on/off call, relationship clarity

sunday night was okay, though if i recall correctly i didn't sleep too well.

then monday hit.

i spent half my day trying to fix somebody else's problem (apt repositories weren't reachable), and ended up setting up a workaround. at least that was a positive. there were a few negatives.

i left work a little early, picked up a birthday card for gd, picked up the shopping, got caught in a heavy downpour on the way home.

i came up with a plan for writing in the card without gd knowing about it - after she said good night and it was my reading time, mr smear and i took turns reading and filling out the card. this, it turns out, was working absolutely perfectly! until gd decided to walk into his bedroom to put some laundry away. she walked in without warning, i continued reading while mr smear scrambled to hide what he was doing. gd left the room, but left the door open behind her, and i did what i could to keep on going (and not look suspicious) while signaling to mr smear to keep still.

she came in again for another couple of items. on her way out she stopped to say good night again, and that was when she registered that something was going on... but up until that point, it was a good plan!

exhausted, i went to bed early.

at 12.05am, my phone rang. i groggily acknowledged the page and got up. then it rang again. and again. and again and again and again, for over ten straight minutes. it's very hard to look into a problem when there're more than sixty variations of it and it's not clear whether any of them are for entirely different issues.

i spent an hour following the runbook and the runbook's references, none of which were at all helpful. so i started guessing. fortunately, i eventually found something that looked suspicious and then noticed something else suspicious, what looked like one of my coworkers deploying code at 11pm without so much as a "hey, i'm deploying code in the middle of night" to the idiot on duty.

i felt trolled.

and then the traditional attempts to get hold of my boss, because as usual he wasn't answering his phone in the middle of the night, but fortunately i managed to reach the guilty party and sat with him while he reverted his changes and we verified - about two hours after i'd been woken up - that it was those changes and that everything was okay again.

i went to bed feeling a bit disgruntled.

tuesday morning started... not well. it was gd's birthday! so that was great. but i woke up with a really sore neck. and i had to walk mr smear to school in the rain. and i was a mite bothered by the fact that i got another bunch of mysterious paging calls just as we walked out the front door.

was that yesterday? i feels like a long yesterday. yesterday was loooooooong. i worked from home, caught up in a bunch of confusing and uninteresting shit, my only win fixing something that the previous day's workaround had missed.

gd and i went to pick up mr smear from school, and learned that he'd been a real handful (difficult and rude) for his after-school carer. the walk home was unpleasant for all of us, but somehow by the time we got home he'd changed his tune and things eased up a bit.

fortunately i got some respite, some clemency, and went off-call for gd's birthday evening. we celebrated by having dinner, myself managing to ruin dessert due to a misunderstanding and some leftover raw feelings from sunday, but otherwise we all enjoyed a pleasant evening.

gd and i started watching kick-ass after mr smear went to bed. we just finished it a little earlier, and while i always remembered loving it, i'd forgotten that even today it's absolutely one of my favourite movies of all time!

today was better. i think? my mind was all over the place, as it was yesterday, i'm not sure if i really achieved anything work-wise except really dig deep into why i'm not thrilled with my current occupation.

the big deal of today, really, was managing to get everything together just in time for gd's first lidocaine-magnesium treatment. and an appointment for her with the allergist - that was quite an experience, with the good-luck-trying-to-fire-me receptionist behind a heavy sea of humanity - all before i started my work day in a food court with a nice cup of coffee.

after accompanying gd home i realized i had to stay, as the network technician was coming to visit us. did i forget to mention that the past few days we've been having really horrible experiences with our internet? the wifi's been dropping regularly, usually while on important calls. anyway, he replaced a cable and ordered an outside technician because there's definitely a problem with our building's connection, and just before he arrived i figured out that i shouldn't have let my very expensive network application optimize its channels because the best ones aren't compatible with macbooks (old or new) or playstation 4s :/

mr smear went to a classmate's home after school, and gd and i went to pick him. he'd had a great time, and after a quick grocery run we all came home to play evil genius 2: world domination and enjoy a nice dinner followed by a pretty good shower/bedtime ritual.

...

it's been a frustrating few days. i'm really tired, but in spite of how rough the past couple of days have been i feel hopeful.

mr smear and i are still ironing out the kinks in our new strategy. for the most part, things seem to be going well or getting better.

i realized something important, yesterday, on our miserable walk home. i had a revelation about my relationship with my own father. aside from the usual bullying and name-calling that formed the basis of our relationship, there's something he would always describe me as that used to get under my skin: "rude and obnoxious". i never believed i was being either.

yesterday, after mr smear's behaviour when we picked him up, i had those words front-and-center in my mind, and in those moments i could imagine just giving up on my son, giving up on trying to have a good relationship with him and giving up trying to guide him into becoming a decent human being.

just imagining that was a horrible feeling, but it made me realize something very interesting; i think that that must be what happened to me and my father. i was always told it was because i would say "no" to him from an early age, but i suddenly realize that that "no" is hereditary, whether genetic or behaviourally, and that i've passed that "no" on solidly to my son. that "no" is the family curse, and it's not just a "no" - it's a perpetual battle of wills that should never have been in the first place.

i don't know if my father ever really cared about me. maybe he did, once. i know he was severely damaged by his upbringing, that he was a violent and aggressive and venomous person. i know that i inherited a lot of that. but as good as my intentions may always have been, as much as i've tried to raise him with love and build him up, i'm raising a kid who's struggling with the very same anger issues that i did, and with whom i'm struggling in a very similar way to how my father must have with me.

i'm beginning to believe that things really started going badly between me and my father when i was about mr smear's age not because that was when i started standing up to him, but because that was when he finally gave up on our relationship because he just didn't know how to handle me consistently defying him. yelling at me didn't make me want to cooperate with him, physical violence didn't make me want to cooperate with him, and he just didn't have any other tools in his toolbox.

that's kind of how i feel sometimes. "no" was one of mr smear's first words, and it's always been difficult for me to get him to cooperate. it got more difficult the more i tried, and i kept on trying because i care and because i don't know any other way. for the last couple of years - too late to prevent real damage, sadly - i've been doing everything in my power to keep a cool head, to reason and discuss things with my son, and to use non-violent sticks and carrots to convince him to cooperate; but it's hard to convince someone that they don't need to fight when fight-mode has become a baseline for them. it took years for me to be able to see my own angry face reflected in my boy's, in order to even realize that i've been in fight mode the whole time that i'd felt like i was in care mode.

mr smear's a good kid, when he's not being stubborn or angry, and most of the time he's pretty chill. most of the time he's a loving, kind human being, and he doesn't like fighting. this week may have started out horribly, but we've had some big conversations and i'm extremely grateful that right now, after everything that's transpired, we're still able to talk to each other, and listen to each other, even when we don't particularly like what we're hearing.

i don't want to fight any more. i don't believe he does, either. this week we all learned a few new words, a few new ideas. now all we have to do is remember them and put them into practice.