hi-caf

with all the cleaning over the past couple of days, my hands are really, really dry and cracking :/

...

i'm surprised that i slept at all last night, because i was still a bit caffeinated when i woke up this morning.

mr smear got himself to school, and i tried what the original airconditioner man suggested and managed to get the flaps flapping again without further cost 😤

i spent most of my morning being productive on the assessment. i also had that introductory chat with the company i was sure i wouldn't be interested in, and after hearing what they had to say i was honestly surprised to find myself liking the idea very much.

so now i'm up to five applications on the go... but i got exciting news in the evening: the consulting agency called to ask me for my references, so 🤞

i joined my previous (previous-previous?) team for lunch, which was great, and then followed a few of them to their offices for a really good cup of coffee before my coffee-date with an ex-coworker (newly ex). i was sure that something was up, but she was just being supportive and we had a really nice conversation.

once mr smear came home, i gave up on being productive and focused on helping him through his homework (and doing dishes). not only did we get through all his homework (and well, too), but i discovered simply sing which seems cool, though i'm not in a position to be putting down another $10 per month right now for the family plan.

we watched the second episode of dinosaurs over dinner, and then got through the bedtime ritual quickly enough that there was reading and talk-to-granny time, and then i finished reading chapter 24 of the neverending story and said a calmer good night, and now... now i'm trying to decide whether i have it in me to do some more of the assignment, or take the night off.

i'm leaning towards the latter.

two hours later...

 alright, so that late coffee *did* actually work. it also helps that i've remembered that i'm expected to be using AI assistance for the assignment, and i got to a point where doing so made sense. now i feel like i deserve some proper downtime before going to bed.

procrastination

 i'm so over today. especially now, because i just had a fight with mr smear over bedtime protocol (an hour after his bedtime, forty minutes after i finished reading to him) that ended with both of us feeling shit.

but it could have been worse, i guess? we'll find out tomorrow.

...

today can be pretty well summed up by a distinct lack of motivation on my part. between yesterday's cleaning situation, and this morning's focus on the take-home assignment (which i've sunk a few hours into already), and then twenty minutes waiting by the school gate after mr smear was supposed to meet me outside, and then having to tail him to the library after he went by himself but decided to leave his phone at home*, and then overseeing his homework while helping gd out with dinner...

* okay, i'm actually really proud of that one. on the one hand, gd and i were freaking out because we didn't know if he'd even gone in the right direction. on the other hand, he felt confident enough to leave his phone behind, has actually decided that that was a good idea (!!!), and by the time i caught up with him he'd already exchanged the books and was on his way out.

[mr smear just came out to get some water, and i decided to let go (read: cave in) and hope for the best.]

at one point this morning, after completing a chunk of the project, i finally procrastination-cleaned the fans (i've been meaning to do that for days now) and then took a walk to sip a coffee and read a chapter of percy jackson. i wandered into the ridiculously overpriced neighborhood across the road, and decided it's a really awkward and unsociable area.

...

i can't decide if i should put everything down for the night, or dive back in.

professionalism

 godsdammit, today's been long. i accompanied mr smear to school because it was threatening to rain and he had to take sports shoes (tied in an inconvenient way) in addition to his rainboots (i'm not entirely sure he actually switched them for phys ed, he says he did) and an umbrella. thank god i was with him, because he started freaking out on the bus about how the shoes were tied, and whether he should be taking shoes at all, and how to validate his bus ticket when he has an umbrella in his hand 🤦

anyway, we survived the ride to school and he seems to have managed fine while there.

...

i got home, and triggered the take-home challenge along with two or three other application processes. then i spent an hour or two doing some studying for the challenge, and then the airconditioner cleaners arrived.

look. they did a great job cleaning, the airconditioners are definitely, thoroughly clean.

unfortunately, half the mold and grime they removed from the airconditioners ended up on the walls, the floor, and anything we'd accidentally left too close to them.

before they left, i showed them that the flaps aren't working properly, to which they responded that "that's just a function of time" even though the flaps were working just fine before they touched them.

and they left us with soooo muuuuuuch cleaning to do. and we found a couple more mold blooms we hadn't seen before. we're still not completely finished. i'm fucking tired. the skin on my hands is all messed up from the cleaning materials and constant hand-washing.

i wanted to go rollerblading tonight, but i haven't even got started with the solution design.

and i'm going to have to figure out how to fix those damned flaps.

...

scr called me up today, and we had a long chat about a potential partnership. it's kinda scary, but if everything falls into place it would be an incredible opportunity...

...

we took a break from cleaning to go to the dentist, where mr smear and i argued over what constitutes an "i'm hungry" snack and worked on his geography homework* while gd finally got her new tooth installed. for real this time!

* he has to learn the countries around the mediterranean, so i had him sketch a map for himself so he can practice offline. an unintended consequence of this is that i told him about italy being a boot, and he saw a boot, only not the boot 😂

after we got home, i got back into cleaning (and reading the incal) while gd made dinner and mr smear did the math homework, dinner was pleasant, and we've changed our sheets (we're using the new comforter), and mr smear is reading deadpool before bed, and i'm about to get ready for bed and then hope i have it in me to spend some time on the design.

or... procrastinate and dive into it in the morning. did i mention i'm a bit tired?

downturn

 well. i went to the offices, and i sat down and talked for half an hour. it was a pleasant conversation, i think, but it ended on a bit of a weird note and i literally couldn't figure out whether he's going to recommend me or not.

i mean, i really hope he does... i even ate additional pasta this evening...

...

during the interview, we talked about mr smear's school, and his comment (based on his son having gone there) was that it's a bit too individualistic. to which i responded that my son was a bit too individualistic before he arrived there. when i left, i spoke to gd and learned that, on track with that assessment, mr smear had got it into his head to use a marker to turn his face into a skeleton's, and was promptly sent off to the principal's office.

[gd and i giggling hysterically for a minute]

i keep imagining the principal keeping a straight face, as she asked him the following questions: in what class did you do it? what would your parents think? [there's a third question, but neither of us can remember it]

so this evening we had to explain to our son that there is a time and a place for everything... and that perhaps he might want to consider switching from film to theatre...

...

pre-dinner was rough. we had some homework tension (confusing questions about magic squares), though he did recover himself eventually and did quite well. but the downer was me receiving a phone call from the company that mr smear was with me for the interview, which i was certain i'd done really well in, to say that they were proceeding with other candidates.

that doesn't feel good at all.

bedtime was mostly good, though it was the second night in a row that mr smear made the final good night unpleasant, and now i'm processing shitty feelings and thinking about tomorrow morning, when i begin an at-home technical challenge that sounds like it might be complicated.

distraction

 yesterday:

yesterday got off to a busy start, mr smear went to school on his own (on his own by bus, which we only learned later) and we headed to bnei brak for an appointment for gd. the doctor could handle speaking in english, but gd did a great job of breaking her teeth and i was barely needed :)

we got off at the hospital stop to pick up some things on the way home, after which i spent some time preparing for an interview. the interview went well.

i chatted with my mom for a bit (mixed feelings: pride in my nephew for telling my niece what's what, sadness that she's been neglecting her older child while planning on bringing a new one into the world).

i dropped a return package off at the post office and then paid a visit to another clinic to confirm that we'd done the right thing when trying to book gd a followup appointment.

i did some post-interview "homework" (playing around with temporal), and then when it started getting dark i headed to the comic library - which i'd never heard of before - where i found mr smear engrossed in tokyo ghoul.

the library has a lot of interesting stuff, and i was pleasantly surprised to learn that residents have an all-access library membership, so we picked up a copy of the incal and two tokyo ghoul volumes and made our way home, with me investing some time in getting mr smear familiar with the landmarks along the way.

i decided to tell mr smear that i'm leaving it up to him to determine whether what he's reading is appropriate or not, and to talk to me if he encounters anything confusing or disturbing.

just before dinner i discovered that the dinosaurs tv series is on apple tv after all! so after mr smear got through his math homework, we sat down to eat and enjoy the first episode :)

it was an easy bedtime, and i fell asleep pretty easily.

today:

i slept quite a lot last night, and had a lot of strangely unremarkable dreams.

everyone's morning was smooth and positive, and i accompanied mr smear to school "just because". i came home for breakfast, and then gd and i walked to get mr smear's school logo printed on his shirts. on the way back we picked up a lentil soup, then i stopped for a coffee while gd visited the pharmacy, and then we stumbled upon a good place to buy a comforter (it's starting to get colder).

since we've been home, we've chilled, had soup for lunch, and i'm now doing a terrible job of focusing and being productive. it doesn't help that gd's watching 28 years later while i try to be functional...

...

and in an hour or so i'm off to a (hopefully) final interview for the consulting agency 🤞

from the AI warning to the sea

 the rest of yesterday was pretty relaxed. gd and i made extra-strength challah-peño, which really just means extra-delicious, and we finished watching eddie murphy's dr dolittle which - in spite of some spectacularly lazy writing - quite entertaining.

last night before going to bed, mr smear let me know that he'd decided that he did want to finish watching the matrix after all.

today:

gd hasn't been sleeping well, and i've been kind on/off the past weeks, with last night being one where i definitely slept some. but i woke up very early, and finished reading the first percy jackson novel.

extremely underrated.

on the one hand, it pains me to think that i only just discovered percy jackson. on the other, i've just had the distinct pleasure of discovering percy jackson! this is top shelf stuff, a brilliant, exciting blend of modern fantasy and ancient tales.

the first highlight of the day was settling in to watch the second half of the matrix. with AI tech being where it is, it's never been more relevant, and seeing my boy's face light up* as he encountered bullet time and neo's superavatar powers was so much fun!

* as well as his body twitch involuntarily, he's wired different

i spent most of the early part of the day alternating between the second percy jackson book, trying to write up manacher's algorithm in a readable way, and napping.

i'd made a pact with mr smear about going to the beach in the afternoon, which he sealed by doing something that lost him privileges (he has a compulsion that causes him to scratch himself until he has holes in his skin, and that's unfortunately the only tool we have to get it to stop) so he didn't have anything better to do...

so that became the second highlight of the day: we walked across to the promenade to meet up with a couple of ze germans, enjoyed a pleasant walk with them, then separated to go into the sea. the weather was absolutely amazing all day (hot, but dry), the sea was calm (except for very small waves crossing each other), and we chilled in the water as the sun sank lower and eventually set.

it was a glorious evening.

there was - as usual - a little unpleasantness getting mr smear out of the water again, and then out of the sand, and then across to and through the showers, but otherwise everything was cool and we enjoyed a pleasant walk-and-talk until we happened to find an open hummusia.

we opened a table and ate too much, and it was excellent.

by the time we got out of there the buses were running.

while waiting for the bus, my son blew my mind with a suggestion to reinvent the question mark.

we arrived home fairly quickly, and showered, and then i passed out on the couch, as much from the post-hummus food coma as from the day in the sun. i got dragged off the couch to say goodnight to mr smear (i'm starting to give up on keeping his door closed when putting him to bed), then tried and failed to get back to sleep even though i was half-asleep the entire time.

and then suddenly i wasn't, so i've written all of this and am now going to try to tire myself out again with youtube and minesweeper...

strange vacation

 yesterday:

i took mr smear to school, then came straight back home so i would be here when the window guys arrived. after i'd waited a while, i received a phone call telling me that the wheels they ordered were available - matching the ones that were currently installed and broken - but that the guy at the store had explained that the reason they'd broken in the first place is because they weren't designed for big windows.

of course.

on the one hand, they might have been "scamming" me for an upsell of 120 shekels. but, more likely, our idiot landlords skimped on the proper wheels because they're precisely the sort of people who would try to save 120 shekels when it would cost a thousand to have to replace them.

anyway, the work was done well, there's no way i would have been able to do any of it myself, and since they've left every opening and closing of the windows has been a pleasantly smooth surprise.

...

after cleaning the floors and rearranging our apartment, i spent the next couple of hours waiting for the air-conditioning guy, who never came. i took a break from waiting in order to go to the shoemaker to pick up my repaired sneakers, developing a craving for a falafel on the way there and grabbing one on the way back.

the weather was hot and dry, and the walk-and-chew was very pleasant. it strangely gave me the distinct sensation of being on holiday.

the only other time i left the apartment was to spy on mr smear, and i was grateful to find him not on his phone, so i didn't have to go through with the punishment. the homework went well.

in the evening, i received a message from the air-conditioner technician, apologizing and asking if we could do sunday instead.

i'll give him one more chance.

...

we started watching eddie murphy's dr dolittle over dinner - much more entertaining than robert downey jr.'s - and then had a long chat with my mom and sister, and then rushed mr smear into bed.

on my way out, i read a whole lot of missed messages in the school chat and learned that the school (and all the schools) are dealing with a really ugly "internet challenge" that is effectively sexual assault (kadisha), and that there was an incident in mr smear's class :/

i hopped on a bus to visit the mongoose. i don't know if i didn't know, or if i'd forgotten, that his partner's pregnant again 😳

we talked until quite late, then i got in a taxi and came home. and got ready for bed, and passed out.

today:

the day began with a very serious discussion about sexual assault, and us telling mr smear that if he witnesses anything like it he's to do everything in his power to stop it immediately - even if it's his friends - and to report it immediately. i think we successfully impressed on him the significance, the important and the potential consequences...

i took mr smear to school (at this point i feel 90% confident in his bus-taking abilities), and when i returned i tried to introduce gd to orgazmo, but she really wasn't interested and i feel like it's aged very, very poorly. like, the concept is funny, and some of the lines are good, but overall it's very flat.

gd and i headed to the nature store, stopping for a jusa nirvana and vegan chocolate alfajores* on the way. then we stopped at a pharmacy, where we bumped into the new captain's first mate and were trapped together in the queue for a while, making small talk and then discussing how things are going in the office, and how the job hunt is going...

* yeah, it hasn't been such a great week for weight-watching

gd and i walked home, picking up coffee at what used to be coffeeholic, and she seemed to manage it well post-nerve-block which is quite something. we did some more shopping at the local store, then mr smear came home, and after some snacking and napping we decided to put the matrix on.

so: the summary of our experience after the first half is that mr smear's mind was blown, but the existential terror proved too much for him and he asked us to stop because he's just not ready for it.

recovery day (1)

 i dreamed a lot last night, so i'm confident i slept. i accompanied mr smear to school (we remembered to take the bus), and then i made my way to the employment agency. "for adults" 🤔

the man who ushered us in spewed a stream of instructions at us, which led to confusion when we got to the ticket machines and they weren't finished booting up yet. then i followed the instructions and waited at the counter indicated on my ticket, but when the clerk showed up she was immediately pissed off with me and sent me to the waiting area. and as soon as i was seated, she called my number.

she didn't speak any english, which wouldn't have been a big deal had i not used an expression i'd translated from english. and she certainly didn't have any detectable sense of humor.

anyway.

after that, i returned home, where i found a delivery notice from the post office indicating that a package had arrived more than two weeks ago, which meant there was a good chance it had been returned to sender. again. i angrily rushed over to the post office, notice in hand, and confronted the manager... who assured me that she's also very frustrated with the delayed notices, and that there's nobody she can talk to about it.

good grief.

the good news is that they hadn't returned it yet, so i finally picked up our math fluxx and mystery fluxx ^_^

(and rain gear for mr smear)

i barely had time to get those back to the apartment before i had to leave again, and with a brief interlude discussing pre-dawn philosophy with horseman i arrived at the coffee shop to meet with the other firees. it was a good couple of hours spent discussing all sorts of things, but mostly supporting each other, and chatting about how to manage (or not manage) a business and what kinds of things we might be interested in building.

at least skippity joined us this time.

i made my way home chatting with swordschool, and we dived into the weeds of a book he wants to publish and i'm trying to help him edit. it's interesting stuff, and it might play into another side project i've been thinking about.

once mr smear got home, it was all about homework until i received a message from the unhinged, once again claiming that her darling innocent angel had been verbally abused by my son.

i immediately took him to task, and put the fear of god in him, and he told us the details and appeared to be suitably contrite regarding his behavior. but i didn't want to respond to the unhinged without some council, so i asked their teacher to call me.

while i waited (and in-between helping gd prepare dinner), i chatted with someone who wanted our windows machine for much less than i'm asking, leading me to re-evaluate my offer and raise the asking price again, but also format the machine.

when the teacher called me, i was pleasantly surprised, both because she's not usually so easy to get hold of and also because she was aware of the incident and supportive. and then, in addition to that, she informed me that mr smear really has been making an effort, that his behavior's no worse than any of the other kids, and that today he entirely voluntarily participated in her science class.

so while he's being punished for handling the unhinged's daughter really badly, we're also very busy praising him for everything else :P

when i finally responded, just as had been recommended, she responded with a flood of her usual disrespectful bile. i took a screenshot and sent it to the teacher so that she knows what's up, and successfully held myself back from responding.

we had a long and entertaining chat with my mom and sister after dinner, then put mr smear to bed (relatively smoothly), and i'm now trying to decide whether to try to be functional or not. i have lots of interesting stuff to read (swordschool homework), but i also have a very busy day tomorrow supporting the window fix and the air-conditioner cleaning, and the floor cleaning in between with gd only able to yell at me for doing a poor job because she's still recovering from yesterday's nerve block...