the needle

[currently battling a mosquito and losing]

 well, i did sleep last night. i had horrible dreams, though. involving really gross public toilets, amongst other things.

i gave up on reading dragon ball. it's like a pre-teen fever dream. combined with dragon ball: rick & morty i'm now pretty confident i never missed anything important.

our subwoofer situation: i was so excited the past couple of days, because it looked like the subwoofer was finally stable for the first time since we bought it. but today? garbage. i finally bit the bullet and ordered a new one, which will hopefully hook in to the shelf in the same way 🤞

work ownership mystery: i asked my manager to investigate, and he managed to get someone to approve my pull request. but then we learned that they didn't have the authorization to merge, either. a bunch of us (virtually) ran around trying to find out who's in charge, and so far the answer appears to be "nobody".

in the afternoon, my employer team had to sign in to a presentation that went on about an hour longer than it should have. i had to turn my camera off halfway through so nobody would have to keep seeing me rubbing my eyes and yawning.

mr smear had a regression today, and homework turned into a massive, unpleasant thing that got him punished. as part of the cooldown, i took him to the park to use the exercise equipment (i was too pissed off with him to train him, and i'm pretty sure he wasn't in the mood either), and then we continued on to do some sweet shopping.

i'm not doing to well with my weight situation lately. something about war and lockdown and yada yada yada.

dinner (we were forced to order in because my employer doesn't let me use my food allowance to buy vouchers) was much calmer, getting mr smear showered and toothbrushed and into bed proved stressful and stretched our patience completely, and that was on top of two attacks launched in that exact window. and i still had a little more work to do after he went to sleep, so i was even more annoyed.

now i'm playing catch-up and calm-down, as i type this i realize it's already past midnight :/

...

gd's friend (the glassblower who made us massage tools and gifted us with some bitcoin a couple of years ago) has been contemplating suicide for a very long time, and gd's finally reached a point where she can no longer bring herself to keep trying to talk him out of it. she's upset about this, and she wants to be a good friend, and i told her to just make her feelings crystal clear and deal with whatever may come.

you can't help everyone.

sabotage and self-sabotage

 i had trouble focusing today, so i took a cup of coffee and walked to a local park, there was noisy construction going on there, so i walked further to the next park, which also had noisy construction going on, but it was less intrusive.

i would have enjoyed the experience of sitting on the bench, reading percy jackson and drinking my coffee, a lot more if i hadn't been harassed by mosquitoes. i'm pretty sure i got bitten.

the afternoon was pretty calm. when mr smear came home he did his homework quite well, and i read a bit more, and then there was drama with gd's daal recipe, and we ordered dinner, and then dinner was interrupted by a call from my aunt in los angeles, and then we spoke to my mom and sister, and then we watched an episode of dinosaurs, and then...

bedtime did not go well. mainly because we discovered that mr smear - who has been ignoring us and defiantly cutting his toenails insanely short - is now sporting two ingrown toenails and a really ugly infection 💔

i made some more progress with the assessment, at this point i'm approaching twenty hours and i think that's way more than is reasonable for a job application. having said that, i'm getting some experience with a whole new system and practice with golang after more than half a year of almost exclusively writing bash scripts 🤷

...

it wasn't all bad today, but it definitely wasn't a good day. in spite of lots of birthday messages and calls, which were really nice, this might be one of my least favorite birthdays in 45 years.

beats

 it was a big day, it had ups and downs. big ups, with a sprinkle of frustrating downs.

it started with me waking up with a sore shoulder, and it's ending with me either being eaten by a mosquito or just imagining it.

we left reasonably on time, with only a minor mr smear hiccup along the way. the drive there was longer than i'd anticipated, but we arrived relatively early in the day. it wasn't quite what we expected - the party took place in an amusement park - but for a family-friendly trance event it was a pretty good space.

immediately, mr smear decided he was struggling with sensory overload and wanted to go home. we tried to calm him down, and make him understand that we weren't leaving anytime soon, with varying degrees of success.

for round one, we hit the main floor while he sat outside drawing, but soon the wind came up and he went upstairs to lie on a bench and watch the floor from above.

in retrospect, i feel really dumb for not having brought him earplugs or ear protectors. i'm guessing roughly half the other parents remembered and/or cared :P

between rounds, we ate the packed lunch in the car and then played foosball before returning to the main floor. something bothered him (i found out later it was people eating at the table he was next to) and he went and sat outside (reading on his phone, i let it go for today), and gd and i continued having a really good time dancing, enjoying a beer or three (i only had one :P), and being both amused by all the families on the floor and proud of all of us for doing precisely what our people fight and die to be able to do: live.

on the way out, mr smear actually joined us for a final dance on the second stage (a dj with a didgeridoo, mr smear wisely thought it prudent to step away from the bass bin because he was feeling the beats in his chest), and the long ride back was (long, but) very pleasant. coming into the apartment, gd made a comment about how we need to do that more often and my heart lifted ^_^

the rest of the evening was good, with mr smear and i playing some there is no game together. eventually, he went to bed. everything seemed fine.

by the third time he called for gd, i went to go and see what was going on. i was surprised to find him in tears, and i pushed him to tell me why he was crying... to which he responded that they were joyful tears, because gd had sung him a lullaby and he'd felt truly at peace for the first time in years 😭

i've spent a little time working on the language project, but it's late and it's been a big day and i think i should probably go to bed soon.

buzz

 yesterday:

i felt better, at least. made more progress on the language project. waited twenty minutes at the store to pick up my "neon-nazi"s only to discover that i was supposed to wait for an sms update, but they sorted me out anyway. had a pretty productive day at work, with the biggest achievement being a coffee walk interview with someone we've been courting and who signed later in the afternoon. good for him (as a new oleh) and good for us! ate too much cake at the happy hour, brought home too much cake and nobody else wants to eat it. went through possible summer day-camps with mr smear (whose preferences surprised us) and tried to book it, but we're now waiting for them to get back to us :/

the bug zapper in mr smear's room is super bright and may have been a mistake.

a couple of hours work in the evening (to protect us from a mysterious bug that we encountered during the day), a little more of the language project, then finally passing out.

this morning so far:

getting up early, catching and crushing a fat, slow cockroach, being blown away by the dor brother's AI short film. fighting with mr smear (but winning, apparently) because i'm taking him swimming but he wants to go to his friday computer class. more progress on the language project. now getting ready to head out...

...

i hate the spice girls, abhor wannabe, but i've had it in my head the whole morning and am somehow enjoying the nostalgia of it 😶

deficit

 i didn't sleep enough, but that's normal. i was extra slow this morning, and then we had a "school team" meeting, which really took it out of me. by the time i arrived at my office i felt as if i'd already done a full day's work, and my throat was feeling scratchy, so i've been suspecting that i might have picked up a bug.

i can't right now.

i drank loads of coffee to compensate, but i still found myself passing out at my desk in the afternoon...

i got home at a reasonable hour, and i took mr smear (without any argument!) to the school to shoot some hoops, which was really fun :)

after getting mr smear into bed, i very excitedly managed to lock down a couple of mosquito zappers* inspired by the couple of nasty ones that flew in our window this evening.

* i love calling them "neon-nazis", but lipgirl called it a "little auschwitz" and that's definitely taking it

i had some wonderful breakthrough moments working on the language project, i've successfully completed today's minesweeper challenges, i watched some youtube, and i think i'm just about ready to go to bed.

...

there are two wars against israel right now (gaza is not one of them & israel is losing)

norms

 why am i awake so late? i've been soooo tired lately...

getting mr smear to school was fine, and i actually put a layer of spackle over where i cleared the peeling crud off mr smear's walls, as well as put in the first line of polyfill around the cupboard in our passageway.

so that was good.

gd and i arrived a bit late for our parental guidance session because the bus we were waiting for disappeared. it felt like a good sessions.

getting gd onto a bus to get to the dentist for another first aid meeting - she's been so scared to crack her other tooth that she's lost 2kg in just a week, which is distressing - took so long that i ended up quite late for work.

it was a pretty productive day, i guess, and my cousin's kid has just moved into an office on our floor and that's both cool and awkward at the same time :P

i left late, and was really pressured for time because i had to go to a lecture at mr smear's school that i was dreading. mr smear informed me that he had not, in fact, had another perfect day, but in retrospect it doesn't seem like such a big deal. then again, i've only heard his side of the story...

the lecture was about setting norms for tech use across the school, and i initially presumed that the school would be interfering with parents' choices. this immediately put me on the defensive because i don't trust anyone with those sorts of intentions to also be operating in an evidence-based manner. by the end of it, though, i was convinced not only that this initiative is well-informed, but that they have an approach that really does make sense.

assuming the prinicipal doesn't screw it up.

gd and i watched some pantheon, which was brilliant, and i've played some crying suns, and i'm now pretty sure that i'm ready for bed.

...

i've been battling with a mosquito for the last hour or two, it's infuriating.

chiba city

early thursday morning, i paid using the same credit card machine they use for take-out before removing my shoes and donning surgery cap and booties. a technician sat me down and told me what to expect afterwards. a few minutes went past, then the surgeon came by and i followed him into the operating room.

a small, sterile room furnished with two large machines separated by a table that felt like a padded stretcher. the procedure was explained vaguely and the lights went out. in the dark, with my eye beneath a circle of yellow light with a flashing red dot in the center, i imagined how it must feel to undergo back-alley surgery, whether abortion or body upgrades. this was an upgrade, for sure, trusting this stranger and his machines with one of my optical sensors.

"look straight up, don't move" was the mantra he chanted. over and over and over again. a metal hoop of sorts? to hold my eyelids open? no. i'm moved to the other machine. "look straight up, don't move," he repeats, and i try to relax my body as it stiffens against the hoop pressing into my eye. that pressure increases and i'm almost gasping for breath. "look straight up, don't move," he says, as i think of that hoop being pushed straight through my eyeball and brain and grinding into the back of my skull. my vision pops into blackness, have i fainted? oh gods, i forgot to tell him i have a syncope. is now the time to tell him? no, it can't be. i say something, he misunderstands and i have to explain that it's okay, everything's okay, i just don't know when to be alarmed. can i see again?

i'm back under the first machine, a circle floats between me and the machine. "look straight up, don't move" over and over and over again. i'm trying not to move, i'm trying to focus. what am i supposed to focus on? it hurts, my eyeball flutters involuntarily, am i messing this up? am i going to blind myself because i can't keep my eye still? "look straight up, don't move," he repeats. the machine is whirring to life and then backing off, over and over. "look straight up, don't move," and he counts down. he's doing it, the laser is shooting into my eye and shaping me and he's counting down and i'm focusing everything i have on not moving but what if i move? what if my eye flickers? am i breathing? am i moving? should i relax? should i tense?

suddenly the mantra stops and the machine stops and the lights go on and a technician gives me a hand. i stand up, disoriented, and i stumble outside in a daze. the first technician is there to greet me and show me where to sit for the next hour, to tell me that it'll be hazy and it'll burn and scratch and that i need to tell them if anything's going horribly wrong.

i sit down, blinking rapidly. i don't stop blinking, am i blinking enough? can i look out the window? the sunlight bounces off the cars in the parking lot so i try not to stand where it'll reach me. even through the haze and fog and blur i can see that my eyesight's improved - it's improved so much that for the first time i can tell just how bad my "good" eye is. can i use headphones? or will the bass cause my eyeball to vibrate? silly, i know, but i have to ask.

time flies, i sit or i pace and i appreciate this little miracle. upgrade complete, installing latest device drivers. it's feeling good, it's not hurting like i was warned. when she told me about the burning and said "you'll see", she was wrong about the burning but right about my seeing. i do see. it's beautiful.

...

my one eye now sees far and my other near, so depending on what i need to focus on i just close the inefficient one. this is fantastic!

---aota picked me up and we stopped for veggie burgers at harvey's down the road. a bit of office gossip as well, and she informed me that i wasn't missing anything as megaman wasn't in and the office comms were down. if i'm not working, nobody's working.
she dropped me off at home and i spent the next several hours using the computer or my phone in short bursts (so as not to forget to blink enough - that's the real reason you can't read or anything) and enjoying the greatest nap in the whole world. me and my sleep goggles.

leap motion's pre-order form is a bit of a mess, and they're aware of it. after getting my knickers in a knot because it's almost go-time and no matter how i tried i couldn't get my details correct, i requested phone support. they came through, and the agent was pleasant, and i ended up satisfied. i can't understand how a company with such an amazing product can fail on a web form, but whatever.

vfmp shot me a mail inviting me to a magic the gathering / vegan eats evening. now that i can't train for two weeks, this sounds like a good alternative :)

my first eyedrops sessions were frustrating, but it takes fifteen minutes every six hours so at some point i'm going to become proficient.

aota and newk'd took me out to an indian restaurant in snowden, it was a fun evening. what wasn't fun was my mom repeatedly trying and failing to get hold of me because i had no signal and newk'd telling me a story about yang that was so ugly it was embarrassing to hear. rule number 1: "don't be an asshole". calling the cops on peaceful protestors because you don't agree with the protest is not okay.

---friday:

between my goggles, the hot, humid night and my neck i had a terrible time sleeping. i felt horrible in the morning.

in general, waking up for my early drops sucks.

on my way to the follow-up appointment, i was embarrassed to get off the bus and discover that i'd been sitting next to one of the technicians and hadn't recognized her (she said hi to me). i'd arrived too early so i crossed the road to the tim horton's to pick up a doughnut and coffee. i didn't cross in the most legal of ways and two cops stepped out of the coffee shop and began to walk in my direction... [they ignored me, i was grateful]

...

i live in a strange building: the apartments have heating during winter, and the building has a/c during summer. that means that if my apartment gets too hot and humid i can just go sit in the corridor where it's cool and dry.

it was a pleasant afternoon of naps and inconsequential things. i took a bath before dinner, which was a mission and a half. godmother picked me up and i was surprised to find myself allowed back to her house.

my uncle is now only too happy to have me over any time! it's because i am jésus-christ de moustique. he always thought he got everyone's mosquitoes, but that was until last night. he also thinks that my green oakley jawbones are the greatest joke ever.

...

on the metro home i sat opposite a well-dressed woman who coughed non-stop without covering her mouth. typical, when one needs to protect one's eye.

i spent the next hour or so voting on soundtrack styles for shadowrun online. then i took a muscle relaxant and went to bed.

---today:

i suspect that i shouldn't have taken the muscle relaxant. it didn't really help and it made me feel horrid when i got out of bed this morning for my first drops.

i've so far done nothing much today, and i don't care. i've really needed a few days of nothing, i'm only too glad for the excuse!