an unexpected delivery

today was wednesday. yesterday was tuesday.

yesterday:

it was a relaxed morning (in spite of some trouble getting mr smear up and at 'em), but it was still a very long, busy day with lots of interruptions and headaches.

you know when you take leave, and get sick because you finally have time to be sick? i got to the office yesterday morning and i crashed.

in the evening, when i finally got around to taking care of the top item on my to-do list, it went south and made me leave the office an hour later than i'd planned*. and then, after getting mr smear into bed, i had to continue working on it until eventually realizing that i literally couldn't resolve it without accessing the problem device in person.

* i complained about mr smear reading instead of spending some time with me, and then the sirens went off and we had a few minutes playing a game together in the bomb shelter :P

i was falling on my nose by the time i went to bed. and i slept right until the 6.3 magnitude earthquake in crete woke me up with our building moving around in circles. nobody else woke up, but i couldn't get back to sleep.

today:

oh, yeah - my neck and back have been moving issues around for days now.

this morning started calmer than yesterday, and after dropping mr smear off at school i met up with gd at the hospital to track down the clinic for her toenail issue. i was expecting to get bounced around a bit, but were sent directly to the right place and were immensely relieved and grateful to get an appointment that's relatively soon. and then we walked to our clinic and immediately received authorization for that appointment, so that's awesome ^_^

...

i had one mission today, and i barely touched it. i arrived at the office in time for a meeting with a third party, and we came up with a workaround strategy but his issues really didn't make sense. then i got sidetracked by our security consultant investigating a weird incident of my computer behaving weirdly in the middle of the night when it was supposed to be sleeping.

on my way to pick up lunch, i checked in with gd about an unexpected delivery i'd received a call about, and it turned out to be a beautiful care package from my company to say thank you for all the extra effort since our coworker passed away.

that was really touching!

over lunch, i came up with a weirdly compelling trump / bibi conspiracy but i now cannot for the life of me remember what it was :/

a new employee also has lots of tattoos, which set of a funny lunch discussion. then we interviewed a really interesting candidate, who's surprisingly knowledgeable and compelling for his relatively short experience.

in the afternoon, one of my coworkers approached me to ask me for some help with third parties, and in an exciting turn of events we managed to resolve his issues in a way that might help me with those of the morning. i've got some more testing to do, but if this works we'll have learned something that'll save us a ton of heartache going forward!

...

in the meanwhile, it was mr smear's last play therapy session and it apparently went well. i feel bad for her because mr smear was her final project, i hope us bailing on her doesn't affect her too badly.

...

i came home relatively early for a pleasant evening (in spite of a work issue that exploded at suppertime but that someone else ended up taking care of).

...

after showering, i was clipping my toenails when i noticed that one of them didn't look right. thinking that it was dirty or that i was developing something funky, i tried scraping it, and to my horror most of it almost came right off then and there 😱

it looks like when i recently smashed my toe into a table leg, it didn a lot more damage than i thought...

...

at bedtime, gd came out laughing because mr smear had wished her a good night and asked her to never commit suicide. i immediately quipped that i'd bet he wouldn't wish me that... and i was right.

but while i was busy being hurt, gd informed me that mr smear's almost done reading maus, and he's obviously affected by art spiegelman's mother committing suicide. so i feel a little less bad.

i thought i'd get work done tonight, but i'm done. g'nite.

the stress ball

yesterday began positively, and so far the post-privileges world is looking pretty good.

when my mother informed me last night that mr smear had reported that he'd lost his privileges forever, i was reminded that on the way to school, we'd seen a child dressed up in a costume and mr smear had asked me how long until halloween.

now, please bear in mind that my son has absolutely no concept of time, and asking him what day it is is usually a silly waste of breath, but also that on our way home on saturday i'd told him that he'd remember the 10th of may as "the last time [he] fucked with me". so when i asked him what day it was, he didn't hesitate to say "11th of may" and it took everything i had to not laugh out loud and continue with "and what month is halloween?" 🤣

the past two work days have been hard, but yesterday was the harder of the two. it was almost exclusively about planning and preparing installations, although it also included entertaining nystire for a bit, reminiscing about our late coworker with our security officer (who's also mourning, but is outsourced so hasn't been doing so as part of the organization), and interviewing a very interesting candidate (i marked him as "strong hire" when i should have marked "proceed", but there's nothing i can do and it's probably fine).

those distractions notwithstanding, it was 7.30pm when we finally had a release candidate that had been sufficiently tested to begin the first installation, and we then found ourselves doing it on unfamiliar hardware and with a very clear and unrealistic looming deadline.

i found myself alone, nursing a beer (my meal replacement) and running into the weirdest issues, until at 10.15pm i realized that i'd been battling for over an hour with a VPN misconfiguration thinking that i was having network issues - that was when i finally left the office and came home; not physically tired, but emotionally completely done.

oh, and my back having been in a spasm for most of the day didn't help much either.

...

i finally posted the following yesterday evening, which i'd been thinking about since being painfully disappointed by a post from tpj a few days ago:

a few days ago an officer that i served with, who lives in a country with some of the most toxic, antisemitic media in the world (the BBC), wrote a post describing israel as an "occupation" and our army as guilty of war crimes. such counterfactual propaganda is painful enough when other people repeat it, but it's led to me recognize that the old adage about the greatest evil being the indifference of good men needs to be revised:

the greatest evil is the amplification of evil by people who we expect to know better. 

in retrospect, our lives since october 7th have been completely overtaken by a perpetual sense of mourning. we mourn the victims of the massacre itself, and all of the traumas both personal and national that the massacre has left behind. we mourn the hostages even as we hope against hope that some of them might return, and we mourn the horrors that they've endured and continue to endure. we mourn the hopes that we've held for so long that peace was somehow just around the corner, and we mourn the decades that we spent deluding ourselves that the situation was so much simpler and less demonic than it is.

but most of all we mourn the illusion that this modern, 21st century, hi-tech world was somehow better than before, that truth and justice were shared values, that antisemitism was fringe, that the west wasn't at war with innumerable enemies who work tirelessly in underhanded ways to turn democracies against themselves. and we mourn each and every friend, relative and supposed ally who falls into the sophisticated propaganda traps and turns their back on us. even more so the jews who don't realize that they're not only unwittingly betraying us over here, but themselves, and every jew everywhere, before us and after us.

perpetual mourning and grief are hard, exhausting pills to swallow.

...

it wasn't an easy night, but at least the massage time in the morning made a big difference. i dropped mr smear off at school, then headed to a post point to collect some ali express gear for gd. i arrived half an hour before opening time, so i hunted around for a coffee shop and settled down with a vegan coffee slushie.

life was good - for all of three seconds, before my phone rang with a video call from a coworker and an unfamiliar name in desperate need of assistance because one of our systems died.

the unpleasantness continued all the way to the office, with only a few minutes' pause as i picked up the package, and for the most part i didn't feel like much of a contributor (although i quietly celebrated a moment when something i'd suggested did help).

i went straight from that to troubleshooting my own installation, which needed to be done before with could continue with any others, with a bunch of different people breathing down my neck...

ultimately, i figured out what we needed to do, delegated some annoying manual labor to the project lead, and between the two of us we managed to get (almost) everything ready by the end of the day.

which is the point at which we were informed that there would be a delay in delivery, but thank you for the effort 🙄

no matter, it's been one heck of a learning experience for the organization, so i'm good with it. i came home relatively early, we all had a very pleasant evening (and watched the first episode of the original naruto series), i've had some time to myself (including playing slay the spire), and although it's late i'm going to at least spend a little time thinking about some of tomorrow's work before hitting the massager and going to bed.

...

the bitcoin money finally landed in our bank account today, and it was enough to cover the last outstanding debt we owed to my mom. this is a very special moment for us ^_^

almost restful

yesterday:

we all went out to pick up pillows (the ones we bought a few weeks ago are expensive but shit), a bunch of nature store groceries and treats, and then "opened a table" at the hummusia. it was great.

but all the while we were on the clock, trying to make arrangements to get mr smear and his friend to cinema city to see a minecraft movie (in english with hebrew subtitles, as they instructed, because his friend's trying to learn english and they both agreed that it's always better to see a movie in its original language 🤣)

we caught the bus home just in time for me to be able to pick up the first car (our "usual" vehicle wasn't available), figure out how to start it (?!), pick up the boys and get them there just in time, and only almost taking a wrong turn once. i turned the wrong way for parking, though, and we ended up having to walk quite a way... his friend's mom had organized the tickets which were supposed to include concession stand items, and figuring that out when they were already running a bit late was stressful.

i eventually got them seated, then headed out to the car to get it back before the reservation ended feeling somewhat liberated by them being okay and somewhat nervous about them being alone (i was thinking about the off-chance of mr smear somehow coming into contact with dairy)

i drove back to the car's parking spot, parked it, and had just left the building when the sirens went off - a houthi attack.

good grief.

i managed to get into a bomb shelter nearby, one full of extremely loud neighbors, while frantically talking to mr smear's friends parents and explaining that they were alone in glilot but that it was probably okay (because the theatre should be a protected area). then i walked home, grabbed a cup of tea, and began the journey to the second car, which was much futher away.

just before arriving there his friend's mother called to say that she'd called him, and that he'd complained that she was disturbing their movie :P

i drove back to cinema city, found a closer parking, and got to the theatre just as the two of them were walking out, full of enthusiasm and joy ^_^

it took a while to get out of there, but it was all good spirits and they decided that mr smear should go to his place for the evening. the drama that followed was him refusing to take stuff for the night (insisting that he didn't want to sleep over), even though he eventually did end up sleeping there.

god knows if he brushed his teeth. i know for sure he didn't shower :/

gd and i made kiddush, ate a very simple dinner, and watched the rest of nightcrawler (meh. also, have i seen it before? but mainly meh - it's a good movie but not something i'm ever in the mood for)

today:

it's weird waking up without mr smear at home. not unpleasant, but weird. after much not-much-ing (including a fair amount of slay the spire), gd and i took care of the humungous pile of dishes, and around lunchtime i called mr smear and heard that the parents were out and that he hadn't eaten. he was "peckish", he told me, but not hungry.

i walked over there (it's a half hour walk) to pick him up, and arrived in time to find them being fed. i ended up being coerced into staying for lunch and extra coffees, while the kids continued with their screen-time marathon, and the adult conversation was excellent and ended in me passionately describing the magic of shakespeare's sonnets to people who really appreciated it.

after that, i finally managed to extricate myself and my boy, and we were off on our way home. in very good spirits.

...

right until i explained that due to the excessive screen time, there would be none until dinner (which at that point was only an hour or two away). what followed was pretty extreme, not just the fighting over screentime and rudeness and consequences, but also me having to physically drag him half the way home.

it was all just fucking awful.

there were big feelings and strong words and angry silences. also a couple of funny moments, but they didn't last. i explained to mr smear that we're going to mark today - the 10th of may - as the last day that he gets away with the bad attitude.

i didn't know whether gd would be supportive or not, but it only took her a minute to realize what he was doing and how and we agreed whole-broken-heartedly that real measures needed to be taken. so while he showered, i figured out how to block specific sites on the computer, initiated an account deletion for roblox, deleted almost all the games of the ps4 (except for my games) and unsubscribed from their plus program, and disabled his access to our steam library.

it's cold turkey time.

there was still some lingering nastiness over a very quiet dinner, but afterwards we all had a family talk and it really feels like we got through to him. in addition to everything else we discussed - and we discussed a lot of stuff - i instructed him to start working on a gratitude journal, which he did with gusto.

bedtime was smooth, and pleasant.

post-bedtime? gd and i are absolutely drained following all the drama. it was a beautiful, restful weekend that was marred by car rental issues, terrorism and a massive parenting failure, and it's pretty hard right now to focus on the good stuff. i'm going to go practice that now.

"hummus thursday"

 "hummus chamishi" - lipgirl's started a pretty dangerous tradition. miraculously, i was fully functional during the post-lunch meeting in spite of it, and i only began to crash around 4.3pm when leaving the office for the weekend.

i taught mr smear how to construct beats in the morning.

it was a tough day, although less than the previous ones since my wednesday night achievement, and us agreeing that the other stuff on my plate was more "nice-to-have" than bona-fide requirements.

our friends' son's barmitzvah was intimate and pleasant.

[writing paused to write a complaint at the discovery that all the construction noise today is from a new project]

this morning so far has been mostly alright, although there was a bit of a meltdown over writing a mother's day card (i still haven't got a clear answer as to why there was yelling and tears). i woke up and used the massager this morning, and my neck's still tender but feeling markedly less so.

...

we're retaking gaza. we should have done this well over a year ago, instead of pandering to the american left and letting the situation get worse. all the land from egypt to jordan belongs to israel, it's in everyone's best interests that we reclaim it and put this jihadist's wet-dream of a  "palestinian" experiment to rest.

more strike

 the strike continues, on through tomorrow. this morning i took mr smear with me to pick up a parcel, and then took him to work, picking up a mother's day gift for gd along the way.

getting him to do his homework was tough, but aside from that having him in the office was fine and he enjoyed coming with me to build a salad for lunch.

it was another annoying work day, though. slightly less annoying, but annoying nonetheless. but: while i didn't get through what i needed to get through at the office, i did make progress and managed to get things working after getting mr smear into bed. and i got to show off something cool to gd, which was fun.

mourning / scrambling to finish the work / dealing with a strike / not sleeping well / overcompensating by snacking and consuming too much caffeine -> wired, tired, not happy

and my wrist's a little sore from too much minesweeper.

i don't know if i'm ready to rest, but i think i'm ready for the massage kit.

strike^3

 omg.

another strike day, and tomorrow's another one. godsdammit.

the day began alright, then involved a fight over misunderstandings, then (once resolved, at least) i headed to the shiva house. i expected to be the only coworker there, but a few others arrived just before me. i talked to a woman i once served with (who turned out to be my late lead's sister-in-law), spoke briefly with the widow, and spent an interesting while with the parents.

then we bussed back to tel aviv, where i met up with gd and mr smear, took him to mexicana, and we walked to the office and ate there.

by the time i was finished eating i was done. my brain was fried - the sensation i suspect of being a kind of mild narcolepsy - and my coworkers needed me functional.

i wasn't functional.

for a while, at least.

anyway, most of the afternoon was me feeling harassed and not getting any of my work done, while simulatenously feeling guilty about feeling harassed. and at the same time dealing with mr smear who couldn't do his homework on the old computer.

it wasn't a particularly successful day. we came home and enjoyed a great dinner, and then i began falling apart. but i had stuff to do, so after putting mr smear to bed and doing some massage-kit time, i did a little of the work (symbolically little) and then got caught up in bullshit. and now it's late.

so i think i'm going to go to bed soon.

strikes

 jesus, another day of the teacher's strike. and tomorrow's another one.

i slept alright, i guess, but still needed some massage time when i woke up - i feel like consistently using it for long periods on my neck is helping. i did another page of hebrew reading with mr smear, and gd and i had an encouraging parental guidance session.

the work day was long, but alright. tough, pressured, but alright.

it was an enormous relief receiving my payslip and seeing that my broker was right - it was just the last one that was out of whack.

during the day i got a call from gd, who'd realized that mr smear wasn't doing the math homework he'd claimed to have done (fight, battle won). when i got home, i taught mr smear how to make beat in cubase before dinner (minor fight, battle won). at bedtime, we had an issue with closing his door (minor fight, battle mostly won).

i thought i might get some work done tonight, but no. youtube and minesweeper, a bunch of random admin chores, slay the spire, and now... back to youtube while i type this, and then... bed.