namaste

i went to bed late, but i got up way earlier than i wanted to. the day started off well, i spent the pre-school morning coaching mr smear through some last minute exam prep - he did really well! - and then rushed through an online grocery shopping so i could leave on time to get to our yoga class.

no buses for a while, i ended up arriving *just* in time.

it was a good class, not easy, with some highly amusing moments. i didn't hurt myself.

we got a good company breakfast and i showered before settling in to work; getting in and out of the shower wasn't amazing, but the shower itself is worth it!

it was a pretty successful day. but the most successful part wasn't me: i asked mr smear how his day went and i could hear how pleased he was with himself, because he's pretty confident he aced the test. i am too, but i'm more excited about him not only getting a handle on the math, but feeling good about it too ^_^

i left early to meet gd and mr smear at the pain clinic for her nerve block, but we arrived there to discover that we hadn't sorted out authorization and it costs thousands of shekels, so we rebooked, did some shopping and went home.

i got mr smear to work on cubase for a while, but to be fair a lot of the actual work was done by me. *we* put together a pretty cool beat, and i hope he learned as much as he claims he did :P

then he read a couple of pages of hebrew harry potter - well - we had an early dinner and a pleasant evening. i spent a couple of hours ironing out issues with the language project, where user registration and authentication is now good enough to move on to the interesting stuff.

it's late again. hopefully i'll sleep.

instruction unclear

 last night's sleep was relatively okay, i guess 🤷

[i just burned the tip of my tongue on my tea]

image of the day:

after leaving a big note, and directly telling two of my coworkers not to touch the server under any circumstances, i discovered it had been unplugged and the entire office was treated to my very loud, very not-amused "WHAT - THE - FUCK?!"

some of the team found the story amusing, and one of them posted the above to the entire company along with the message "instruction unclear: unplugged the cable" 😂

...

i got mr smear through some basic math exercises this morning, and in the evening i worked with him on some of the matific exercises he'd been struggling with and which happened to provide great preparation for his math test tomorrow. and then he did some good hebrew reading before dinner, and all-in-all i'm relieved to see him not only improving his general attitude but gaining in math confidence as well.

...

aside from the unplugging incident, work today was memorable for an unusual but mostly positive interview, and an unspeakably unpleasant bathroom incident.

...

my wife is now bugging me about the language project, so i spent some time working on it this morning before leaving for the office and i'll probably do a little bit more now. tomorrow's a big day - gd's got another nerve block procedure in the afternoon - and i can't help feeling i'm forgetting something important...

...

 my prayer was answered, and the rest of the day went pretty smoothly.

i mentioned GPU stuff the other day, this morning my boss asked if it would help if we asked our contact at AWS for some help. literally the moment i agreed, i wondered out loud if perhaps we'd been using the wrong instance type the entire time.

two short experiments later, and all of our cloud instance issues were resolved 🤦

otherwise, i spent the entire day doing everything except what my boss had asked me to do, except for the last half hour during which i managed to get it done.

the bus ride home was interrupted by a dramatic search for vegan mayo.

i ran mr smear through some math homework before dinner, and he did pretty well. my new approach has had some major wins, and some minor losses, but all-in-all i feel i'm on the right track.

i spent some time half-heartedly working on the new language project, and just played a little bit of slay the spire. i'm nervous about going to bed. i'm pretty sure my mother has the sleep cheat code installed, i wonder if i don't...

... probably not :P

...

i have yet to have a fully positive audible experience. either the books i want aren't available, or the narration sucks.

a rough start to the week

i crashed soon after posting last night (although i did play some slay the spire first), but then i woke up around 12.30am with lower back and hip discomfort (like, bad) and spent the next six hours suffering both physically, and from an incessant stream of work-related nightmares.

then i got up to battle mr smear over homework, which we got through in the end but not without some feelings. 

i joined gd in taking him to the clinic, but turned around when i received a message from the mongoose to say that i could drop their old duvet off. i was almost home when i received a call from gd informing me that i neeses to take mr smear to school on my way. 

the walk to the school was unpleasant, to the point where i had to threaten him to stop fighting before we arrived. i really hope he doesn't dump his shit vibe on anyone else today. 

now i'm on the bus, praying that the rest of the day is smoother. 

calm

i'm tired, i'm posting this and drinking my "good night" tea (chamomile and lavender) and then hopefully i'll be ready to get a full night's sleep.

thursday:

it was a relatively calm work day. one of my coworkers was particularly condescending to me and another guy, and i'm quite proud of how calmly i handled it.

lipgirl organized an insanely rich, delicious vegan cake for the happy hour and i ended up bringing most of it home. i've eaten too much cake over the course of the last three days.

i was inspired by some of mr smear's homework questions to try teaching him math from first principles. he was so excited by how much easier it is to understand what's going on!

yesterday:

yesterday was the first day in a long while that i've had bandwidth for stuff other than my day job. i installed the windsurf IDE - which i'm so far quite pleased with (it feels more comfortable than cursor, but i haven't got lots of experience with the important stuff yet) - and recalibrated myself with some of my side projects.

some of the morning was just spent doing nothing.

after mr smear came home from school, i took him to meet gd and urchin at the sarona market for lunch. overall it was great, although it would have been better had mexicana not screwed up my order and given me chicken when i'd asked for vegan. yecch.

by the time we left, our buses weren't running anymore and it was searing hot at the bus stop. fortunately, while we were waiting for a taxi to accept our fare, an unexpected bus arrived that worked for us and we got home without further stress.

the rest of the afternoon was pretty relaxed. i looked up an alternative synagogue - we don't like the politics of the one we've been going to - but the only one that's close by and checks all the boxes doesn't hold friday night services which i find really confusing.

gd experimented with yuba for dinner, which came out really nicely.

today:

i started the day by initializing a language learning project, and then by reading more of a canticle for leibowitz when out spare mouse turned out to be broken and mr smear demanded (begged) to use our main computer.

and then i rotated my rollerblade wheels (which i've been meaning to do for ages) and mr smear and i rode to the beach.

it was a glorious beach day. the rides there and back were good (minus a minor incident where i tried to give him a boost and accidentally pushed him over), we found a spot in the shade for our gear, and we spent plenty of time having fun in the water.

i did get slightly sunburned, but not painfully.

the afternoon was spent reading and napping, and in the evening (after doing a whole bunch of dishes) i walked to our friends to deliver the barmitzvah present two weeks late, and we were all very awkward about it.

it was a very pleasant evening.

i've just bought tickets to a family-friendly trance party next weekend in honor of shavuot. we're praying that gd can come with (she's got a nerve block procedure on tuesday), but even if it's just me and mr smear i think it's going to be awesome ^_^

,,,

tomorrow is towel day! which in my book is synonymous with DNA testing day.

שֶׁהֶחֱיָנוּ וְקִיְּמָנוּ וְהִגִּיעָנוּ לַזְּמַן הַזֶּה

slower

 tuesday and wednesday.

mr smear was hardcore on sunday night, then chilled on monday. then yesterday's homework session was horrible again - just awful - and today was (mostly) chilled. i feel like we're getting somewhere, but my god it's taking a lot of strain to get there.

even though things were rough yesterday, they ended on a positive vibe and mutual appreciation. at least that.

...

i've been eating somewhat poorly the past few days, lots of snacking. this week the stress has dropped dramatically from day to day, and i've found myself feeling a bit lost in spite of all the urgent surprises i have thrown at me throughout the day.

usually around leaving time...

...

i think i might be falling asleep.

psycho-analytics

 these past two days have been very much about mr smear, and about GPU drivers.

i fucking hate the GPU driver ecosystem. for the biggest / hottest industry in the world, they're all behaving like rank amateurs and the entire experience is just shit. yesterday morning i felt out of my depth, but after hours of coaching by experts i can now confidently say that i'm both out of my depth and incredibly disappointed.

otherwise, yesterday morning began with mr smear informing me - after we left the apartment - that he'd rather walk to school alone. to have some alone time, and because he's nine.

i'm still feeling the feelings.

in the afternoon we had a parent-teacher's meeting. first, his home-room teacher was running half an hour late, and we had a severe conversation with the other mother who was waiting. i was surprised to find an israeli who considered my opinion on coalition governments being the source of our political evil to be plausible.

the irony is that the left and center of the country have consistently forced bibi to collude with the far right and ultra-orthodox for decades, which has been much more damaging to the majority than bibi worrying about just bibi.

right now, the government has cut funding to the teachers in a way that makes it more attractive to them to quit before year-end and go on welfare. we're all fucked.

as for mr smear, both teachers we spoke to said the same things, the same things we expected and have been dealing with ourselves. we've explicitly authorized them to take his drawing gear away if he doesn't comply, but we're shocked that that would even be necessary...

on the way home, gd warned mr smear multiple times to cooperate with me when i helped him with his math homework. we got through an exercise just fine, and then he did his usual thing and played dumb, trying to "run out the clock".

i lost my temper. in a bad way. as in, i'm embarrassed by how angry i got and i'm embarrassed by how long it took me to calm down again. the temper lasted most of the hour or two that it took to get him to finish the damned exercise, but by the end i felt like he'd understood the rules of engagement and that we weren't fucking around.

then we had dinner, and got him ready for bed. it was very late.

this morning began on a much better note, and for half an hour before he went to school i ran him through some exercises on paper, and it was a pleasant and positive experience. i even got him to follow basic algebra!

after that, gd had a bit of a meltdown about the psychologists demanding she see them in person, then took it out on mr smear's therapist during our parental guidance session 🙄

anyway, we had an interesting and constructive session during which i think i've understood something about mr smear's behavior, which consolidated during our evening call with my mom into the following: all of his bad behaviors - when physically changing locations, socially, and academically - all have the same common thread: not moving, at any cost.

but at the same time, he's had this issue with trying to control everything in counterproductive ways since he was a toddler, and it's only when we really crack down on him that he calms down and proceeds in a healthy way. so perhaps all of this is the same cause, and that we've been misinterpreting it all this time: it's not that he hasn't had enough control over his life, it's that he's had too much control and the lack of clear boundaries has left him holding on to where he is for dear life.

obviously we don't know any of that for sure, but it makes sense. either way, although these past few weeks have been particularly emotionally and psychologically exhausting we're seeing positive results.

...

today's highlight - outside of mr smear's progress, which included a good hebrew reading session when i got home - occurred during a knowledge transfer by the contractor who built the basis for one of our systems. he was speaking softly and the guys in the row behind us were talking loudly, so i turned around to shush them saying "please guys, we're recording". one of the guys yelled "then stop recording!" and everyone in the row - including my boss and one of our founders - immediately began calling me names as loudly as they could to make sure it's in the recording 😂

...

i'm not particularly physically tired but i'm soooo over today, and i've got work to do. i also sent a message this morning to ze german who's been consulting me to explain that i have zero bandwidth, and then an email to his contractor to explain that i can't really help her...

lessons not learned

yesterday evening:

highlight of the - day? evening? - we decided to toast vegan marshmallows over a small candle. they didn't toast as well as real ones, but we still had fun.

today:

another tough night.

today began with another fight with mr smear over screentime.

most of the day has been (and still is) all about my shoulder, it's been locked and hurting and massaging has only brought temporary relief :(

aside from letting mr smear go to a friend's place to screentime while we ventured out in 38° weather to have coffee with our friends, it was a day spent indoors doing not much. i played a fair amount of slay the spire and read a little bit of a canticle for leibowitz, which i'm enjoying when i have the headspace to read.

great, now i suddenly feel guilty for avoiding working this evening...