Whose hangup is it, anyway?

Spending day after day with anyone for 8 hours at a time, with only infrequent contact with other people, leads to a wealth of identity issues. Even if the other person is your little one, maybe especially then, you lose a sense of where ‘you’ end and ‘we’ start.  On a rough day, I may forget to eat lunch for a bit after I serve Max his food: he’s fed, so we’re fed, right?  I noticed this behaviour a while ago and I make sure to keep my own needs on the list of stuff to do.

There are times where I slip into talking about ‘us’ when I’m really talking for myself, and I admit I have done this intentionally once or twice to get out of an awful situation. Sometimes you need to get out of there, and no one can fault you if it’s your kid who needs to go. And hey, if your kids can’t act as your alibi, then who can?

The first day of preschool went fantastically, with a lack of tears at both the beginning and the end. I didn’t do very much with my free time, since I was still in the grip of an irritating cold, but it was still a welcome break. There was a little temptation to sit and worry the whole time. Historically, I refuse to celebrate how well something is going until I’m absolutely sure it can’t go wrong, but I decided to be a normal person and have some confidence that everything was going okay.  The ear to ear smile that covered his face when he saw me waiting in the doorway was the best thing I’ve seen in a long time.

Tomorrow is day two of preschool, and it’s bound to have a surprise or two.  The surprises might start early, since he fell asleep an hour and a half before his bedtime tonight. I’m glad he fell asleep, because he was in the very dangerous state of high energy but no impulse control or physical dexterity. His throttle was stuck on ‘injury speed’ and it was a battle to keep him from hurtling into one thing or another.

An ache in the brain and a gurgle in the belly

One of these is bad, one of these is good. I’m struggling beneath the totalitarian regime of a head and sinus cold, flailing about in a vain attempt to get free or at least lessen the achiness. The only balm in Gilead (ooh biblical) is the belly full of sate beef soup that I have thanks to my loving wife. The spice has warmed me and relieved some of the sinus swelling, and after a nice cup of decaf coffee I should be able to tolerate living until bedtime.

I did try to get some planning done for the next chapter I have to write and post tomorrow. I hit a point where I just could not push myself to work anymore and I slowly stormed away from my work area and pouted upstairs. I must be fantastic company today.

So far Max has shown a few mild cold symptoms, but if we’re lucky it won’t intensify like it did for me. And his teeth are almost back to normal-sporadic incisor action has taken place today and everything still looks okay in there.

Good night and good luck. I’ll be in my bunk.

Fueled by over-the-counter medication

I am currently under the effect of a muscle relaxant which is dulling my brain in addition to unknotting my various knots. You’re in for some real blog gold, people. (And ‘The tourist’ by radiohead is not helping sharpen my focus. So slow and dreamy. Out it goes.)

First off, I have added a ‘donate’ button to the sidebar over yonder. I hemmed and hawed about doing this for a while. I don’t want to give you, my loyal readers, the sense that You are obligated to throw money my way, but there may be occasions when someone will read a post and think ‘I want to reward that poor doped up fool’. so now you have a vehicle to do so. If it matters, any money that comes in will be going directly to paying for the little dude’s preschool and will not be spent on golden underpants for myself.

Next up, moustaches! yesterday was ‘have sex with a guy with a moustache day’ so I hope you ladies did your part. If circumstances prevented your charitable work, please get around to it whenever you can. Every little bit helps. It’s for a good cause, so ignore the pricklyness and chip in.

Medical (dental?) update: Max is recovering nicely from his mouth-first landing on the arm of the couch. He’s still uncomfortable biting with those teeth, but he can chew normally if those two front bottom teeth stay out of the mix. He should be right as rain by the end of the weekend. My mouth devil has calmed down and is giving me very little grief right now. I’m also trying to flush my sinuses out with warm water, to hedge my bets and get things moving along. So far I’ve had a bucket of post-nasal drip mucus slide down my throat today, which made me happy as it was a sign of some kind of change and progress. I am a weird fellow.