ready for the new year

 well, this weekend has been a surprisingly good one. a great one, in fact. i'm pretty stoked about it. the only downer this weekend is that gd's been struggling with neck pain since yesterday, but she seems to be doing better today and hopefully she'll be back to relative normal by tomorrow. as for my sinuses, they're still not 100% but seem much better than yesterday, so that's good.

yesterday was a miserable-weather indoors kind of day, perfect for discovering a fantastic humble bundle for kids, one with two titles of particular interest. so we installed pajama sam: no need to hide when it's dark outside and as soon as the morning service was over i jumped in with mr smear who absolutely loves it. i mean - to be fair - i love it too. it's a great game.

i was exhausted, and needed to rest quite a bit, but in the late-ish afternoon got sent on a errand and took mr smear with me. we walked to the shopping centre, and after a successful mission sat down to eat carob rice cakes and enjoy some drinks. my mom rocked up, gave us a ride home, and after dropping mr smear off upstairs i went through to sea point to join sailor - well, to record him, not actually join him - for his fifteen minutes in the rock pool. aside from the fact that it was a beautiful sunset and it felt really nice to be there in spite of it being a bit chilly, we also had a really interesting conversation.

i was exhausted after putting mr smear to bed, i crashed and ended up having a pretty decent night's sleep for the first time in many days - not being on prednisone probably had a lot to do with that.

today started off on a good foot. mr smear returned to playing pajama sam and i made great progress on my project. in the early afternoon i took him to the museum but there were too many people in line with too little distance between them, so we headed off to the aquarium instead. after an enjoyable visit - as mr smear gets older his experience of it changes dramatically - we then entered the super park for the first time since it initially shut down for covid. it was awesome. i cannot described how much i enjoyed seeing mr smear enjoying himself, challenging himself physically and learning new things (i was a bit nervous watching him figure out the zip line by himself for the first time, but after his first success his confidence and mine shot right up).

the car ride home wasn't great, as a demonstration of why sharing and kindness pay off (seaweed vs jelly tots, i don't feel like explaining) turned into a teaching moment or two. otherwise, the rest of the afternoon and evening were great, in addition to taking a bath i finished off the current phase of my project's website development (so i'm now back to working on the mobile app) while mr smear played little big planet 3 and then sailor and i continued yesterday's chat which we developed into an idea that we're both very excited about.

my mom is (via video chat) continuing to read harry potter to mr smear at bedtime, which is fun, and after saying goodnight i joined gd for the second half of the suicide squad. i'm usually not a big fan of the dc universe, but the reboot is fantastic - the story and action are excellent, the characters are wonderful and there's a great balance between cool and silly. we thoroughly enjoyed it!