Week of January 9, 2023

Whew, what a week. Charlie was pretty sick all week and stayed home from daycare. We think it was a combination of something resembling the flu and RSV from the symptoms, plus some teething thrown in there for good measure. He was miserable.

For the first three days there was a lot of vomiting and fevers. We had to wash every towel and blanket in our house, most pillows, and some rugs. We each changed our outfits multiple times a day and took multiple showers. His nose was also a constant faucet, so anything that didn’t have puke on it had snot. Then came the constipation and coughing, and shortly after that the teething pain. He was lethargic most of the week. Days 4 and 5 were the worst. Thankfully his breathing remained good and we were able to keep fluids in him long enough for him to make diapers, so no need for urgent care.

He wanted to be held 24/7 (and cried when we had to set him down), so Amanda and I switched off who help him and who slept or worked. It was like we reverted to the newborn days again. To top it off, Amanda and I both got sick too, but thankully not as sick as Charlie. Coughs, sore throats, and fatigue were the extent of it for us. COVID tests came back negative, so we don’t know what it was. It was certainly the most challenging parenting week we’ve had since he was a newborn. I am very thankful to have Amanda as my partner and that we are usually on the same page for how to handle tough situations like this and share the burden. I’m also thankful we have flexible jobs and work from home.

Poor kid. We felt so bad for him.

As of writing this on Saturday night, he is on the upswing. Eating more, less coughing, interested in playing again, and he slept in his own bed for a little bit.

The night before Charlie got sick, we made fondue at home for dinner. It was a hit, but a consequence I hadn’t considered is that Charlie may refuse to eat anything for the foreseeable future if he can’t poke it with a fondue fork first

Charlie has been signing with us more to communicate what he wants, and it has been really gratifying to watch his face light up when we understand what he is signing and he gets his desired outcome.

I helped a friend move on Saturday morning. I was pleasantly surprised that despite carrying heavy furniture down the stairs of a three floor walk up and the aforementioned tribulations of the week, I didn’t get fatigued or even out of breath.

I’m reminded that it is nice to have a circle of friends who help each other.

They were giving away an old soda siphon that doesn’t work, so I grabbed it on a whim. After some trial and error I finally got it apart to figure out what is wrong with it (the rubber gaskets are cracked and hard as rocks). So guess who is researching replacement parts for antique soda siphons?

I’ve been testing out posting short-form content on this site first, then syndicating it out to Mastodon and Twitter. That stuff lives over at https://cagrimmett.com/notes for the time being. I’ll probably change the slug to micro or something. Or maybe I’ll rename my digital garden (current called notes.cagrimmet.com) instead, I haven’t decided.

I have more work to do there because Twitter syndication isn’t working as well as I’d hoped and I don’t love how my theme is outputting the content, so I haven’t linked it in the navigation yet. I had hoped to work on it more this week, but, well, you know.

Since Twitter APIs for third parties aren’t working for unknown reasons, I probably wouldn’t have made much progress on this front anyway.

I’ve also been sending out web mentions for Likes that I post here at https://cagrimmett.com/likes/ (also not linked in the nav yet).

#indieweb

I’m getting really into tiki recently. Moreso the drinks and less the faux-Polynesian pop-culture, though there is some of it that isn’t problematic. I’ve been searching out various styles of rums locally (see both Smuggler’s Cove categories and Minimalist Tiki categories), tracking down recipes, and mixing up fun concoctions at home.

We also got a standalone pellet ice maker, which is a game changer. We’d definitely use it for more than cocktails, too. I’m envisioning lots of iced tea and coffee this summer.

Who thought we’d be talking about gas stoves on social media this week?

My take on gas stoves: I prefer them, but the emissions do give me pause with a baby in the house, so I have CO detectors on all floors and replaced my recirculating fan with an actual exhaust fan (which entailed cutting a hole in the side of my house to install a vent).

One thing a lot of people miss is that you can still cook on gas when the power is out, which is becoming a more frequent occurrence recently. When the power was out for a week, it was really nice to be able to cook meals and heat water.

I currently have no plans to replace my gas stove. If/when it is no longer working and more expensive to fix than replace, I’ll revisit the current evidence and reconsider.

I’ve had a lot of time for reading books or listening to audiobooks this week, so I’ve been reading Blake Crouch’s Recursion and listening to more of book 5 of Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle.

For TV/movies, we watched a lot of Songs for Littles, various remakes of 101 Dalmatians, the 1992 animated Aladdin, and Animal Planet this week with the sick boy. Even when he is sick and lethargic, he loves animals. Zebras, giraffes, and dogs never fail to get his attention.

At work I’ve been thinking a lot about payment platforms and migrating billing tokens for subscriptions with zero downtime and zero customer disruption (purchases and renewals still happening during the migration period). I also did some FTP dumpster diving on a site we recently started working with to resurrect some code that had gone missing, which was a success. Another week in the life of the Special Projects Team.

Last week’s meal plan didn’t work out as expected. See above. I did make a couple of the meals (chicken soup, gyudon), but we ate a lot of leftovers and purchased meals from the freezer, so carrying over some of the plan from last week to this week. Some TBD here because Amanda will be traveling and what I cook will be somewhat dependent on how my work day goes and how Charlie is.

Sunday: Gnocci + sauce + arugula side salad with vinaigrette

Monday: Pork tenderloin with green beans and roasted potatoes

Tuesday: Chicken and pasta (garlic linguine?), side of roasted zucchini

Wednesday: TBD

Thursday: TBD

Friday: Dinner with friends, menu TBD

Saturday: Sheet pan dinner of some kind. Probably chicken thighs + some kind of vegetable. Side of cous cous?

Sunday: White bean soup with coconut milk?

See you again next week. In the meantime, post some cool stuff on your own feed and send me the link. Also reach out to me if you are into tiki and want to chat, or if you have knowledge about antique soda siphons.