big days

i went back to bed soon after posting, slept for a few hours, then got up and moved to the couch where mr smear assailed me with more calvin & hobbes, which i enjoyed, but only about the half of the time that i was conscious for it.

mr smear and i had a great morning, he played limbo until he was unsettled by the corpses, and ms splosion man which is gloriously unhinged. and then he got into ship design and setting up a game of galactic civilizations II.

in the meanwhile, i was still feeling emotionally raw about last night, which led to more discomfort...

it was an unseasonably beautiful day, and around lunchtime i took mr smear out for a bike and blade. we were planning on going anyway, but just before we got a message asking if we were up to giving back the current borrowed bike and taking our friends' newly acquired one (which they got free from someone in their neighborhood, but was too tall for their youngest).

so we headed there first, and mr smear was immediately incensed by the fact that the front brake was on the right handlebar ("i want to sue the manufacturer" 😂). this was on top of the fact that he does *not* take quickly to unfamiliar things, and it uses the pedals for the rear brake. so we had a bit of a scene, but i managed to get him to calm down and give it a try in spite of himself, and eventually (with some efficient handiwork by our friend) managed to leave on the new bike and go for a really nice ride.

which included messing about in the park's outdoor gym, chilling on the grass watching the parrots, getting a really nice lunch at a coffee shop, stopping for excellent ice cream (salted oreos - genius!), and finally getting home just before it got dark.

everything up until bedtime went smoothly, but then gd and i got into it again because things obviously weren't resolved yesterday... so that sucked, but it feels a little less shitty now.

...

mr smear and i are meeting with the school team tomorrow morning, and i think i'd be stupid if i didn't prepare him for it. and tomorrow's my first day in the new job, and gd has a nerve block in the afternoon, and i'll be damned if i know what i'm feeling about everything right now. it doesn't help that it's past 10pm and my mind's unsettled and i'm nervous about sleeping...