stickers and scribbles

 okay, i'm tired. but i'm also agitated and frustrated - mr smear's school has been utterly unresponsive for more than two days and tomorrow's the deadline to register him for the art school. so tomorrow's going to be started with angry phone calls but, at the end of the day, it's really not in my hands...

i eventually climbed into bed after 6am, and the morning was really hard. so hard, in fact, that i skipped on taking mr smear to school - on the one hand i'm really impressed that we're at the point where he can go to school by himself, but on the other i'm rather disappointed because i quite enjoy the opportunity to chat on the way to school.

the office was really quiet today - one of the bosses kept repeating that, until at one point i offered to put some heavy metal on and she quickly assured me it was fine :P

i asked lipgirl if we had any stickers (swag), and she enthusiastically introduced me to the office label printer. omg i hadn't realized that label printers have evolved so much!

i learned stuff today, very slowly but surely. it's all about a crash-course in kubernetes right now.

i was so desperate for lunch that - believing that the order would take a while to arrive - i scarfed down the previous day's leftovers for breakfast. which was more food than i'd thought, and then a few minutes later a massive burrito arrived for me... and i ate it :/

gd called me in an angry panic, the new vaccum cleaner arrived and she couldn't figure out how to work it, so she wanted to take it back immediately. i've convinced her to let me give it a go first...

in the afternoon i returned home to pick up mr smear and take him to his final psych evaluation session (i sneaked photos of the school's form, that'll make for interesting reading). inspired by the morning's sticker session, i thought it would be cool if he drew something with a sharpie on my fancy water bottle, but he didn't follow the (very simple) instructions and started scrawling something inappropriate. both gd and i were upset with him, and to his credit he did feel bad, but at bedtime i proposed that we turn it into a bit of a graffiti project in the morning and he seems into it.

while waiting for him, i went back to the office thinking i'd continue working, but i had an issue with the coffee machine and ended up in an interesting 1-on-1 with someone i hadn't met before; i'd spent all day thinking that i just couldn't remember him :P

i picked up mr smear (he apparently did well) and we returned home, and between his shower and dinner i managed to get him through two significantly advanced paragraphs of harry potter. *i'm* learning as we go, and he's building confidence, particularly with the stuff that's more his level. this was definitely a good idea.

i had a salad (because of the overeating) and we watched the simpsons, then called my mom to say goodnight. once i'd showered and brushed my teeth i joined mr smear for calvin & hobbes, and i've spent the past couple of hours taking care of random items, watching youtube and ignoring a bunch of stuff on my to-do list.

i suspect that i should go to bed very soon, but i feel like i can't get my head into or out of anything right now.

the first day

 i managed to sleep alright last night, but i was pretty anxious this morning. i made sure that mr smear understood what the meeting was going to be about, and i'll be honest, by the time it was done i was quite relieved that i hadn't posted anything on social media.

after quite the interrogation - including a hilarious part for which i had to bite my tongue* - we ascertained that the social boycott we thought was happening isn't really happening. but we also established that the bullying and violence is very real, and that they need to make a move on dealing with it. additionally, they pretty much convinced me that moving mr smear out of the class right now isn't the best move (mainly because his current teacher and her incoming replacement are, to their minds, the most sympathetic / best suited to deal with mr smear) and that it's worth waiting for the recommendation from the evaluation (which should be concluding this week).

* mr smear was pretty insistent on how unfair it was that his bully was recognized for doing good schoolwork, even after we'd all explained that it was irrelevant :P

the meeting didn't produce an amazing feeling by any stretch, but i walked out feeling like things were relatively okay.

the meeting ended much later than i'd hoped, so i scrambled to get to my new office as soon as i could. the morning was spent meeting lots of interesting people, getting the tour, beginning to get my computer and office access set up, joining my first standup, followed by a very long but surprisingly intelligible presentation on our architectural overview.

it's been an extremely long time since i was introduced to a system that just makes sense. it's elegant, and i feel considerably more at ease about what i'm getting into.

i went with my (for now) manager to get breakfast / lunch (it was around 3pm already), and until i tucked in i hadn't actually realized just how hungry i was. and i managed to stop eating a little after hitting the "too much" point, even though it was absolutely delicious.

after we returned, i made myself a (really strong) coffee and resumed setting up my machine, at which point gd called to inform me that she couldn't find the authorization form for her nerve block... so i sighed loudly, and rushed home to grab it and my family and walk to the pain clinic.

the process was, from start to finish, more straightforward than usual and much quicker than anticipated.

...

the taxi home, though, was completely ridiculous. we were picked up by an old lady taxi driver, who immediately took offense that she could smell that gd had just smoked cannabis, complaining that it would damage her lungs. this turned into a very weird argument, at which point i pulled out my phone and she said "you think google's going to convince me?!"

once we'd established that it wasn't dangerous, she went on a tirade about some (probably fictitious) bride in her wedding dress who refused to get in her taxi once because she smelled... weed? cigarettes? who knows. so i asked if this had occurred once, or if it had occurred many times. to which she responded: "if i told you only once, what would that mean?"

"that she had issues."

ooooh, shit. the taxi driver began berating me for daring to judge a stranger i'd never met. eventually, still very heatedly, she asked "and what difference would it make if it was many passengers?"

"that their behavior was somewhat normal, and therefore somewhat reasonable."

at that point we were approaching our street, so she slowed down very dramatically to share a "tip for life" with me: that if you're arguing with someone and they're starting to show signs of losing interest, you should stop arguing. with that, she dropped us off, and i gave her the single-star rating she deserved.

holy shit, some people should not be working in the service industry.

we got gd upstairs, mr smear showered, dinner served, discussed marijuana usage with mr smear (who'd understood most of the argument, and was surprisingly completely on my side), who assured me that he would never smoke (cigarettes) "because i made a vow to my dad", and who paid attention when i explained the risks of consuming illicit drugs while one's brain is still forming...

anyway.

we had a good good-night chat with my mom, and had enough time between dinner and bedtime for me to shower and join mr smear for some calvin & hobbes. i am soooooo glad i managed to get hold of those comics!

after putting him to bed, i continued setting up my machine, and also started a fantastic run in kaycee's mod abusing the fair-hand mechanic:

unkillable hooved tribe totem FTW.

and now it's half-past-midnight and definitely past my bedtime.

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...

was that it?

 it's almost 3am as i begin typing this, i've just spent two or three hours watching random youtube videos and playing minesweeper (a really hard minesweeper - total minesweeper), after a really mixed friday after a rather awkward thursday.

thursday (yesterday?):

after dropping mr smear off at school, i called back the ministry of education representative who very clearly and urgently set things in motion. later, i received a phone call from the school counsillor inviting me and mr smear to an urgent meeting on sunday morning. when she reminded me what the plan for moving mr smear was, i reminded her how the plan was always to make sure that mr smear didn't disrupt anyone else after being neglected and left in a known bad situation for years.

i wrote up our experiences, and i feel like i should have posted them publicly but decided to wait on my mom's edits instead, which i sadly received yet. posting's potentially going to open us up to attack, though, which does make me a bit nervous.

thursday afternoon was shit. a lot of fighting with mr smear not doing his homework, it was a real drag and absolutely exhausting. in spite of that, whenever he did achieve or complete something he got really excited, and that was hugely rewarding.

gd had a dental appointment (i yelled at the second receptionist to try to cancel it at the last minute and then ignored me and tried to hang up when i told her to give me a moment so i could explain to gd what was going on), and i ended up having to order dinner, which worked out alright in spite of my reservations (we've been burning a lot more money these past couple of weeks than we should have).

friday (today?):

it started off well, we went to the open day at the art school and, aside from the dance demonstration, mr smear was very excited. and so were we. everything was great until we were on our way out and i was trying to summarize / translate the important bits for the two of them, which led to a simmering fight with gd that lasted the day until it became an all-out battle in the evening, which never got resolved. just ugly feelings all day.

while that was going on in the background, i went to pick up insoles for my rain boots and they seem to fit better. i'm now regretting asking the guy to order a better size for me because i really don't wear them enough to justify a whole other pair of boots...

... and then i spent the rest of the afternoon coaching mr smear through the remainder of his homework. it went much smoother than the previous days - although we did have one blowout incident in the middle - but we pushed through and rushed through together and a little after sundown we were done, with a good feeling all round.

after his shower (during which gd and i really got into it), and before dinner, we spent some quality game time together. dinner wasn't great from a vibe perspective, but it was encouraging to see mr smear being empathetic and trying to raise spirits (and not picking sides for once), and at bedtime he asked me to join him while he read calvin & hobbes out loud which was nice.

as soon as he was in bed, gd and i went to bed. i'm not sleeping well, and i'm feeling shit emotionally, and i feel like i neighbor's coughing and the jackals howling has been fitting accompaniment. i don't know what i'm up for right now, but it's not sleeping, it's not reading, and it's not playing anything.

burnout grossout

 friday:

getting mr smear's foot checked out took about two hours, but was mostly pleasant (we played inscryption together while waiting until my laptop's battery died). it turned out to be just another sprain (same place), so they bound his foot and sent us home.

as soon as we arrived home, i was sent out again to pick up wine and ice cream for dinner, and considering how tired and sore i was feeling and how miserable the weather was, i was not thrilled.

the remainder of the afternoon was spent resting. by the time we were ready to head out to our friends for dinner i was feeling alright, so i didn't think i was being irresponsible, but as we arrived my throat started a thing - no coughing fits, thankfully, but i still feel a bit guilty.

regardless, we had a really nice evening, even if it proved impossible to get mr smear to eat anything. dinner was great, the adults had a good time and the kids had a good time, and eventually we returned home and turned in in good spirits.

yesterday:

i slept alright, but woke up feeling properly sick (hence the guilt). it was another miserable, wet day, and i alternated between flitting in and out of consciousness while watching stuff (specifically cowboy bebop, delicious in dungeon, and pluto) and beating inscryption again (at this point the story mode really isn't much of a challenge, i think it's just become a comforting thing to do).

i did try for a bit to help mr smear with main assembly, and i've arrived at the conclusion that every other player has - it's a game with great potential, but it's abandoned and broken and it's not going to get any better. that's just sad.

...

i had a conversation with gd last night about where i'm at / where i've been for a long time, but specifically now while i'm on two week's leave and feeling sick. i've been burned out but highly functioning for a very, very long time, and that's made it very difficult for me to relax and not have a perpetual sense of anxiety about all the things i'm not doing or want to do. intellectually, i'm very happy to be doing nothing, but in practice i'm constantly feeling either over-stimulated or under-stimulated. i can't concentrate if i'm not doing multiple things, but i also can't concentrate because i'm doing multiple things...

today:

getting mr smear to school wasn't as hard as it could have been, and i hope he's playing nicely with others (to wit, his teachers).

the weather is still miserable, so i've been in boots since taking mr smear to school - i'm now sitting at a nice little coffee shop where our calvin & hobbes books were finally delivered to, and very soon i'll be on my way back home for a conversation with my previous employer's insurance broker that i'm pretty confident will be a total waste of time.

between two sleeps

 i recently watched thoughty2's video on biphasic sleep. well, it's past 3am and i've just gone through the training in system shock 2, and i don't even feel like i'm doing it wrong :P

yesterday wasn't a bad day. the weather was alright, and i published and babysat a new release at work that went relatively smoothly.

my team decided to go to tamir, which is a terrible idea of you're trying not too eat too much, even if you're vegan and only ever go for their falafel. to avoid the pita i ordered a plate, which was heaped with food, in addition to a large plate of fries :P

in the evening i sent a message to the CTO i met with a couple of weeks ago, and it looks like my timing was appreciated 🤞

we're continuing to watch the simpsons, we're deep into the third season ("homer alone"). and at bedtime, mr smear has me reading calvin & hobbes. there's something magical and fascinating about re-imprinting nostalgia in a next generation.

i passed out watching the latest venom movie soon after mr smear fell asleep. i haven't been sleeping well at all, and it's mostly been due to "the usual" physical pain in my lower back and legs :(