doing it wrong

 i barely slept last night, (and) my lower back's messed up. gd's in an even worse state.

we got up at 6am in order to get mr smear to his new classroom by 7.30am. gd forgot that his dairy challenge was scheduled for wednesday, and gave him an antihistamine, so now we have to postpone that and it's usually months before there's a slot available.

gd wasn't able to come with to his first day in the new school.

he was very awkward, but the general vibe and other parents were cool, the school is (as is to be expected) completely different in every way. but some of the adjustments are hard. and me having to handle the admin side of things, and then walk into the office only to realize someone cruelly scheduled an interview on the first morning of the school year, broke me.

it didn't help that there was little oxygen in the room - i really don't handle the meeting rooms well at all.

i left the hour and a half interview and went straight back to the school to pick up mr smear, and then spend more than half an hour waiting in line for his books. then i taught him how to open his locker (i'm sure it'll be a struggle for a while, it's an old-school combination lock) and we went to the light rail together.

and then i got off at my stop and let him go the rest of the way home by himself for the very first time. that wasn't stressful at all.

the next couple of hours was mostly spent getting the team aligned with our new priorities, and then i went into another interview. more interesting than the first, but i still had trouble staying awake by the end of it.

the last hour was torture. and i think i made one of the new guys feel bad. i'm pretty sure i'm making a bad impression on everyone lately, because i'm just burned out and every interruption has become a thing and i'm finding it really hard to display a positive attitude.

i'm fucking tired.

but i'm also tired because i have to handle all the new-school shit on my own, which includes the parent groups as well as figuring out how to get mr smear into the music track, which until today we had no idea required a history of formal lessons.

godsdammit.

anyway, at least mr smear is happy so far. on the other hand, our friend's daughter / his classmate decided not to leave the school, and is apparently deeply regretting it.

just before dinner, i managed to get in touch with someone in his old school who didn't register for their book program, so he took over mr smear's books and i'm grateful that it didn't cost us double.

...

there's some huge insect or something that was flying around our living room earlier, but it hasn't shown itself since. i'm going to bed now. i hope those two statements don't clash at any point.