The home stretch.

And the week slowly winds down to its final crawl, I look back on it and realize that it has been a Hell of a week, not entirely helped by the children and with a grueling week at work.

Yesterday, I managed to make it through the entire day without completely going insane but it was a very close matter. I got both girls to school on time and then broke out my Palm's client accounts timer, using it to make sure that I gave my office the full four hours I owed them this day. To my pleasure, the VPN worked flawlessly, allowing me to get a lot done and keep up the correspondence despite my physical separation from the office.

After three hours of that, I went to Kouryou-chan's school and attended the parent-teacher conference. There was a lot of good coverage: Kouryou-chan has bright insights into mathematics, she's a reader and a writer above her peers, her handwriting is fabulous, that kind of thing. All of her problems are social; adjusting from Primary to Elementary was hard on her, as she transitioned from being the class leader to the class little kid.

The kidlet and I hit the library where she picked up four more Secrets of Droon books and I discovered Jim Butcher and Marianne De Pierres (not that I had time to read them), and then we got home just in time for Yamaraashi-chan to return from school and fallenpegasus arrived just in time to take them off my hands. He and intrepid_reason were taking them and a third kidlet to a family-friendly event at the UW, a games night. They bowled and played DDR and air hockey and pizza.

I so needed that break. I had a counselling appointment on Capitol Hill and I was almost late for it. I thought to myself that if I left fifteen minutes early I'd have time to stop by the marketplace and pick up Dead Man's Reach, my favorite brand of coffee, but I forgot that I was leaving during rush hour and usually I have Omaha, meaning we breeze by using the carpool lane. I barely made it.

Afterward, I called Pegasus and he said he was heading back. We rendezvoused at his house, which is near where I was, and I took the girls home.

I promised them that I would snuggle them that night, so I let them both go to sleep in my bed. That was a mistake. I went to bed later, after they were in sleep, and they were both terribly tossy-turny. Things came to a head when, at four in the morning, Yamaraashi-chan suddenly turned over and I rolled away from her, falling out of bed. I slammed my elbow into the register grating of the heater vent. If I hadn't been wearing long-sleeves with my pyjamas I would probably have cut myself. I growled the kids into their own beds.

Today, I managed to swing daycare for Kouryou-chan, so I was able to go to work. Despite the lack of sleep I had fun because I finally got my humongous 30 inch, 16:9 aspect ratio monitor and dual quad-core machine with VMware up and running.

The stress has been high this week, obviously, but I found an appropriate target for my venting. I can't believe I wasted 4000 words tearing into every last niggling little contradiction and fallacy some bozo posted to one of the sex advice groups I sometimes read, but his sneering, "What do you get out of an open relationship?" challenge was just to much fun to pass up. Damn, that felt good.

My meditation strategy tonight

So, this evening, completely stressed to the max, I decided to do something about it. I went by the local butcher shop and bought myself a 12-oz NY steak. I stopped by the daycare to pick up Kouryou-chan (Yamaraashi-chan is staying with her mother), and we went by the supermarket for milk and eggs, and while there I bought a huge potato and a head of broccoli.

Kouryou-chan spent the next hour and a half reading to herself while I made an authentic slow-baked potato, trimmed and steamed the broccoli with minced garlic, a splash of olive oil, some coarsely ground sea salt, and a few red pepper flakes, and then broiled the steak in a pre-heated grill pan at 500°F four minutes on one side, three minutes on the other, with nothing more than a pinch or two of that sea salt. Kouryou-chan got by requesting leftover penne and home-made sauce, but she's a pasta fiend so that was okay.

Oh, dinner was bliss. I don't do that much. Even a 12oz prime cut is nine dollars, and the potato takes a long time. But between starting the potato and everything else, I cleaned many kitchen things. I ate the steak, sometimes slathering on horseradish just because, sometime enjoying my dead cow just the way it was. I put two tablespoons of butter and one of sour cream on the potato. I drank half a glass of pretty good wine (47 Pound Cock merlot, California, 2003).

I am now very relaxed, mostly from carbs, fat, and protein. I spent an hour in the kitchen, which is my meditation spot. I feel much, much better. Kouryou-chan and I are going to have ice cream in a little bit.