Real Life Interlude

Between Ziggy, Cat and the discovery of the Homecoming City of Heroes servers, I found myself without the time to blog that I'd managed to carve out a few weeks ago. But not just that - the post I was working on when I stalled again is necessarily very critical of my mother-in-law and I felt bad about writing and publishing it - especially as the wounds are still very fresh. However, she recently bought me a load of yarn (I think her way of apologising without needing to actually apologise, which I'll take) and I'm feeling better about her and so, strangely, better about writing a post critical of her. Maybe because I can end it with a positive.

Anyway, that will come later. The post is about the first week or so of Ziggys life, which was difficult and stressful and jumbled so will take time to untangle onto the page. Or screen. In the meantime, I've been knitting and playing Heroes (mostly the Reunion server. Global handle @Tempest Skydancer) and looking after Ziggy and Cat and playing Aberrant and Pathfinder and reading and playing Pokemon Go and teaching aerial and occasionally managing to train aerial and overall feeling pretty good.

 
Kitty has been losing weight. We put it down to the stress of Ziggy's arrival at first, but then she seemed ill and we found a lump on her back so took her to the vets. Turned out to be a cyst, but they were aso worried about the weight loss so ran bloods then did an ultrasound and long story short she's either had an infection that she's recovering from and is getting older, or she has lymphoma. We're overfeeding her for a few weeks, then back to the vets. If she's recovering her weight, then it's the former. If not, they can start her on steroids but there's not much more they can offer: lymphoma in cats doesn't respond well to chemotherapy, which would destroy her quality of life and be dangerous to Ziggy. She does seem to be gaining weight so we're hopeful but anxious.

Ziggy's growing so fast! I mean, babies are known to but he's huge for his age. Part of me loves having a mini giant, and part of me wishes to have a little baby. He moved nonstop in the womb, and that hasn't changed, meaning he's also a very strong baby who's already standing with minimal support (he'll hold your fingers and pull himself up, and sometimes he'll let go with one hand and stay upright!), and starting to try to walk (with inconsistent success). He still can't sit unsupported for long, and is nowhere near being able to crawl. He's smiley and chatty and loves singing and shoving things in his mouth. We've let him test a few vegetables - raw carrot sticks seem to help with teething (he has 2 teeth already), while potato appears to be quite tasty and broccoli is both tasty and a great toy (he cried when he ran out).

I have to go back to work tomorrow, which I'm dreading. Only for half a day, then another few half days before I go on gardening leave - my department got sold to a company based in South Africa, which was a bit too far a commute for me. Then 3 more months home with him, but I need to use that time to find a new job to start soon after and that's a stressful feeling, especially with the Brexit bullshit hovering over us. I'm terrible at interviews so need to train that and create a suitable online profile to demonstrate I'm good at my job (which I am, but the technologies I've primarily used are outdated - I've only used IDEs in training seminars - I've mostly coded C, bash and php in vim! But I learn fast. They took me on with no knowledge, no experience at all and in a matter of months I'd overtaken people with years of experience. It's just the way my brain's wired. And I need to learn how to say that in an interview... I don't have a portfolio at the moment because my drive to code has been focussed on what I do at work (and since Ziggy arrived I've been too busy looking after him and have only recently started to recover my life). I'm hoping to use my half days to set up on github, something I probably should have done long before. I also need to dust off and probably reset my linkedin profile. Wish me luck!