t-minus 12

 i didn't sleep enough last night, but i did wake up feeling less wrecked than the past two days. after doing a ton of dishes, and exploding at my family because there'd been a whole conversation about mr smear switching art streams and nobody had thought it worth discussing it with me*,  i actually had time to read makoto yukimura's planetes over coffee.

so far, planetes is really interesting hard sci-fi, and the artwork is amazing.

* i feel horrible, too, because he wants to do music and aside from burning a huge amount of money on this move, i have no idea what we'll be able to afford once we're there.

after mr smear left for school, we had a brief window of quiet before our alarms went off reminding us of an important appointment about nerve blocks that we'd both completely forgotten about. thank god we had the authorization ready already...

we walked to the pain clinic, and the doctor was very understanding and sympathetic. it was good that i went, though - gd's communication issues aren't always around language :P

from there i said goodbye and walked to my client's office, arriving in time to make myself a coffee (every morning there's an issue with the coffee machine on our side of the building, so it's a whole thing) before my daily meeting with my bulgarian teammates.

i'm under a ton of pressure, and (along with a bunch of others) lost hours of work today due to wifi issues. i even went home thinking it might work from there - also taking the opportunity to eat lunch, and discover that gd's been using our supposedly vegan fridge to store eggs, which upset me because we explicitly agreed no animal products in our kitchen - and when i couldn't get it to work from home i returned to the office and found the poor IT guy and got in line and eventually got sorted out.

the rest of my day was investigation in ML models, and learning how to run opensearch instances locally, and syncing with the two teams (overcoming a massive, weird communication problem with the only team member with tribal team knowledge), and having a massive info dump with a new face (fortunately recorded), and being unexpectedly hugged by my client / boss when he saw me 🤷

[oh, yeah - there was an "incident" last night when he chided me for introducing myself in a chat as a contractor. but i'm definitely a contractor 🤔]

i called mr smear after school ended to check in because gd made me paranoid that he'd skipped / gone to the wrong arts class. he freely admitted that he might get into trouble for touching his teacher's computer, but he assured me that he'd received permission from another teacher. you'd better believe i messaged that other teacher to confirm, and i was relieved when she not only confirmed, but also praised his behavior 😌

when i got home, it was to discover that gd and mr smear had gotten most of the way through his history homework - alexander the great, and military formations - so i took over from her and we managed to complete it before dinner, with only one minor incident that involved me convincing him that procrastination is poison and that it would feel much better to get it over with as soon as possible.

i was amazed when he agreed, relieved and pleased when he finished the work, and then we could sit down and have a very pleasant leftover dinner before heading into shower and bedtime.

i don't know which i'm more excited about: mr smear getting on my psytrance vibe for most of the routine, or him asking me (just prior to toenail treatment time) to switch to tool - pushit.

his toenails. i don't know if they're getting better. they're so fucking damaged it's horrifying, it's been horrifying to do the treatment every night. i really hope they're getting better somehow.

...

after receiving a ridiculous quote from a mover this morning, gd and i spent a large chunk of the evening trying to get quotes to compare. now it's 11pm and i need to decide whether i should go to bed (i definitely should), or do something entertaining. lightly entertaining, because i've been (obviously) watching lots of streams about iran, and today i learned about the british government agreeing to install the CCP in london, and then about the kurds in syria which i can't figure out if it's good or bad, and holy shit the world feels scary and messy.

if there must be ballistic missiles fired our way, it would be amazing if they could hold off for another 12 days so that we have an in-apartment bomb shelter 🙏