When I woke up this morning, I felt refreshed and energized—it had been an especially good night’s sleep. Around 8:30, I started packing up to take Hamer to meet her classmate for some exercise. Hamer was particularly excited about the agility ladder and rings that had arrived just the day before. She’d seen others playing with them and thought they looked like a lot of fun.

When we got to the venue, we began by following video tutorials to learn footwork drills using the agility ladder. Hamer and her classmate jumped around, laughing and having a blast. Afterward, we switched to playing badminton. Hamer struggled to hit the shuttlecock and became a bit frustrated, so she set down her racket and grabbed a tennis ball instead. We decided to toss the ball to each other, trying to keep it from touching the ground. Our initial goal was 10 passes, but it proved so difficult that we lowered it to 5. When we finally achieved it, we all cheered.

Next, we experimented with catching the ball using rackets and played agility ring games, like throwing a ring and jumping to it. We took turns twice, then tried forward, backward, and side jumps. Anyone who made a mistake had to run a lap as a penalty. I ended up running twice, which had Hamer and her classmate laughing uncontrollably.

While running, I suggested a relay race, and they were thrilled. We ran three laps around the field, working well together. Despite being sweaty and exhausted, the laughter never stopped. The final game was their favorite—ring toss. Using leaves as “money” to buy rings, the two kids had a blast, laughing and jumping around. Before we knew it, it was noon, and we packed up to head home. On the way, Hamer jokingly pretended to cry, saying, “I don’t want to leave my classmate!”

After lunch, we relaxed in the living room for a while. Seeing it was nearly time for dance practice, Hamer and I began to get ready. Before leaving, I told her, “While you’re dancing, I’ll write in my journal, okay?” She found the idea novel and agreed. At the dance studio, I dropped her off and went to a nearby community study room to write. As I typed, memories of the joyful morning filled my mind, and an hour and a half flew by.

After picking up Hamer, we stopped to buy some cake. On the way, she suddenly asked, “What’s a journal?” After I explained, she said, “I want to write one too!” We agreed that next Saturday, after dance practice, we’d bring our supplies to the study room and write journals together.

When we got home, Xiaoyan was napping, so I helped Hamer with her homework. There wasn’t much to do, so she finished quickly, eating a few small cakes in the process and even taking some with her when we went out again. She wanted to join me at the hair salon, so we went together. Along the way, she chattered excitedly, saying, “I love playing with my classmate’s dad; he’s so much fun!” At the salon, I got a haircut while she had her hair washed, thoroughly enjoying the experience.

On our way back, we hurried to buy groceries. My task for the evening was to make braised noodles with green beans since I’d lost a bet with Xiaoyan over who would cook dinner on Saturday. The green beans cost 10 yuan, and the noodles 5 yuan. When Hamer heard the total price, she laughed and said, “So cheap!” I took the opportunity to explain, “That’s one of the benefits of eating at home.”

At home, Hamer spent a long time chatting on the phone with her classmate while I got busy in the kitchen. Xiaoyan stood nearby with chestnuts, occasionally feeding me bites as I worked. It had been a while since I last cooked, so I carefully followed the recipe step by step, washing, chopping, and cooking the ingredients. Though busy, I found it enjoyable. When Hamer finished her call, she came into the kitchen wanting to help, but by then I was nearly done. She stayed anyway, pretending to arrange dishes and playing the role of a restaurant server.

After an hour, the braised noodles were finally ready. Both Xiaoyan and Hamer loved them, showering me with compliments. That long-lost sense of accomplishment filled me with satisfaction.

In the evening, we lounged on cushions and the sofa in the living room, watching Klaus together while relaxing. During this time, Hamer wrote her Christmas wish list for Santa, ready for him to “collect” it. It wasn’t until 10:30 that we slowly got up to wash up and end the day.

This morning, I placed a phone playing a pinyin song beside Hamer’s pillow before leaving the room. After a while, I returned to wake her, and she slowly got up. Just as she was heading to the bathroom, she suddenly mentioned her nose was bleeding. I quickly helped her pinch her nose to stop the bleeding and assisted her to the bathroom, thinking it might have been caused by the dry overnight air. Later, I noticed her nails were quite long—perhaps she had scratched her nose and ruptured a blood vessel. I silently reminded myself to trim her nails in the evening.

While washing up and getting dressed, Hamer was extra cautious, worried her nose might not have fully stopped bleeding. She was even afraid to blow her nose when she saw mucus. Before we left, she grew anxious again, concerned there might still be traces of blood her classmates would notice. Her mood dipped, and her attitude while packing wasn’t great. We left about five minutes later than usual. She seemed bothered by the delay, but I reassured her, saying, “Today’s a special situation; it’s okay. The teacher will understand.”

After dropping her off at school, I felt unsettled on the way home, reflecting on the chaotic morning. Back at home, as I prepared breakfast and coffee, my frustration showed on my face. Once I finished, I sat down to write in my journal. As the words flowed, my mood gradually eased. Later, while getting ready for work, I noticed Xiaoyan’s expression seemed off. When I asked her what was wrong, she snapped, “So it’s okay for you to have a bad attitude, but no one else can?” I wanted to argue but decided to stay quiet.

The morning was spent addressing the spacing record issue I had discovered the night before. Despite revising it several times, there were still gaps. Thankfully, a colleague caught the problem during the Pull Request review and pointed it out; otherwise, it could have caused major issues. In the afternoon, we went out for field testing, and this time, everything went smoothly. Our first Release Candidate (RC) version was completed on schedule, marking a satisfying milestone.

Around lunchtime, on a whim, I decided to hit the gym. First, I had enough time, and second, I worried that if new issues popped up later in the day, I might miss the chance again. I packed my bag and headed out, feeling unusually cheerful. At the gym, I started with some cardio before moving on to strength training. While there, I bumped into a colleague doing heavy deadlifts. Feeling inspired, I decided to try it myself. She cautioned me, “Your back just recovered; it’s better to avoid this exercise.” Ignoring her advice, I went ahead. The weight was heavy, and after just three lifts, my lower back started to feel uncomfortable. I immediately stopped and switched to bench presses, squats, hip thrusts, and a few new machines. By the end, my arms were sore, but most of my body felt fine—except for my back, which was noticeably strained.

Close to the end of the workday, I thought I’d get home early. I called Xiaoyan and suggested we go out for Hunan noodles together. I also called Hamer and invited her along. Picking her up on my electric scooter, we met Xiaoyan near the noodle shop. By then, my lower back pain had worsened. After finishing our meal, we headed home as the night grew colder. Hamer fell asleep on the scooter, exhausted from the day. On the chilly winter night, the three of us rode home together. Xiaoyan teased me, saying, “You’re just looking for hardship—why didn’t you take the subway instead?” But as I glanced up at the sky, my mood unexpectedly lifted. The night was clear and bright, scattered with clouds, and a single shining star hung in the sky, as if guiding our way. In that moment, everything felt just fine.

Back home, Hamer stayed asleep, skipping her bedtime routine before climbing into bed. I lay flat on the floor to ease my back and ended up chatting with a colleague about ideas from our recent 1-on-1 session.

Today, I experienced “Murphy’s Law” firsthand: anything that can go wrong will go wrong, and if you’re worried about something happening, it’s even more likely. Recently, I moved a “sample interval” task on my Kanban to-do list directly into “done” without properly addressing it. As a result, during this afternoon’s testing, the related issue was uncovered—a mistake born of negligence that taught me a harsh lesson.

The day started off relatively smoothly. In the morning, we had a fairly short sprint meeting, and afterward, I continued working on the debugging issue in Visual Studio that I had left unresolved yesterday. Due to .NET version incompatibility, the debugging functionality wasn’t working properly, which had been bothering me all day. Fortunately, I managed to resolve it before noon. However, because I hadn’t controlled the variables well during testing, I’m still unsure which solution actually worked. I wasn’t willing to risk starting over to test again—time is just too precious, and the process too frustrating.

By noon, I had installed some VS plugins and even explored how to batch-install them via the command line. When I checked the time, it was already 1:30 PM, so I quickly grabbed lunch. In the afternoon, I focused on optimizing the device connection logic and made significant changes. Just as I was fully immersed in work, a colleague discovered a critical issue during testing—the very one tied to Murphy’s Law that I mentioned earlier. The overlooked details had finally caught up with me. The problem surfaced at the worst possible time, which was a bit demoralizing. I then spent most of the afternoon troubleshooting, reproducing, and fixing the issue. By the time I finished, it was already past 8 PM, and my planned gym session had to be canceled. On the way home, I did some on-site testing to verify if the problem was truly resolved, only to stumble upon another major issue. Although it was a bit of a headache, I felt somewhat relieved—it was caught early enough. After giving it some thought, I now have a rough idea of how to address it and plan to tackle it tomorrow at work.

In the evening, Xiaoyan supervised Hamer while she did her homework. Toward the later part, Hamer’s focus completely broke down—she was jumping around with Xiaoyan doing exercises, cutting small pieces of paper, and then fiddling with the mini textbooks I had brought back for her. When she only had one page of homework left, Hamer, after washing up, simply declared, “I’m not doing it anymore,” and packed up to go to bed.

Before bed, Xiaoyan and I chatted about some of the troubles she’s been having with her friends. Lately, she’s been receiving a lot of negative energy, which has left her feeling a bit overwhelmed. I listened quietly. Although I couldn’t offer much help, I hoped she felt a bit more at ease and would eventually find her own way to cope. Toward the end of the conversation, Xiaoyan suddenly brought up what happened last night—she asked what I was thinking when Hamer was walking ahead of us by herself. When I told her, “I was annoyed too,” she cut me off with, “Alright, stop talking.” She could sense that what I was about to say wasn’t what she wanted to hear. Even so, we continued the conversation. I explained my perspective and listened to hers. Although she was still a bit unhappy in the end, we managed to get everything out in the open, which was a good thing overall.

Last night, Xiaoyan had planned to continue taking Hamer to school, but by morning, she felt too tired and ultimately gave up on the idea. She decided not to go to work today, opting instead to take a day off and rest.

The morning’s work went relatively smoothly. I followed the Pomodoro rhythm to tackle tasks and maintained high efficiency. However, around noon, I impulsively upgraded Visual Studio, which led to a frustrating chain of issues. When I resumed work in the afternoon, I discovered a problem with the compiled version due to a .NET version mismatch, making debugging impossible. I tried the usual method of modifying global.json to specify the default version, but it didn’t work. Then, I installed a new SDK for VS, but that didn’t solve it either. I even reinstalled Visual Studio in an attempt to roll back to the previous version, but the issue persisted. The entire afternoon was consumed by this problem, and despite my efforts, it remained unresolved, leaving me feeling incredibly irritated.

In the meantime, I managed to complete some overdue cross-testing tasks, but that hardly made up for the time wasted on the debugging environment issues. Frustrated, I resorted to writing code on my personal computer and debugging on a test machine. Although this workflow was cumbersome, I managed to fix the remaining bugs before the end of the workday. As for the .NET problem, I had no choice but to leave it for tomorrow.

After work, I went to a café to meet Xiaoyan. She had been there in the afternoon having a meal with her colleagues. Later, we went to Hema, where Grandma and Hamer joined us. What was supposed to be a relaxed family shopping trip turned sour over a bag of chips.

Hamer wanted to buy chips, but Xiaoyan refused, worried about the health implications of eating too much junk food. This led to a back-and-forth argument between them. Xiaoyan began a lengthy lecture, starting with the health issues of chips, then moving on to our weekly shopping expenses, and even suggesting canceling next Wednesday’s shopping trip altogether. Hamer gradually lost patience, showing visible frustration and even a bit of anger. Standing on the sidelines, I couldn’t help but feel annoyed too. When Xiaoyan mentioned canceling next week’s trip, I felt it was an unreasonable remark. Since we’ve established Wednesday shopping as a regular family activity, why couldn’t we discuss and find a compromise? If we think some snacks are unhealthy or the expenses are exceeding our budget, we could set rules and adjust gradually. Flat-out rejecting someone’s choice of snack or casually proposing to cancel our routine entirely seemed unnecessary.

On the way home, Hamer walked far ahead of us, as if trying to avoid us. I also didn’t feel like making eye contact with Xiaoyan, and the atmosphere was somewhat awkward. However, as we neared home, Xiaoyan suddenly started running with Hamer, playing around, and eventually, the tension between them dissipated.

At home, Xiaoyan and I had dinner while Hamer quietly worked on her homework. After dinner, Xiaoyan did a dance workout. I watched some Korean drama before joining her, while Hamer remained focused on completing her assignments.