reset

 these are big, hairy days and i'm having trouble keeping track.

i felt much better for the entire length of saturday, but saturday night was once again plagued by night sweats and hallucinations. last night i still had a couple of night sweats, but i don't think i had any hallucinations. i was able to work yesterday - a particularly long, nasty workday working around a bunch of shit, broken tools - and i'm going to work today, though from home because i'm still gross.

yesterday morning started with taking mr smear to school*, and then spending a couple of hours supporting gd with a doctor's appointment and a pharmacy visit. at least she has the meds she needs.

* he looked miserable on his way into the school, and i asked him what was going on. apparently, he's really scared he's getting fat. we've since had a family discussion about that, and i guess we'll see how that goes.

mr smear came home by himself yesterday, but was literally coming up the stairs when my alert went off for his therapist appointment and it was the default **** ten minute alert. that's what happens when i'm not the one to add things to our shared calendar 😡

so mr smear and i - with me in the middle of a work struggle - rushed out to grab a bus, get stuck in traffic, and arrive there with only fifteen or twenty minutes of his appointment remaining.

...

last night, mr smear was supposed to be doing his homework while i was trying to work, and after a week of him giving us shit about it i had zero patience, and i got violently angry. a bit later, i sat across from him and explained that over the past year or two it's become normalized that we only get positive results from him after intimidation, threats, or things getting physical, and i don't want that. even if it's largely performative, i'm embarrassed by it, grossed out by it, and i don't want to do that any more.

so last night i reestablished some ground rules. if he wants to FA, he can FO. i'll do what i can to help him and guide him, but i'm not going to fight with him to try and stop him from doing things that hurt him or take him down a dark path. he's going to do the things that need to get done, or face the music. if he needs to learn his lessons in the hardest ways imaginable, then so be it.

the first result of him not completing his homework is that the homework piles up, and there's no screentime until it's all done. but last night he had to copy his hebrew homework into his workbook, and it took him a long time to realize that i was serious about him not going to bed until it was done. he tried to run out the clock by doodling, at which point i informed him that if he continues doodling in his workbook (as opposed to in his sketchbook) i'm going to make him take a fresh workbook and copy everything across into the new one.

eventually, around 10pm, he finally went to bed. around 10.30, i finally was able to report a success of the work i've been struggling with since before the previous weekend.

...

this morning's wake-up wasn't pleasant. accompanying mr smear to school was fine. gd's coughing and hacking in the background, while i cough and hack in the foreground. it's past 9am and i'm tired.