a playdate that then transformed into the aforementioned nightmare moment followed by a very stressful repeat of what's become this past week's standard fare of crying and screaming, followed by a long chat with our neighbour when we went over to thank him.

after weeks of waiting mr smear finally got to light the chanukah candles, then passed out on our way to dinner at balducci's and only woke up when we left, eventually deciding he was hungry only after brushing his teeth. and then... oblivion for everyone.

until around half an hour ago when gd and i woke up panicking about what happened. 

the long tail

thursday:

i began my day with a couple of hours of bureaucracy, stressing about money while paying our nanny a large christmas bonus which took us down to almost nothing. interesting timing, as we had to send her home with chicken pox. we're praying she didn't give it to us, primarily because gd's still compromised by her surgeries and she's not sure if she's ever had it :(

i had a positive introductory call with a consultant operation, spent an hour playing rummy with gd and mr smear and then another hour prepping for an interview, which i realized too late was in a language i haven't touched in more than a year. i hadn't prepped sufficiently for the personal story section of the interview, and the coding portion wasn't great, so i don't feel particularly confident about that one...

thursday night was an improvement over wednesday - mr smear appears to have learned the lesson, for the moment at least.

yesterday:

the money came in! huge relief. i met up with a now-ex-co-worker for breakfast, it was great feeling the walls come down and having a refreshingly honest conversation (even if we were very careful not to make explicitly disparaging remarks about anyone). i get the sense that i have had a positive impact, at least on my fellow seniors, and it did me good to get some resolve.

i met up with gd and mr smear for a quick shopping run, and we all spent the afternoon together walking around the company gardens and then hunting (successfully) for reassurance beads for mr smear in case we have a repeat of wednesday morning. mr smear behaved abominably for a chunk of the experience, then beautifully. he's been all over the place lately and we're really not sure what the deal is, but it's possible he's feeding off our anxieties...

the evening service at the temple was generally great. after a mixed bag of hide-and-seek (mr smear hid REALLY well, but then so did i and i had to go running when he gave up and began yelling for me at the top of his lungs), he played nicely while i actually got to sit and enjoy the service. my mom picked us up for dinner, it was very pleasant and ended in a late bedtime for mr smear and an early one for everyone else.

today:

i'd managed to leave mr smear's epipen and asthma medication at the temple last night, so we didn't have much choice in going again this morning. once again, i actually got to participate in the service, and afterwards it took forever to leave as i got caught up in a not-uninteresting conversation with someone who doesn't really pick up on signals such as "i'm sorry, i have to go". eventually we made it home, i played some games with mr smear before lying down with leviathan wakes for a bit before having a very heavy conversation with gd before going out for a walk, again with mr smear giving us the occasional bit of trouble.

when your kid-who's-old-enough-to-know-better is screaming like a banshee in a public place, it's hard to be kind. i've learned some pretty hard negotiating tactics, like "would you like me to put you in this convenient hole and leave you here?", i hope he remembers some of the funny bits one day when he's describing his childhood to a shrink.

the evening was pleasant, he's very excited for hanukkah tomorrow, and now that everyone else has gone to bed i have to decide whether to be functional or to go to sleep myself. i've been burned out and depressed for so long i don't know what "normal" feels like, and i'm struggling to figure out whether i need to be sleeping so much or if that's part the problem.

...

anyway, i was pleased and saddened simultaneously this afternoon when mr smear told me we had to stop watching an asterix movie because they were eating boar.

the wait

well, i did get to read a lot today.

mr smear made such a scene when we left the house this morning (he didn't want us to leave him behind), the nanny accidentally locked us out and i left the obligatory black pen behind. we arrived just in time to buy some new ones (which we'd later discover we didn't need), stood in a long queue for security, then another long queue for a ticket. then they seated us on one side of the floor for a while, time passed, and then they moved us to the other side.

the ticket numbers. were. random. for the longest time (two hours) we sat in their uncomfortable metal seats, trying to amuse ourselves (reading, sharing memes, chatting with other people and their kids), and each time a ticket number was announced we had to pay attention because there was zero predictability. i doubt the psychological toll on hundreds of people per day is taken with malicious intent, i'm sure it's just wild negligence.

until we handed over our documents, i had no way of knowing if i'd been given the right information and i was really nervous that we were missing documentation that could take weeks to procure. fortunately, everything was in order and the one item that was missing i could write by hand (with their pen!). then we sat down for another hour (more of the same) until we were called to hand the approved documents to someone else.

when you've paid one and a half thousand rand for an application, wouldn't you expect the R20 sms update package to be included?

just saying.

another half an hour's wait for the fingerprinting, and we were finally out of there!

to celebrate, we went to balducci's for an amazing meal. then we went grocery shopping. then we came home.

gd ran a salt bath, once she was done mr smear and i jumped in (we tried to convince him it was too hot, but he insisted and he was fine). tool songs, rubber duckies and a hot soak: just what the doctor ordered.

i went straight from the bath to a haircut (backwards, much?), the assistant's head massage was great until she stuck her fingers in my ears (???), and i picked up a couple of forgotten items on my way home.

over the course of the day a number of bureaucratic items accumulated: i have quite a few documents to submit to my former employer, and the CRA sent us an ambiguously-worded message so we had to call to clarify. *sigh*

bedtime wasn't very smooth - mr smear wasn't listening or taking my threats seriously so i ended up putting him to bed without a story. he obviously wasn't happy with the situation, but it was a fascinating experience talking him down and witnessing him play out the exact scene we were in with a couple of his stuffed animals (one got punished, but apparently redeemed himself later). the finale was mr smear explaining to me that if he behaves well and tomorrow night has a story-time, i can either read him a story or tell him one, but i can't do both. and he insisted that i choose - he wouldn't let me get away with "whichever you prefer" :P

i've got a busy, busy day tomorrow. hopefully a relatively early night will help.

ups, downs and palpitations

the last few days have been interesting. sunday's birthday party was a mixed bag of the frustrations of sevens' traffic and bad directions, versus mr smear having a grand old time at acrobranch and making me super proud. also, me being under-dressed for the freezing wind. monday was a beach day. yesterday was a shopping mission / walk through town and a fun encounter with an israeli couple.

over the course of the past few days i've put in a fair amount of hours creating an online store for my books, and i've read quite a bit and played lots of games.

yesterday our projector died, so that's a bummer that needs to be dealt with. fortunately, mr smear's pretty good with keeping himself occupied and he's really excited by a bunch of books my aunt offloaded on us :)

my anxiety's been mostly off, although i have been surpisingly impatient and agitated. to be fair, mr smear has been mixing up his behaviour and he's balancing his "awesome" with a fair amount of "what-is-WRONG-with-you?!".

but this morning i woke up fully loaded, worrying about gd's visa appointment. that's in half an hour. i'm praying we have everything we need. wheee!

halfway through the weekend

hmm. i wonder what just exploded / collapsed outside.

yesterday was a strange day filled with lots of positive farewell conversations, a delicious and fun lunch (with occasionally amusing interjections by toxic crusader as she tried to be relevant and failed), and sadly being escorted out early by my manager and having to skip the game hacking session.

most gratifying moment of the day? removing myself from on-call rosters.

i met up with gd, mr smear and the nanny at the grocery store, learned that birkenstocks are way too expensive for my tastes (the ugliness i could handle ironically), and the struggle to uber is real (we now use a combination of uber and bolt). we swam in the afternoon for a little bit, and skipped going to the temple because i was just too tired. my mom came over for dinner, and everyone went to bed relatively early.

today was mostly fun, although at some point i was too tired and became cranky. we went to the waterfront (sevens + summer = more mall people being more mall people than usual), i found a decent-ish pair of crocs, mr smear ate most of the falafel wrap, we played until kids with ice-creams got on the slides, listened to amazing music, shared unframed's vegan turmeric latte ice-cream, visited the aquarium (mr smear hugged a shark mascot), had an impromptu playdate with a friend of his, and finally returned home so i could read leviathan wakes and nap.

i woke up to do a bit of personal work (well, i guess any work i do is personal until further notice), watch a bit of the nightmare before christmas, put mr smear to bed, discover that gd really doesn't like johnny mnemonic, and now it's either bedtime or fiddle-a-bit-more time.

the last week

today: mostly spent trying to leave something positive behind. mostly succeeding. at 5pm hearing that someone had discovered a bug in our project that was supposed to go out on tuesday, at 7pm leaving the building having fixed the bug. coming home to a big dinner and the croods.

wednesday: announcing my resignation to the team, and witnessing just how quickly news travels through the organization. getting a real apology from my strongest teammate (the one i'm convinced is on the spectrum), and toxic avenger arranging a farewell lunch which i presume is to make it look like everything's okay. i'm wondering if she's smart enough to avoid talking to me at the lunch tomorrow.

a really important meeting with the other senior engineers, getting to see them get the ball rolling to prevent other new seniors from going through what i did.

coming home and spending a few hours sorting out my mother's computer, eventually discovering that the reason she hasn't been able to log in is because her keyboard is broken and it's impossible to enter her password correctly...

working until midnight to write up feedback on my manager. that was a really, really tough task. i tried to be fair, but it's pretty darned scathing.

tuesday: the awkwardness of handing over things while waiting to make an announcement with my line manager. speaking of which, i still haven't spoken to my direct manager about any of this. i might not. i don't know.

spending some time reworking an old project for sailor and being fairly satisfied with it.

monday: the newly renovated offices are fantastic. high pressure to complete the project, three of us struggling with a mystery and me enjoying the gratifying sensation of uncovering the bug. pushing the button on my resignation, and promptly learning that i probably shouldn't have cancelled their visa assistance, but whatever.

---this has been a long week with very little electricity, we even got up to stage 6 load-shedding. businesses are losing insane quantities of money and the fat-cats who've stolen so much from everybody are not going to jail.

i'm really tired. i think it's because i'm relatively relaxed for the first time in a long, long time. i've learned a lot over the course of the past ten months. a LOT. but i'm really happy to be out of there, and i'm looking forward to some summer holidays and whatever 2020 may bring ^_^

debunking the game changers

the game changers is an amazing documentary. joe rogan's been bothering me recently because his biases have been showing through, and inviting kresser onto his show alone was a really bad move. but his follow-up, with both kresser and wilks?

it's a train wreck, but a profound one. while wilks gives a master class in scientific literacy and critical thinking, joe demonstrates the reasonableness he's made himself famous for and kresser unwittingly turns the episode into a wealth of evidence to back up the documentary's claims in a format that's almost twice as long.

i can't believe i'm still watching, but i can't stop. this episode should be showed in high schools the world over.

also, wilks' patience is legendary.

the upside down

in my last post, i mentioned my mother picking up a nuance in the offer that made the story a lot less severe. then i went to work and received an email informing me that that phrasing had been a mistake. *whoosh* went my anxiety. the last few days have been full of panic attacks lasting hours, almost no sleep, a lot of soul-searching, struggling to make sense of the past six months, the past ten months, the past ten years. many unknowns, many scary things.

i have until monday to make my decision. yesterday morning, after a helpful talk with an attorney who confirmed my understanding that not filing formal complaints about being harassed by toxic avenger had made this an unwinnable fight, i went to work for deadline day and was so stressed that i was completely dysfunctional. that was when i received an email from my employer's partner company who was supposed to be helping us with gd's visa, finally asking when to schedule our appointment after a week of dragging their heels.

i had to make a call.

i walked home, a knot in my belly and my heart in my throat, to pull out whatever documentation i could find from the last renewal. in a daze, i went to the website, filled out the online application, and paid. an hour later, when we had an appointment scheduled, i let the partner company know that i was done with my employer.

a great weight lifted off my shoulders and out of my gut. when i got back to the office, i received my first sign that i'd made the right call - deadline day, down to the wire, and my laptop almost died. the technician who did me a favour by looking at it outside of office hours was freaking out because it was so messed up, he eventually managed to rescue it but for most of the time he was convinced we'd need to wipe it, and it could take another day to get it set up enough to complete the work. and then the other senior dev on the project had to call it a day, and he wasn't finished either - so we were officially late.

and i didn't have to care anymore. my whole world was better. so i have some work that needs doing after shabbat, and i have some reports to write about my manager and an harassment complaint to file against toxic avenger, and then monday will be primarily about saying goodbye to my coworkers and getting the hell out of dodge.

i effectively went straight to the temple from work, meeting my mom and gd and mr smear outside our building and ubering there. i'd had a banana for breakfast, and plenty of tea during the day, but otherwise i was on a perfectly empty stomache for a welcome glass of whiskey. i was able to really enjoy the service, received some much-needed support, and i barely saw mr smear because he was busy playing with some other kids.

my mom joined us for a nice pot-luck dinner, and after putting mr smear to bed the week's draining finally took its toll and i went to bed early.

for an actual night's sleep.

i'm still feeling pangs of anxiety here and there, but life's better now. i actually just cried a little, that relieved cry when you realize that the worst is over, that the coming challenges are going to be better than the alternatives.

i cannot express how grateful i am for my family. i am a really, really lucky man.

anxiety for tough choices

it was difficult to sleep last night. i've been reading james s. a. corey's leviathan wakes for the past week or so, and when "being present" didn't help and i was too tired and agitated to walk around, reading seemed to help a little. i woke up early and went through my financial statements - it turns out we've lowered the costs that used to be problematic, but are still living ever-so-slightly above our means - and i started working on editing this week's podcast episode.

then i paid my therapist a visit, who talked me through a lot of the shit i've been dealing with and concluded that it's probably best if i just walk away.

would that i could.

so i got in to work, bumped into my line manager and realigned a bit, then spent the day (when i wasn't introducing the new guy i convinced to join us a while back to how we operate) focused on churning out changes. i eventually left the office feeling pretty good about the day's work, even if some of it was spent grinding my teeth every time i heard toxic avenger fake-laugh.

ugh. the last time i worked with someone this dedicated to destroying others was with megaman.

i walked home through the soft beginning of the storm that's now raging outside, played uno with mr smear, ate dinner and prepped him for bed, and then discussed the "offer" with my mom, who picked up an important phrasing that makes this whole story a lot less dire than i thought. so i'm now going to settle in and try to impress my taskmasters, while simultaneously hunting somewhere new to go to regardless of the outcome - i really want to work in a place that doesn't demand sacrificing my family just to scrape by, and i'm praying that such an opportunity exists.

either way, i'm feeling considerably more relaxed now. now to prepare a podcast episode for publishing and go read a bit.

monday's child is full of woe

yesterday was a pretty good sunday. we had friends and my mom around for pancakes, i got my next podcast episode scripted, and some surprising tantrums were resolved very well*

* and humorously, too. mr smear punched me, and when i slapped his punching hand he yelled "no! if i punch you then you have to punch me back!". he eventually accepted my explanation that i don't really want to hurt him, and even less so kill or disabled him... once he'd calmed down, he told me he had to open the door "just to let some air in so we could talk"

i tried to go to bed at a reasonable hour last night, but i slept badly and then woke up at 3 or 4am to do battle with his nightmares. this took a lot longer than expected and i was a wreck by the time the sun rose, even though gd had eventually taken over. he was in even worse shape, didn't go to school and ended up sleeping a fever off for most of the day.

me, on the other hand? i thought my day was going pretty well until i walked in to my meeting with my manager and an HR representative was waiting for me. i'm still in shock, thoroughly disappointed and frustrated, after discovering that toxic avenger has been pulling all the strings and the fact that i delivered what was required of me by my deadlines was disregarded and i'm fairly confident i was not judged by a jury of my peers. i now have a big decision to make: do i stay, or do i go? the "program" they've set up for me seems designed to see me out the door, and while i was already starting to look around for somewhere better anyway this just adds insult to about six months' worth of injury.

one thing's for certain, though, and i say this in spite of my current emotional state: i am very, very grateful for my family, and for the many wonderful things in my life. it would be nice if the rest of being an adult could all be positive too, but i guess everything has a trade-off and in general... my trade-offs are a damn sight better than most people's.

maybe i'll stay and play their game. maybe i won't.

happy birthday to me!

this birthday, all i ask is that if you haven't already, please click on this link and see what i've been up to!

yesterday was fun, i managed to deliver what i'd been working on the previous days, had a pretty good time with gd and mr smear at the bring-your-kids-to-work-day event (i'm sure he now thinks that "daddy has to go to work" means "daddy has to go play with balloons and coloured sand and get face-painting and watch magic shows"), and then enjoyed our first game-dev session.

i took mr smear to the temple yesterday evening, which was nice, my mom picked us up, brought us home and stayed for kiddush, we generally had a nice evening and then all went to bed early.

today was my birthday, but it was also gd's hypnotherapy exam so i did not get to sleep in. i watched a cute show with mr smear (gauko), played adventure time guess who? (he's playing well!), took a pleasant walk around town, spent some time trying to set up games on my windows machine then went to celebrate our accomplishments (gd aced the exam!) at plant, ate too much, came home with the intention of vegging out.

instead i watched most of bridge to terebithia and then got sucked in to playing draw a stickman epic for a while, and then took care of all the bedtime stuff before eventually deciding to spend some time setting up the next podcast episode and being distracted by recording a poem that after many attempts was ultimately disappointing (the recording, i'm happy with the poem).

and now it's late and i definitely need to crash.

maybe.

maybe i'll just read in bed until i pass out.