interview with a zombie

 today was tough. complicated. all over the place.

[trigger warning on bathroom stuff?] i didn't get nearly enough sleep, but not just because i stayed up late for shadowrun returns, but because i spent the next hour or so feeling like i urgently needed the toilet with nothing moving. that went on pretty much all night until i left for the office in the morning.

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gd wasn't feeling better after all, and she's still not feeling better. the occasional coughing fit is still intense and scary and she's feeling properly sick again. i think i might be sick too. and might have been, too. i don't know. it's hard to say when i could just be handling stress and a lack of sleep.

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i took mr smear to school, we'd had a decent morning and he got there in pretty good spirits. we had a parental guidance session with his therapist over zoom, which felt pretty good right until it was over, at which point i received an sms from mr smear's teacher informing us that he'd consistently refused to cooperate with anyone all morning :/

so that fucked us up.

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afterwards, i received a call from the cannabis licensing people, to inform me again that they weren't happy with the recommendation. i told the woman i was speaking to that the problem isn't with our application, but with their process, and if it's not clear enough to her as a human being that our request is valid then she needs to send me a precise template for the doctor that he can fill it in to spec.

she consulted with someone else, and then agreed to authorize the request anyway.

sheesh.

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i barely had time to sync with my boss and manager before i had to leave to help get mr smear to his therapy session. i didn't mean to walk all the way home, but i was very grateful to my mom for lending an ear to me venting furiously on the way there.

my avo/toast/kala namak/tabasco lunch was so good that it wasn't completely ruined by the difficult conversation i had with mr smear while chewing on it, trying to understand where he's coming from and make him understand that he's undermining my efforts to help him out of his awful situation.

as i was crouching behind the kitchen wall when the two of them entered our apartment, he didn't realize i was home. so i heard him tell gd that seeing as he's nine, he'd really like to take the bus to his therapist by himself. it was immediately obvious to me that this was an attempt to avoid having to discuss the morning's shenanigans with me along the way, which i may have found a little funnier than i should have.

but i did offer to let him lead the way. what followed was a pleasant, but awkward journey, and although he needs a little coaching he's kinda doing okay.

i returned to the cinemateque to work, and actually got something done. then i picked up mr smear and let him lead the way home.

step 1. get lost

step 2. guess and walk the wrong way

step 3. listen to dad and open up a navigation app on your phone

step 4. look only at the map, not at your surroundings, even if following the map leads you to almost walk into a giant pillar.

step 5. (surprisingly) listen to dad when he suggests that the light rail will be a faster way home than waiting for a bus across the street

step 6. successfully navigate home using the app even though you're literally across the road from the apartment you've been living in for 2.5 years already. also, make sure to walk very, very slowly whenever dad stops bugging you to move it because he's got to get back to his office.

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as soon as he was on the same block as our apartment i spun around and caught the first bus back to the office. i was supposed to have called the woman from the municipality half an hour earlier, and i had half an hour to get to the office before the "happy hour" that they'd rescheduled so that i could make it.

i hopped on a bus with a broken back door. at the next stop, the driver stopped the bus, turned off the engine and walked outside to call for help.

a stop with no mobile reception.

it took three calls to finally be able to speak to her, but once i got started telling her what mr smear has been going through she was invested, and although she doesn't have the authority to intervene directly she really made me feel heard, and gave me helpful advice for dealing with the school team in our meeting on wednesday. and now she's in, so she wants updates :P

our happy hour was scheduled for 4pm. after pacing around the base of our building for the duration of the call, it was around 4.40pm when i finally sent up my apologies and raced upstairs for the tail end of it :P

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the vegan offering was good this time, and i was strong - i left some for my family and brought it home with me. they enjoyed it too :)

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i got a tiny little bit of work done, then realized that it was so late that i needed to move quickly to get back home in time for my interview with a VP R&D.

i was wired. i was overwhelmed and feeling a bit dizzy from the entire day. and i'd had zero time to prepare. sooo... it didn't go great, although apparently it was a total loss either. i guess we'll see, but i definitely can't show up without prep work again.

the rest of the evening went pretty well, in spite of gd having a coughing fit at the table during which she slammed something down hard and that made me jump and hit the handle of a very sharp knife that went flying in mr smear's general direction (O_o)

it's been an insane day. the rest of the week's looking pretty crazy already. here goes nothing...