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I ran completely out of cope last night, about 11pm, in the process of getting Colleen into the bedroom. I think I'm a little better now, but probably still fragile. I lost it several times: gibbering, almost completely non-verbal in either direction, and occasionally sobbing silently and without actual tears. This is going to be harder than I expected. I haven't been that out of cope since one night when the Y.D. was a month or so old, sitting on the floor by her crib at some ungodly hour in the morning trying to wake up enough to pick her up and change her. Maybe not even then.

Taught my son-in-law to make fried matzoh this morning -- the Y.D. is home from school today because she can barely walk with her injured knee, and wanted comfort food.

Meta: note that I've switched tags from colleen-200812 to colleen-200901 to mark the fact that she's home from the hospital now.

I think maybe I'm ok now. OK enough to get through the day; that's all I can hope for at this point.

Coping?

I seem to have considerably more cope today. Successfully disconnected Colleen by myself, with Selkit observing. We had a nurse here this evening; selkit did most of it, with me assisting and Marty observing and the nurse walking him through it. So I'll have help.

So I'll have a little more assistance than I expected; I'm not too worried about Colleen's care while I'm at Conflikt. And I have several offers of generic help from various friends. The problem there will be, not so much asking for help (which I have no experience at), as figuring out what help to ask for. I've never had to even think about it before.

I've also discovered that I deal very badly with distractions. Somebody was here when I was disconnecting Colleen this morning; I had to shush them several times. Colleen wanted to stay in the living room this evening; I had to force the conversation back on topic several times, and silence a few distractions. I don't like to do it, and I'm no damned good at doing it politely, but I simply can't work through crosstalk.

I'm going to be working from home most mornings, as I did this afternoon. It's difficult even with the office door shut, but I think it'll work. It'll have to -- I don't have the time or energy for a double commute.