cut

yesterday:

well, mr smear wasn't completely done with his shenanigans... he'd promised to come ride with me in the late afternoon, and when the time came he decided he hadn't. it took a lot of emotionally-draining work to get him out the door and onto his bike, and that was followed by an emotionally-draining ride to the park during which i don't recall if he took even a moment to stop whining about how much he wanted to go home.

it was in the park itself that we just about had an incident, but i managed to get him to confess that he just doesn't like going outside in general. i explained to him that it's important to be outside and surrounded by nature both for physical health, and mental health, and that the bicycle he detests so much (because it's neither easy nor perfect) is actually his ticket to freedom and independence and he needs to regard it as such.

the next ten to fifteen minutes of riding around and then home were pleasant enough that i was happy to treat him to an ice-cream on the way home.

sailor arrived just after we began eating, and he hung around for a while. mr smear enjoyed him being over as much as we did, and they had a "drawing competition" a la strip search, which was fun.

i was so tired at one point that i had to lie down, and aside from getting up to say goodbye i was stuck on the couch until the middle of the night, and my lower back was sore. then i moved to the bed and suffered there for a while, until i stretched a bit and managed to calm it down enough to get some sleep.

today:

i wanted to have a slow day, but i had to pick up gd's wellies from the post office and soon after getting home i left again for a haircut. i was tired. the hairdresser was awkwardly quiet. for most of the haircut, i was either closing my eyes and trying to not lose consciousness, or watching him suspiciously because his style is kind of like tetris, or chess, where the whole haircut doesn't make sense at all until it all comes together at the end.

gd and i are pretty satisfied with the cut, surprisingly, so even though the experience was unnervingly uncomfortable and the haircut was way more expensive than standard, i might well go back again.

it's been a chilled afternoon so far, and in a couple of minutes i'm taking mr smear to his mma class.