so @Yuki Kishimoto it looks like putting the subscribe after the notification receiver creation appears to be the key i needed. i appreciate the help.

When you call the 'notifications' method, you subscribe to the notification channel from that precise moment. Anything sent before that moment is not included in the channel. In the code you were subscribing to the relays very early and then you were sending the metadata event (if one of the relays is offline it may take some seconds to continue). Therefore, when the `notifications` method was finally called, it's likely that the events had already been received (but not included in the notification channel). --- I'll update the documentation of the "notifications" method.

ahh good call. classic race condition. well that makes alot of sense. thanks for the help!