it seems I'm awake

We're experiencing some household-wide Epic Sleep Failure here at the Snugglehaus. I often sleep erratically anyway, then Anna came down with this brutal cold and cough, and now I have the cough, though it seems not as bad as she did. (As a girlfriend told me years ago, in a delightful fake Russian accent: "Strong, like bull. Smart, like tractor.") Our sangha's retreat is this weekend, and if I feel like this, I won't be able to go. I'm normally fairly robust, though, so there's a good chance I'll be better. If not, I have a quiet weekend alone in the house, which isn't so bad.

I can do 15 push-ups! The last 5 hurt my upper incision, which is healed on the surface but will take some time to knit together underneath. It's hard for me to imagine how debilitating a traditional open surgery must be, where they make a huge incision in the abdominal wall. It's such a strange feeling to try and use a normally-reliable muscle and it's just...broken. A couple years ago I was throwing a football around with some kids at Thanksgiving, and after one particular throw my shoulder hurt and one of the muscles (the front part of the deltoid, from the diagrams) stopped working for a few months. I couldn't do push-ups, which meant I couldn't get up in aikido the way I was used to: where before I would put my hands down and push up, I learned to put my elbow down instead, and use my sturdy, jointless upper arm for support. I assume I tore the muscle or something: it got better very slowly, and it was at least 18 months before it was fully healed.

It turns out, though, there's no working around the need for my upper abdominal muscles.

J's excitement at programming in Scratch continues. Sometimes I show him stuff, sometimes he figures things out; he found a bunch of code examples I didn't know were there, and picking those apart seems to be a good way for him to learn. He digs through the icon library and makes varyingly elaborate stories about how the knight was mean and so he's being punished by J making him spin around and grow small. It's pretty adorable.

Not that I've been at work much this past month, but we're finally done with our Quality Initiative (which left me with a single vague assignment I wasn't interested in) and back to re-designing the transcoding system (which is really interesting and it's what I want to do). Now, of course, I have to design and build extremely high-quality components from scratch. This is something I can do, of course, but I feel like it's not necessarily something I have done, so there's a certain sense that I'm now playing with the pros and this is the time to bring my A-game. There's a strong leadership aspect, too: the team already has a leader, but they're looking to me for the vision of the re-design, and I need to communicate with and get everyone understanding and participating. There are several parts of the thing that I don't actually know how to build yet. (It's a big, complicated thing. The broad strokes are clear, many details are not.) I'm happy to be back onto that.

And apparently I'm getting married in three (3!) weeks. We have the expected last-minute RSVPs and cancellations, crabby or insane relatives, ordering cupcakes, writing checks, sorting out final details. Anna and I finally picked witnesses to stand up and sign paperwork and handle logistics the day of the event (because we shouldn't have to worry about stuff, even if we'll be able to, which I doubt): they're both named Ann, so I decided mine would be the Best Ann and Anna's would be the Ann of Honor.