For the first time in literally months, my in-laws are all gone for twenty-four hours and I can live with my wife and kids like a normal family, versus being trapped in the basement by myself like some kind of prisoner. It's weird being near so many windows, feeling actual sunlight on me, listening in on the normal daily activity of my own children, the tick of a nearby clock, hearing cars drive by, and so forth.

Just for one day, we get to be a normal family again. It's a very emotional experience for me-- like I was released from jail for a few hours' worth of visitation.

A couple of nights ago I read the intro to the diary of the woman who was receiving the visions of Jesus's Divine Mercy, and who instructed the course of the painting. I don't have it in front of me, but the intro contained excerpts like "I never said 'no' to God", and "even though my nature quaked at what He would ask me to do, and even though those things seemed beyond my capacity, I did them anyway."

That's how I'm trying to frame my present ordeal: God has me on this crazy road for some kind of purpose that only He understands. I'm trying to say "yes" to things even when they are challenging. But at the same time, what I wouldn't give to "undo" so many things in my life.

My latest tribulations have involved running multiple church-related meetings over the past few days. I'm good at it and I see that the need is there, which is why I've stepped in to fill that void. But boy is it stressful. We also have a need for more Mass Servers, and I made an agreement with my son: if I learn how to do it first, he will join in after I can instruct him. But that's yet another source of anxiety for me, as I have to perform this new function during Masses on both Saturday and Sunday mornings.

So it's another church meeting presentation on Friday, followed by the two Masses this weekend. Then you get to my career, which is a complete cluster.

I've been tasked with "modernizing" some applications, which involves re-writing chunks of them so they work in what's idiotically named "Kubernetes". I have twenty-seven years of professional IT experience. This "Kubernetes", "Terraform", "Azure AD", "GitHub Actions", and all the rest of it is the worst technology stack I've ever encountered. It's duct tape and bailing wire. Rather than solving business problems I'm having to spend hundreds of hours just getting what used to be basically automatic stuff going, like deployments and security. I'm absolutely miserable at work.

I also have a lot of stressors with parenting, in large part because I essentially don't live with my kids-- so rather than being present on a daily basis to make little course corrections, I'm finding out about stuff sometimes weeks later, then having to do re-teaching and damage control. It all just feels so wrong.

On a different subject matter, the kids and I have been trying to squeeze in episodes of the anime "Code Geass", and have been really enjoying it. In fact, we think it's something of a masterpiece. I've also been watching "Gintama" on my own, lots of hilarious episodes-- my favorite of which was the one where the ninja chick is supposed to assassinate this rat crime guy, and convinces the tagging-long Gin that the crime boss is her father, and that Gin is to ask for her hand in marriage. "Who are all of these guys??" "Uhhh, they're... all ex-boyfriends!"

Finally, my daughter just had her fifteenth birthday and is going to start Driver's Ed soon-- she is very much looking forward to that. The old WRX is just sitting there waiting for her!