ice water and ocicats

Some interesting (to me) progress on understanding my longstanding spiderweb phobia; not surprisingly, it isn't exactly and only spiderwebs. Back when I went to Norwood's birthday party, the subject came up of random things that gave us heebie-jeebies, and I mentioned spiderwebs as usual. His other ex asked me "Is it a texture thing?" which nobody had ever asked me before. I said maybe, or maybe in part, because the texture of having a web on you is pretty gross. Even though I also remembered trying one time to explain that a strand of web, once clinging to me, isn't exactly doing the web thing anymore... so I said that beyond texture there's also something about an invisible unknown structure in the air, holding stuff up, but whose extent is not known. I'm not particularly scared of cobwebs that are covered in dust or in dew/fog/moisture, or not in the same way -- though I'm still not about to go putting my hand in them, maybe that's the texture part.

So then more thinking. Looking at a dust-covered cobweb in the Esh bathroom, thinking "I could touch that and it would be gross, but I'm not getting much of a fear response." (Maybe I should touch it tomorrow).

Then in someone's backyard, there was some netting over an enclosure, and it looked invisible in some places because of the shade and the angle of the light; I could see leaves caught in the netting, and looking at that made me uncomfortable in a recognizable and related way. As if the leaves, hovering there obviously in a plane and supported by something, were stuck in a giant spiderweb. Weirdly, having become aware of it, I even got a ghost of the same feeling with bubbles in a coffee pod later (there were little bubbles on the surface of a big bubble -- annoyed, I made myself poke it with my finger to pop the bubbles).

Unless I'm surprised by something, or there's a web I have to deal with, this is all more a matter of discomfort than real fear.

I'm not the only one. There's some recent-ish discussion on Reddit lately, sometimes calling it "araneophobia", sometimes talking about things stuck on webs and "floating in the air" as a trigger (I identify with that). There's an article on Medium too, discussing it as a sensory "fear of touching" thing. For me, I think it's useful to realize that the sensory thing exists but is largely separate from the fear thing. And, I guess, nice to realize that I can still learn more about myself at this point in life.

Happenings:

• The bug is back from Oregon; his mom remains in the hospital, or more accurately is back in the hospital, with pneumonia and two small strokes (?) having followed her hip surgery. Prognosis is cautiously optimistic but it may take her a while to get home again. In the meantime, the bug seems to have picked up something on his return travels. We are quiet today.


• I have done rather a lot of circus since last time. Handstands, a semi-private contortion lesson with another Zillian person who is apparently twenty years younger than me, acro practice, more acro practice.


• Finished a drawing lesson. I don't like coffee cups anymore; they are annoying to draw. Screw you, coffee cups. Mushrooms were much better.


• Spent a fair bit of Saturday buying, transporting and installing air conditioner units for tenants. My co-landlords were all having Moments, and it really fit in pretty well around Porchfest, anyway, for me to take care of most of it. Then yes, also the bug played Porchfest, in the backyard of the same house because everything happens at Blue-Green Street now, and I sat between friends and felt relaxed and happy.


• Did I mention Moments? Yeah, Perse and her other boyfriend have broken up, creating a Disturbance in the Polycular Force. (Not very long ago the four of us usually ate Tuesday dinner together, so this does affect me... it kind of sounds far away from me but it really isn't.) Date nights are changing around, and my squirrel-family is losing their nice convenient poly-symmetry. This is gonna be a trip... in the meantime, my Sunday night date moved to Sunday morning and damn, Henrietta's Table is really delicious.


• I played with Cursor and Sonnet on Sunday morning, which means vibe coding, and it was very quick and very infuriating. I'm almost certainly going to do more of it, as my new crossword puzzle hobby drags me further into futzing with word lists.

On the macro level, there's a vicious heat wave here (I'm worried about the squirrels) and uh, the US has attacked Iran nuclear facilities. I'm reading that Iran has (or had?) an underground enrichment facility that only the US had the right plane and the right bomb to knock out, and I get why the world might be better off without an Iranian nuclear state... and this is still queasy-making.

I'm enchanted, at the moment, by thoughts of conscious flexibility and looseness. Twice in the last week I've learned very physically that there can be more (and easier!) motion of one part of the body when there's part that's held firm and part that is loose and able to move freely. And I'm messing around with this as a metaphor, as my schedule loosens and life flows along. This has been my problem with handstands, and handstand jumps, all along -- I actually have to be disconnected through a certain part of my body in order to let my hips rise. Tiny Coach got me to jump onto a yoga block taller than I ever have before by having me hold my arms firm, relax the rest, and jump repeatedly (boing, boing, boing) while allowing my hips to actually move with the momentum of the jump..... after we did that, I went and did hand-to-hands with my base and we had more success, both on Friday and on Sunday, with that too. I'm talking like several jumps to balance in a row on both days. We still seem to need a big pile of safety mats in front of us but they're not actually doing anything, they're just there. So yeah, isolations. Where to hold firm, and where to be chill and adaptable while taking in momentum from the world or from others, currently is a fascinating lens on the puzzle of how to plan a life.

Not to put too fine a point on it but uh... I'm really happy right now. There's burnout in some places within me, but lots of little tendrils growing, and lots of satisfying progress being made in the intermediate zones that aren't new and also aren't overtaxed.

I didn't really tell you about trying to hollow out a tree stump to make a planter; that's been a slow process but I've learned that I really enjoy chiseling. (The rubber mallet is easy on my joints, I have a lovely long bath of a slow-burn horror book that's strangely cozy to listen to, and it hits that sweet spot of "moderately active outdoor time in the shade"). Anyway, I finished a layer of chiseling yesterday, and there was a little spider on a little spiderweb in there. I think that a few years ago I would have grabbed a broom. "Idiot" I said to it yesterday, and started chiseling as far away from it as I could. It crawled around, hid for a while and finally came to its tiny little senses and left the stump! Then I swept its remaining web away with the chisel and finished up, and was happy with all that. Very strange.

Handstand lessons are a whole new experience with a) better focus and b) Tiny Coach. I tend to come back from her lessons a little starry-eyed and saying things like "omg, I felt something in my chest that I've never felt before", leading the bug to wonder whether I've been on a date or at a lesson (snerk). But really though. I really did feel something like a rubber band across my sternum, and I felt a part of my right hamstring relax and lengthen in a way that was really startling. I just let her mess with me, the way a vet does things to a cat, and then later I take notes. Amusingly, and related to the above, we did have a moment where she suggested I visualize a spiderweb wrapping around my ribcage and I was like "this is a great moment to tell you about my phobia, let's do something different." LOL. So all of this is good and it's carrying over into my Spring lessons too. I hope it carries into my hand-to-hands where I'm still working through some mental block, but time will probably help there too.

(Speaking of Spring, he's going to have surgery in a couple of weeks and be out for a while, plus Tiny Coach won't be teaching contortion handstands again next session, so my LCS schedule should ease up soon; maybe just in time for my self-discipline to pick up a little and me to train on my own more?)

Disconnected nice things -- social time out on Tuesday that ended abruptly and left me wandering, alone and buzzed, in Boston in the warm late evening. More drawing exercises, mostly done during video calls with two different friends. And several things went well for the squirrel family this week, big things that advance the plot. And the bug and I made reservations to go ride roller coasters at Cedar Point for two days later in the summer! On Thursday night I was jazzed enough about all these things to have trouble sleeping, which I found pretty funny even while it was happening and I wanted to be asleep.

I fumbled my way toward town/community involvement a bit more, attending a neighborhood council meeting and having lunch with a guy who's very connected to the various do-good movements around town. It sounds like my organizational / group leadership skills are very much in need for pretty much everything I might want to be involved in, but... that's where the burnout still lives, so maybe do-gooding can wait. I still have enough of my own stuff to do.

One final amusement: I had my first garden-related anxiety dream last night. All my plants were dying! In real life, the ginger did have a leaf or two go dry from this week's heat wave. It's funny how any pursuit or any level of caretaking creates a whole new genre of "X going wrong" dreams.

I'll be posting separately about the weekend, but in the meantime here we are.

A friend was discussing some bullshit he's dealing with at work (in those terms), and I realized my life is quite low-bullshit at the moment. I guess I expected this, but it's gratifying. The most likely source of bullshit in my life is now probably... me. Me who is definitely going to use every moment of tomorrow in the best possible way, mmhmmm. Me whose hips are definitely going to go forward over my hands, next time I do a straddle jump. Me.

So anyway, the week:

• Flora: Went with motyl in the pouring rain to buy native plants on Thursday. The rain persisted and the plants sat by the side of my house getting soaked for a while, but now they are all in the ground, and labeled too! I bought a wide, shallow pot at Pemberton to set on the pipe/drain I found under the dirt, so that we can cover it while not totally losing it again, and one more random (non-native) plant to go in that -- at the plant store I found myself surprised that living things can be so cheap, and then I realized that living things are almost the only self-assembling products out there. So maybe the low prices do make sense.


• Fauna: speaking of life in my yard, I had a bit of a Boys Don't Cry moment while feeding my favorite squirrel Wispy. Wispy was eating a nut, sat up while directly facing me, and... Wispy, I don't think you're a girl after all. At least, no squirrel doctor would have said so at your birth. So I've been engaged since then in a slightly creepy quest for firm photographic evidence, but in the meantime I think Wispy is never going to give birth to a litter of adorable black squirrels (sniffle). I will have to wish him well in the mating games if I am to see such babies.


• Finished reading, and writing reviews for, The Poppy War and Abundance and My Year of Rest and Relaxation. Two of those were audiobooks! Gardening and house projects both help a lot with getting the hours in. As for Abundance: now I am mildly inspired about infrastructure, know more about what "supply-side" economic discussion is about. I also learned that Ronald Reagan shut down a bunch of solar energy programs that had been started in the 1970s (the 70s, ffs!), and we'd probably be way further along now if that hadn't happened. Sigh.


• House projects included painting over some chips in the bedroom walls, priming/painting over some knots in the stairwell along with cleaning the stairs and baseboards, taking off even more nasty plastic/tape/adhesive from windows, and installing a new bathroom fan with a lot of care for extra noise & rattles. Now it's quieter and doesn't let weird flakes of gunk fall through from the attic.


• One drawing lesson on drawing organic forms. I was supposed to find something mostly based on cylinders, spheres etc but imperfect, and settled on mushrooms, which turn out to be quite fun to draw.

A private lesson with Tiny Coach on Thursday and a group one on Friday just kept blowing my mind.

• I didn't know that one can (and maybe should) do the standard upper-back stretch on the wall with... relaxed traps, just leading from the chest. It's hard to be aware enough to get this right, but it feels great when it works.
  
• And I didn't know that one can hypothetically get a good backbendy stretch sitting in a straddle, with pelvis tilted anterior and arms overhead (holding a weight). My body barely goes there, it's so confused, and its confusion is interesting to me because I have all the pieces.


• She did a very painful massage thing to my right leg that made a knot deflate almost instantly. After she did it I was able to briefly touch my right elbow to toe for the first time in years, though with a calf twinge.

Overall, I've been having a lovely time of it. My human squirrel has been gone for a long weekend away, but I've been happy and engaged around my home. The bug has a birthday tomorrow and I'm looking forward to celebrating with him, plus there'll be acro practice and a chance to do more house things. But if I want to get there it's time to stop writing, wash the dishes (with the next audiobook) and settle down (with the next paper book).

• No good trip goes unpunished -- one of my friends said "this is the most tan I've ever seen you!" and nah, fam, that's just straight-up sun damage. I have freckles on my face, my décolleté has peeled, and my face broke out a little bit (in a perioral dermatitis way, not an acne way) and needed to be soothed with antibiotic lotion from last time. That said, I'm feeling just fine -- two of the people in our cohort of four managed to pull a hamstring, and I sure didn't do that.


• Someone from the ACLU had coffee with me, primarily as a thank-you for the big donation earlier this year (which wasn't all that heartfelt or carefully chosen, I just wanted to milk Zillian for their donation match before I left and the ACLU seemed obviously "good enough"). She showed me a whole slide deck of good stuff they've been up to, and I learned a bit about how they like to use MA as a place to set legal precedent because apparently we have no Trump-appointed judges in our first circuit. I was straight with her about not having that kind of income anymore, and she gave me some follow-up things to look at regarding activism, which I was grateful for.


• The crossword taught me that salmon go from alevin to fry to parr to smolt, and finally adult salmon. Don't confuse smolt with smelt though -- that's a different species. Also, the pia mater is the innermost and most delicate membrane of the three meninges that surround the brain and spinal cord...


• Minor surgery as the date finally arrived to take a blue/purple mystery bump out of my inner lip. Odds are good that it was a venous lake. Whatever it is, it's out now and I have stitches. Stitches in my mouf! They are the dissolveable kind. Out of four, I think one of them has untied itself so far, but the pain and bruising are incredibly minimal and I think it's probably okay. I was even able to attend contortion handstand class the same night as the procedure, with no evident pain or interference. The procedure itself was quick also, although the first shot of anesthetic hurt like a mofo and brought tears to my eyes.


• Spousal scans also ensued, as it turns out my poor bug has a 3mm kidney stone. Oof, and ouch. There's not much I can do about that except be supportive, and encourage him to live his life when it isn't hurting.


• Handstands with Tiny Coach, oh my god. Yeah, I had my first private lesson and my first private group lesson. She teaches handstand abs the way some people do physical therapy, getting way up in my belly and hip muscles, asking me to activate things under one hand but not under the other. Or activating the deep muscle but not the shallow one. She doesn't cue "open your shoulders", she cues "drag your chest up the wall" (or "across the floor", depending). She says "psoad" instead of "psoas" and "thoradic spine" for thoracic. And when doing cobra stretch she says to "get in touch with your inner fern". Friends, I didn't even know I had an inner fern, but now that I know, I am there for it. And this is because I'm admittedly a little besotted with Tiny Coach. But also, she might really be able to teach me to press? Her way is so different. When she starts me out in a tight pike, and has me do ab-lengthening exercises a few times and then put my hands on the ground while she helps me lift my hips, it feels weird but it feels light. Whatever's going on here, I want to learn it.


• I'm trying to spend an hour or so per day on house-type stuff, when circumstances allow. I did a couple of sessions of cleaning up the front hallway with Magic Eraser and an audiobook, and it was quite soothing and rewarding. Then the weather got nicer and I spent similar time tearing landscapers' fabric out of a few square feet of yard so that we can have a little more greenery along the side fence; that turned into a whole lot more Ripping Out Tree Roots than I'd realized when I started.


• I finally tried making gallo pinto, aka Costa Rica style rice & beans, and it turns out to be pretty easy. How pleasant.


• In date night media consumption we finally watched "Common People", the first episode of the latest Black Mirror season, and it was just as dark as advertised. Holy crap. The vast majority of episodes don't live up to the name and just come across as plain SF to me... so... moving along to Love Death + Robots.

I remember reading, in some work context, about "opening loops" and "closing loops", where loop was some kind of corpspeak for "project". I think today should be a loop-closing day.

Yesterday morning at home:

Nobody: ...
Me: Rrrrrgh, Jesus Christ!
Spouse: Huh? What?
Me: When they said "screwdriver component" and it started with a V, they meant the DRINK, the answer is VODKA, ohhhhh they did me so dirty.

So yes, I am now trying to extend my NYT crossword streak out to 6 weeks (42 days). No real reason except that I wanted to make sure I had some fun in my first few weeks out of work, and a coworker of mine told me that his solving times cut in half after he did it daily for 6 weeks. Also, I'm already 29 days in, and having held onto my streak during the hang gliding trip it should be easy to keep going now.

As with most things, this is way more fun if a person has time to savor it a little bit. Yes, the puzzle itself is timed -- which I respect and notice, even though I'm not super focused on the time -- but after that I can keep tabs open for people and things I had to look up, and they're often famous for a reason. Like, did you know that Muhammed Ali had a daughter (Laila Ali) who's my age and retired undefeated as a female professional boxer? What a badass. Today's crossword also made me look up the months in Spanish (clue: enero o abril, answer: mes), which indirectly made me realize that everyone named Julio is actually named July in Spanish. Maybe everyone else already knew that, but it's okay, I probably knew some other answer that someone else wouldn't have.

I haven't gone down the rabbit hole of competitions, or even learning specifically for the puzzles (I probably would benefit from knowing all the damn sports teams of major US cities and universities, and the months / numbers in all the major world languages). I also didn't get "before" stats, although all kinds of advanced stuff can be gotten through xwstats.com because I'm not the only nerd out there. Anyway, the next best would be "now" stats, so here we have 'em:



They're supposed to get harder/slower throughout the week, so this is expected, but look how perfect that stairstep pattern really is! I'm impressed by their understanding of what makes a crossword difficult.

Impressions from the first half of hang gliding camp:

• When I saw that my roommates all had male names, I had visions of becoming the den mother to a handful of young collegiate dudes. This... has not happened. I, at almost 48, am the youngest, as well as lightest and most female. I am, in short, closer to being "the pet". One guy here is 69 and I likely remind him of his freaking daughter. All the dudes are good roomies though -- they are organized, they buy groceries etc.


• I almost packed correctly, by accident. I was right about packing lightweight long sleeves, but I expected to be slightly chilly and in fact it's effing hot on the dunes. However, the sun is so intense that one seeks cover.


• We spent the first morning just running with the glider, switching our grip on it as it lifted itself up from our shoulders, then pushing up its nose ("flaring") to stop it. This lesson made sense once I realized we were launching and landing it. In the afternoon we actually flew, not too high, with an instructor each holding on to a 10-foot tether that attached to a wingtip.


• On the beach that first night, I saw nine pelicans flying in formation, which I'd never seen before.


• The "live oak" trees here spread out a great deal horizontally and are perfect for climbing. Unfortunately, their bark is perfectly grippy exactly until it crumbles, at which point... well anyway, I'm okay.


• I have "hollow bones" -- no, not really, but it means the glider wants to fly when I'm on it. Wants to fly a little bit too soon. Doesn't want to stay on the ground, as if I'm a a bit lighter than I really am. When we practiced handling the glider (on the ground!) in high winds on Tuesday, the 130-lb instructor was able to keep it on the ground -- barely -- and I could not at 137lb. He gave up on teaching me anything, held on to the nose wires and flew me in place, like a kite, just to amuse everyone.


• The Fjallraven technical pants I bought for this trip were absolutely worth it and the right thing to be wearing. I will wear them on all hikes and to all amusement parks forever. I'm generally covering up a lot more than the dudes, and am only dealing with ONE painful patch of sunburn as a result.


• Walking in the dunes has given me a whole new respect for the Fremen. Not only is it hard work, on some sand it really is possible to walk just right (flat-footed, distributing the weight) so that the sand is less disturbed and one doesn't sink in. Hopefully nobody can see me fantasizing about being Zendaya, as we trudge up the hill yet again.


• After the first cold night, I bought a cheapo fleece blanket from the clearance shelf of TJ Maxx. Worth it.


• First day: ewwww, there is sand in the bottom of the shower, ugh, how! Third day: of course there is sand, sand is what there is, sand is everywhere; all is sand. Big deal.


• Today, third day, we had dinner super late because one of the guys got it into his head to grill and there wasn't much urgency in getting started. Then another guy decided to do the drive-through liquor place just for fun, and now I am utterly felled by a can of local cider and a LARGE piece of seared local tuna.


• I understood the glider, as a kite, much better today. We have just been doing these tippy-toe ostrich-style runs down the dune with the glider partly carrying our weight, learning control over the thing, and to be honest this is almost as fun as actual flying because it feels the way that it feels to run in a dream. Big floaty steps. But the more I hold it, the more I practice standing still or carrying it or holding its wires and flying it like a kite, the more it turns into... an acro partner, counterbalancing.


• It's amazing how much there is to learn about wind, air movements and layers, etc. Fluid flow in general has always fascinated me but I never have been so aware of moving, all the time, through rivers and eddies of air. I hope nobody will be shocked if I come home with a sport kite? I think I might need a sport kite, after learning so much.

A week with a bit less socializing, and more reading. Also more time spent working out, since it was Week 1 of a new 8-week session with my Aussie coach and that's always a comedy show as I figure out how to do things. I'm feeling less verbal than expected, at the moment, with a bit more visual and sensation focus happening. I've started to take pictures of things I see that I might like to draw, and to moonwalk here and there when I'm at home. (It's a nice little foot fidget I learned in 2020 during semi-lockdown and, hey, maybe I'll learn even more foot fidgets if I want to. I have, I realize, a somewhat juvenile fascination with and appreciation for small bits of physical playfulness. And I'm all right with that.)

Continuing to get an education on how well I can sleep. The tiredness now shows up, grabs me very firmly, and takes me under fast as soon as I stop resisting it; waking's a bit more gradual but not dogged by exhaustion either, and then there's coffee and the crossword to look forward to.

A discovery: I really appreciate how possible it is to course-correct the day, when the evening is mostly free. Like the evening I felt like I hadn't created anything all day, and so I sat with my beading stuff and made Perse a pair of earrings (dupes of these, which I'd bought for myself. I really like the design). The time when I was overstimulated in the afternoon from hanging out with a kid, and so I collapsed on the couch reading my book in the evening.

Peri, etc: the first week on HRT didn't seem to do anything, but then this last Friday I think I didn't have any hot flashes. Since then it's been either zero or one gentle one per day. So... it's working?? Is it? I had a bit of a rash on my belly where I took off the first estrogen patch, and it didn't fade instantly and I worried about that, but it seems to be almost faded now. I'm annoyed to note that I have not lost weight since last weighing myself 2 weeks ago, though, and it could be the hormonal fuckery changing things or it could be nearly anything else. Heck, maybe it's all shoulder muscle. That would be nice.

I bought cheap joggers -- or are they harem pants? -- with slits running up each leg from ankle to upper thigh, and they make me almost want a hot flash because they're amazing for thermal regulation. Stand up, total coverage. Sit down and pull my knees up, suddenly I'm not wearing pants at all! Hah. I've seen people take fun pictures of double stag handstand in pants like this, with the pants draping off a leg, and maybe I'll try that someday soon.

I got myself and the bug signed up for COBRA this morning, so there's our health care all set through next October (at a price). It's good to do some paperwork / email / digital whatever in the late morning from my desk, anyway, because that's when I most often see the backyard squirrels and know when I should take walnuts down to Wispy. I did a bunch of math in there one day last week, figuring out our quarterly estimated taxes -- which were zero -- and that was annoying until I realized that the annualized numbers probably won't change between now and the end of the year. So I probably won't really need to do the math again every quarter.

The sidewalk tree I've been watering is now the tallest on the block, and the only one flowering. They're not all the same kind of tree, so for all I know they're all equally healthy, but also maybe I'm a good tree guardian and the water's been good for it.

Random and mildly disruptive: I went back to Zillian as a lunch guest for the first time on Thursday, because the new manager of one of my people thought it would be nice to have me there to tell me she'd been promoted. That was a truly sweet idea. The promoted person, who I've seen all the way through from junior hire to staff software engineer (and now she's going to manage, OMG), was happy to see me and also got choked up. She doesn't know how tired I got, and how impossible her sheer mental energy level seems to me now; she only saw the competence. And I guess that's the way of things. I think the tiredness is more psychological than physical, and I'm trying not to fall into ageism here, but I might understand some of my early-career memories better now that I know how few fucks my supervisors had left to give. Behold the field, indeed.

On a related note, I'm hearing about a retirement/sabbatical rule of thumb I'd never heard before: that you should rest for one month per year of service, as a starting point. Wild, man. How much better life might be if we all took a month off per year during our careers.

Last week was characterized mostly by knowledge transfer and handoff. ( Read more... )

So now there's one more week; or less than that, since I failed to post this on Sunday night and now it's Monday.

This morning my more personal farewell email got auto-sent. I gave one talk, out of three scheduled for the week; one more is tomorrow and the last on Friday. There are a couple of reviews that I don't care about but must attend; one negative promo outcome that I got permission to share early so that I could help a more junior manager deliver the bad news; and a couple of goodbye events. Blah blah. Today was dumb and rushed like any other Monday.

For all it's gone reasonably, I did have a little flash of panic on Friday when I felt over-scheduled, and I am not enjoying looking at the March page of my wall calendar, which is filled with post-it flags of important battles, all past now. March's picture was prettier but I want, very literally, to turn the page.

My last post feels impossibly long ago, so buckle up.

The workweek was dominated by promotion discussions on Weds and Thurs, this was technically a short week but the kind that feels like it ages a person a couple of years. Monday was a twelve-hour day for some variety of reasons now forgotten, but likely just a full load of meetings while trying to do a bunch of handover stuff and also prep for the annoyingly high-drama status update that I have to give every 2 weeks on Tuesday. I guess I did my promo pre-review for someone. Then Tuesday I somehow got sucked into working the morning, which I'm not supposed to do at all, and handled the high-pressure status update while also scraping together more supporting evidence for my direct report who was going up for L6. I hit send on the supporting evidence and then played hooky for the afternoon to help Perse organize a bathroom, which was very soothing for my brain even though I felt guilty for skipping a workout. Hell yeah sorting things and labeling bins, I say yeah.

Wednesday we discussed and promoted (or not) a batch of lower-level engineers. It went lightning-fast, was engrossing, and got me absolutely terrified for the L6s because the room was pretty harsh. But on Thursday my direct report (call him PK) and my ex-direct report who I plausibly cared about even more (call her Ana) wound up ranked #1 and #2 of the five L6 cases, and indeed the only two we were collectively recommending to promote with "high confidence". PK sailed right through, with higher votes than I could have dreamed of. And who was fast on her feet with answering questions about Ana's case, which was slightly nonstandard? Who knew right where a critical piece of evidence for strategic thinking was? Who was able to dig up wording from a peer review in realtime, despite not having access to it in official tooling anymore because she'd copied it into a 1:1 doc and remembered it? Do you think it was her manager, hmm? No, it was THIS LADY. And yes, I double-dipped on that case by pre-reviewing and then answering half the "manager questions", no, I wasn't totally objective, no I'm not sorry. I've been sponsoring her since the day I interviewed her, nearly 10 years ago now, and I think she deserves to lead a team, so let that be my swan song. Thus it was that I ended the day victorious beyond my wildest dreams (I'd been hoping for one of those two) and having won the last battle I really was trying to win at Zillian. Also completely wound up, and feeling like despite my exhaustion I might never sleep again.

Exactly right then, my biological daughter Birdie showed up for a weekend visit (!), and all three of us walked over to the squirrel's house for dinner. The walk felt crazy good after two days sitting tensely in a chair, and so did dinner with such a big version of my extended/chosen family, and so did the THC seltzer I brought over for myself. I got Birdie set up with the air mattress, started reading a fun new book, and almost slept through the night.

And then Birdie and I proceeded to have such a nice visit! She's 23 now, and flailing around regarding career as is appropriate at that age. Wanted to hear my career stories (the real version, not the polished version I tell), and I hope I at least managed to normalize some 20s career flail. I ended up showing her the results of last year's aptitude tests, at her request, and she also took away my copy of the Designing Your Life workbook (already written in by yours truly, but with nothing to stop another person from also doing the exercises). We also went to the gym, wandered around adorable Arlington stores with apfelsingail -- the first time I had introduced them to each other -- and toured the Google offices, and visited a cat cafe. We untangled a hose from my yard and properly watered our adopted city-sidewalk tree. At some point we talked about sadder, darker things, as she's been pretty lonely on the west coast and working on a psych ward is messing with her mental health even more. She really wants to shake up her life. She's seriously considering moving here, to have a job for a while and maybe attend medical school in two years, and I would legitimately be really stoked to have her nearby. I think she's got an East Coast brain and will do better with the folks here than with where she is now. She remains a lovely young woman, still way more flexible than I am (grrrr!) and still crazy about all cats but especially Caltrop.

Oh, and Blue Man Group. I took her and the bug to Blue Man Group, and she had no idea what she was getting into so that was fun. I was personally disappointed that a lot of my favorite acts/numbers from the show were gone though -- the act with three simultaneous sets of storyboards all flipping down (theme being that one couldn't read all of them), the "Go Ask Alice" act, the act with them sitting at a table and waggling Twinkies at each other, and the video of fractals with the "God, I love the sound of my own voice" narrator. Yes, there were new things to replace these, including some clever fake commercials; I liked the unnamed medical product with side effects including wandering navel, spontaneous combustion and body dumplings. But overall I found it to be a less philosophical and thought-provoking show than it used to be, and there was less paper involved in the finale too.

Today I took photos of the earrings she liked but didn't buy, so I can go back and pick them up later, and fed her, and briefly got to see one of her college friends, and sent her off to the airplane.

Also good: on Friday the stupid ACLU finally located my wire transfer and sent me a receipt / thank-you, so that I could request the matching donation from Zillian. Which I have now done. And, very late on Thursday night (before the fun book), I tendered my official resignation in the Zillian system so that my last day is now well and truly April 4. And of course Severance Season 2 finally ended, which is where my title comes from.

It's a little bit late now, but I'll very likely sleep through the night, so that's fine.