I'm over the plague that my daughter brought home from school, and so trying to deal with various things that got put to the side while that was going on. I've got some tortière on the stove, as there's a multi-cultural potluck thing at our daughter's school tomorrow. It's a win-win: if no one likes it, more for me!

Stress levels are a little higher than I'd like. It's a combination of getting back into the swing, it being the end of the federal fiscal year (so management is freaking out more than usual), and some family stuff. I'd mentioned in an earlier pubski that my mother-in-law went a little crazy pants, so we're having a phone call tomorrow evening to see where we're at. I think she's trying to get back to some semblance of the way things were, which ain't happening; my wife and I are looking to see if there's a reason to thaw relations at all from their current state (which involves 0 contact beyond occasional texts between her and my wife). OftenBen, this is the situation I told you about on IRC awhile back.

In spite of this, I find myself a little more with it, and I'm getting a better handle on my inner demons. I'm finding an addiction model really helpful: the way you hear people with alcoholism or histories with drugs talk about how their addiction is always there telling them to drink or get high, there's a part of me always there telling me to feel terrible and that everything is pointless. Recognizing that this isn't something you can turn off with some kind of switch has helped a lot. In the meantime, I'm slowly piecing together what bugs me about the status quo in my life (and the degree to which it is not quo), and getting better about not being amazingly good at something the moment I try it. Progress!