i got to enjoy it for half a day

 yesterday morning started really well, i Got Things Done, i Figured Things Out, and i Made Plans. then i went to work, spending a good chunk of my first couple of hours catching up or being distracted by my teammate's dog who's clearly decided we're each other's support animals.

we have three people in the office leaving soon, two of them having "kind of" been let go and the fact that it's only them working from the whole crew feels off somehow. and one of them's feeling slighted because an aspect of her job was covering for someone who hasn't been hired yet and they're still trying to hire that hypothetical person.

anyway, office drama aside: i was (noticeably) in good spirits, taking my time to dive deep on solving an unexpectedly difficult problem, when i was called in to a meeting with my boss (previously my team lead, that's a bit weird too). we were in the middle of refining what it is i'm supposed to be doing when gd called. i ignored the call, but then looked again a couple of minutes later and that was pretty much the end of the meeting: something had happened to mr smear's head and nobody could tell if he needed a doctor or a hospital.

i tried to finish the meeting but obviously that didn't work out, so i packed up and left and met gd and mr smear at the hospital. along the way i tried to find out what protocol we needed to observe from the medical insurance's point of view, but it was so difficult that i gave up after my third phone call.

with a little help we found the kid's emergency unit, then went through all the motions. the triage nurse was a bit horrible, but everyone else was great. eventually a doctor came to see him and decided he didn't need stitches, she checked him for signs of concussion/nerve damage and declared him fit and fine. but we didn't know if or when he'd ever had a tetanus shot, and for some reason it took them a long time to deliberate and eventually decide to administer one.

mr smear was not into it, but with the support of the nurse (after a quick search, my description of lockjaw wasn't particularly precise) he agreed that the vaccine + death by old age was preferable to the potential alternative and he calmed down. he barely felt the injection, which is a far sight better than *my* first tetanus shot - it was my first shot that i remember and i tensed, and the needle bent in my arm...

by the time we were finally able to leave i was exhausted. i'm still feeling exhausted, i think we all experienced a giant adrenaline dump. we did a quick emergency shopping and then walked home, and the evening was all about getting through the evening and getting into bed.

aside from a battle between gd and a rogue mosquito which i participated in for a while, that was the end of my first day back from staycation.

today's plan: to battle with the medical insurance and hopefully get yesterday's job done.