The cold deep water numbs my pain... in Life in General

So it’s been a while. Very happy to see Prosebox doing so well - the site looks great and everything seems to work. And it also looks like it’s being used by quite a few people - I hope every one of those people get as much out of Prosebox as I’ve gotten out of a previous online journaling website…

Been a few changes this year. New job, new house, major developments with two of our three children and all of that combined is causing some serious stress in our marriage.

If there’s one lesson I’ve learned over the last few years is that it’s not easy to live your life by black and white rules. I’m very proud of my Honor - yes, Honor with a capital H. I’ve had plenty of difficult situations in my life and I feel I’ve handled all of them Honorably. More importantly I’ve had a number of people tell me I’ve handled situations Honorably.

The new job is in an industry I’ve never worked in before and it’s pure management - I haven’t written any code since last March. For the most part I hate it. It’s a complete waste of my talent, stressful and the industry is a bit unsavory (Banking/Financial). The only real upside is the money - I got roughly a 30% raise taking this job. Unless there are some major, unexpected changes I’ll leave this job after I’ve been there two years. I can leave earlier if I want to but there would be financial repercussions that I’d rather avoid…

We’ve moved about 8 hours away from “home” and bought a house that was a complete dump - 7 or 8 layers of wallpaper on every wall, luxuriant purple carpet from the late 70’s and several significant leaks. We’re doing most of the repairs ourselves. My wife has removed almost all of the wallpaper and I’ve torn down lots of drywall and replace the subfloor in the Master Bedroom. I figure it will take at least a year to finish the house: ceramic tile in the wet rooms (bathrooms and kitchen) and engineered hardwoods everywhere else.

Our son had his 3rd birthday in July. A very sweet little boy who is very attached to his mother. We’ve been asking his pediatrician about autism for about a year. We had him tested about six weeks ago and have been told he has a very significant speech delay (duh, we’re well aware of that) and an IQ of around 75. An IQ in that range puts him in the bottom 5% of the population. We have a meeting in a week with the local school district to go over their recommendations for various services such as speech and developmental therapies. Our first IEP.

• Entry title is a lyric from Assemblage 23’s song “Underneath the Ice”