My work inbox is overflowing. I haven’t had time to sort through my emails even once in the 6 weeks I have been working. I react to those that are urgent, delete those that obviously have no archive value, and the rest just piles up.

It struck me recently that working part-time is really a magic trick, sleight of hand, misdirection. One works fewer hours but doesn’t do any less work. Instead the full amount of work gets squeezed into fewer hours. No wonder the firm is so happy to oblige those who want to work part time!

But I wouldn’t want to have any of the alternatives (no work or full time work) either.

Last night Ingrid was awake and screaming for 90 minutes in the middle of the night. Then she slept an hour and then cried for another hour. None of the usual calming methods worked – rocking, patting, shushing, singing, holding. She just cried until she was done and then she went to sleep. And this evening she has done the same thing twice already. I hope this isn’t the beginnings of a new habit.

Eric baked cheese buns, and gifflar (a sort of a croissant-shaped thing) with an orange and coconut filling. Yum.

Ingrid was feeling much better today. Her sleeping until 7:20 yesterday was a clear sign that she was really ill; today we were back to the more normal 6:00 waking.

Went to the market in the afternoon to replenish my stash of frozen brownies, and ended up giving an impromptu demonstration (my second one) of our Stokke pushchair.

A clear majority of my blog posts are of limited interest to strangers. Many are about personal matters that only a friend or a family member would find interesting, or someone who happens to be in a similar life situation. I guess my book reviews could be interesting to someone with a similar taste in books, but I post them irregularly so this blog is not likely to be anyone’s main source for book recommendations. As I said early on, I write the blog really mostly for myself, although I do get a bit of a warm feeling from knowing that others read it too.

But I have quite accidentally managed to write one post that actually seems to draw total strangers. It’s my one and only rant – about the total incompetence of Parcelforce and I guess I wasn’t the only one to have a low opinion of them. Googling for Parcelforce Charlton depot actually brings up my rant in 5th place, which confirms that the contact information for the depot is almost impossible to find. More revealingly, 9 out of the top 10 hits are rants about bad experiences people have had with that depot… More reason to avoid Parcelforce.

Speaking of searches, I have also managed to grab the top spot in Google image search for Homer muumuu. Hmmm.

Yesterday was just the prologue… today she was sick for real. Nose so runny and clogged that at times she could barely breathe through it, sneezing (mostly onto my clothes), plus fever with all its associated tiredness and misery. She even looks obviously unwell, with a puffy face and icky eyes. And during our walk she didn’t even mind lying down, when she would normally try to sit up all the time – instead she just lay there with half-closed eyes and occasionally moved a hand a little bit. Poor thing.

Just in time for the weekend, Ingrid has a cold: sniffles and a bit of a fever.

Finally made a bit of progress on the code. Sometimes all I need is time to get a good start – just that hour or two to get things going – and then the rest sort of flows.

At long last it seems like I’ve found some sort of balance. I’ve gotten through both the first months’ exhaustion and overwhelmedness, and the subsequent boredom, and then the worry about how Ingrid would cope in daycare with me at work. I feel like I have a good balance between time spent working and time spent at home, and I enjoy both. I feel like I know what I am doing and I feel confident about taking care of Ingrid. (I certainly didn’t during the early months!) I get enough sleep, enough to eat and enough exercise and fresh air.

For the first six months, I generally felt that I could cope with “it” (life, the universe and everything) in the current state for a while, but not forever. Now, on the other hand, the situation actually feels sustainable.

Which most likely means that everything is about to be turned upside down soon, ha ha – if I’ve had time to get comfortable, the next change is probably overdue!

We had a sort of an expo / fair at work, where all the different groups in Technology showed off what they do. Saw some cool stuff, especially from the interaction/multimedia team with their video conferencing and phone + IM integration. Didn’t get much coding done at all; the rest of the week is shaping up to be a hectic one.