trauma

hi everyone, I know you're not all interested in what's going on but i believe the incident and our next actions need to be clear to everyone.

mr smear came home bitten yesterday, and no matter how awful the parents of the biter might feel that does not delegitimize how upset we are. not only were we upset about the bite, but also about the fact that there've been incidents in the class that have not been reported to the parents which we feel is a significant breach of trust on the part of the school.
having said all that, what gd posted yesterday was NOT targeted at the parents or biter, it was NOT targeted at the school and there was no intention to make any of those involved feel bad. they were not the subject of the post.

but one of you, or some of you, felt the need to generate drama and presented a twisted interpretation of the post to the parents and administration. i speak to you when i say this: you are a repulsive human being and, if you're "friends" with the parents, you're horrible, sadistic friends.

as of today we are officially pulling mr smear out of the [school] system. for those of you sanctimoniously bullying other parents and getting off on speaking badly or lying behind other people's backs, maybe you know who you are or maybe you don't but we are done with you dominating a class of generally good and kind parents. we want our son raised with good jewish values and whatever this is, it isn't it. for those of you who don't believe you're part of the problem i invite you to talk to us directly, as should have been done yesterday.

to the majority of decent parents in the class, it has been a pleasure and i hope the rest of the year is a positive one for all.

the past four days have been a nightmare, a post on facebook generated unbelievable drama and prompted an insulting and unprofessional response from our son's principal. as the story has unfolded it's become more surreal and psychotic and gd and i have been suffering serious anxiety and distress. we don't know what's going to happen for the rest of the school year and we're uncertain about 2018, but if nothing else we've learned a literally incredible amount about our peers and the administration. i couldn't even make up the majority of this shit if i tried.

tuesday 14th:

00.30am

up early and better than usual, although gd not so much

an online argument about marijuana use during pregnancy that upset me, but ultimately was resolved in a way that restored a little faith in humanity

buying swim gear on the way to picking up mr smear (good lord, people can be inefficient when you're in a hurry), and being inspired to post the following: "this movember, imagine a world in which hitler's mustache was for all men's health, not just for those in the third reich"

a struggle to get mr smear to nap and suppressing anger when gd accidentally interfered, settling in to get some work done when he finally did pass out on the couch

actually taking a short nap myself, then excitedly feeding mr smear chickpea curry and a bunch of other good things while working before taking him for a quick visit to the aquarium; back home in time for gd's class but ending up in a situation that cost half an hour and saw us heading out after my mom had arrived - the plus side being that she could read to him for a bit before i came home to feed him and get him ready for bed

gd's vegan lasagne a raging success for both me and mr smear, an easier shower and toothbrushing than usual and then watching educational material (the science of marijuana use during pregnancy and last week tonight) until gd returned home

gd's hit and miss in class (i wish she'd document her crazy stories), then working until i got sucked in to watching a movie with her that was only interesting because we didn't realize it was a romcom and were waiting for a payoff that was never going to come...

wednesday 15th:

... we stopped watching nine minutes before the end, after which i figured out what was wrong with my service bus app - nothing. the diagnostic tools are just really badly designed.

working until 2.20am, going to bed sensing that the morning would be tough but feeling like things were back to "normal"

up at 6am, my brain and body remembering just how "normal" being torn out of a great sleep feels, down for most of the morning but not getting much rest, getting up in a hurry to pick up mr smear and leaving late, after a discussion between gd and our nanny combined with an argument with SJWs the night before lit a fire under my ass

mr smear falling asleep on our way up to the apartment, grabbing a quick bite and heading over to my mom's to work and learn about the craziness in zimbabwe (hooray for mugabe's resignation!)

quickly picking up mr smear and taking him for a playdate at the aquarium, the kids had a lot of fun and we had some interesting conversations, home for gd's incredible vegan lasagne, shower and bedtime, an israeli miniseries on a 2006 murder in katzrin, work

thursday 16th:

leg skin issues, giving up on debating with SJWs (they will beat you with ignorance, or irrationality, or both), tortuous microsoft training videos and in bed around 2am

an intensely crazy dream thoroughly disrupted by mr smear crying out from a nightmare, then waking up at 6am and lying miserably uselessly on the couch until finally able to get up to drink coffee around 8am

cats being assholes to humans? funny. humans being assholes to cats? not funny.

gd losing her cool with the builders on the way out, mr smear singing loudly on the way in, staying to watch his teacher giving him a drawing / colour test and feeling immensely proud at how impressed they were (he's holding the pens correctly, drawing really good circles, staying in the lines and identifying all the colours!)

drinking coffee and watching jordan peterson videos before a very positive therapy session, completing forms and going to pick up mr smear - authorizing mr smear's friend's nanny to take him out of class, filling the tank while mr smear passed out to tool's lateralus, scanning documents, reading the long earth, devouring fry's vegan chicken strips and chilli in bed and resting during nap time
"waking up" for mr smear demanding mommy's pancakes and settling for végépaté, his infectious enthusiasm for shabbat tunes i like, taking him for a walk with my mom, picking up falafel wraps for dinner, a rushed shower and getting gd to class on time

(a man begging for clothing, all manner of red flags should've been set off)

interesting classes, the discussion on kashrut spawning conversations about veganism - being careful to call myself plant-based rather than vegan in light of the previous sjw encounter

home for funny stories about mr smear's bedtime, eating then taking my mom home before trying again to make some progress with gd's visa application and getting some work done

friday 17th:

deciding i'd had enough at 1.30am

cries at 6am for the "falafel be'laffa" leftovers (and tearing into them), holding in a poop that he told me about while i was brushing his teeth until he could get to the potty (!!!)

dropping him off horrified by a teacher's daughter's screams (seriously, teach YOUR freakin' kid not to do that), leaving a message for a manager to "park in your own parking space", a long gym prep

my first proper swim in more than two decades began with a bad landing on a hidden shelf, severely bruising my foot and pulling things up to (but thankfully not including) my knee. i was pleasantly surprised to find my muscle memory taking over and being very comfortable doing the work, but not so pleasantly surprised to discover just how pathetic my cardio was and each lap became an enormous struggle to complete because i couldn't handle the breathing

ice pack time waiting for gd, picking up mr smear and gd walking home while i (painfully) walked with him to his friend's place, dropped him off, and (painfully) walked back to the car, drove to my mom's, completed a service fabric tutorial, picked up mr smear, extracted him sleeping in spite of the asshole manager in the next bay parking even closer, fleeing an idiot talking loudly on his phone while following me (can you not see the sleeping baby, dipshit?!), involving the new building manager in the parking story, going to my mom's for half an hour of azure db play, returning home to say goodbye to the nanny (who hadn't seen mr smear since the morning)

a little work, a little play (music and food), showering and handing mr smear over to my mom before heading to the temple for a quick and pleasant service

a nice dinner but with a very naughty boy, my foot aching the whole time, watching the first episode of dinosaurs before putting mr smear to bed, seeing my mom out and watching a few minutes of québécois stand-up before hitting the hay before half past ten

saturday 18th:

6.30 up, 8am really up, mr smear's right foot sketching (and a disagreement over labelling his knees in english and hebrew), my foot much improved, a little drama getting ready for the company gardens, mr smear passing out as we arrived (as is his wont), hula hoops and devil sticks, meeting pseudo-friends at the breastfeeding tent

an emptier vegan market than usual with sailor and his girlfriend, fantastic food, delicious green tea kombucha that we realized a bit late shouldn't have been given to mr smear, him and his biker buddy and way too much "what does iron man do?" (an exhausting little game mr smear invented), hitting heavy traffic on the way home and mr smear down for nap number two

zimbabwéen revelries not only not waking mr smear but infectiously exciting, an afternoon of relaxing and a very short evening; passing out on the couch watching a great deadpan comedian, judah friedlander: america is the greatest country in the united states, moving myself to bed a couple of hours later

sunday 19th:

1.30am waking up for a scary night terror that we were infuriatingly helpless to stop and took about half an hour to bring to an end (not sure at the time if putting on a dr horrible's sing-along blog song worked, or if i put it on as he was winding down) and another half hour before he was ready to sleep again; not sure if actually a night terror or if the same inexplicable freak out from the week before. not helped by occasional loud, sudden and very unpleasantly metallic pipe noises from the apartment above us.

5.30am waking from a long, remarkably real and intense nightmare of living next to a twisted evil mastermind and slowly becoming involved in his machinations, maintaining his respect for me until i mistakenly admitted the possibility that i could understand how they got to where they were, at which point he began playing games to try to "own" me that included involving my family. trying to leave, witnessing an idiot tying his shoelaces in the way of a vehicle and causing the driver to plow into other cars, becoming caught in a long night of drugs and manipulation, and avoiding a trap intending to get me to use his credit card to buy my way out of an unjust situation, returning to his house to return the card and stumbling across prisoners in a walk in fridge, narrowly avoiding insane death traps and gearing up to stand up to him

up early but not feeling wasted as usual, a morning of duplo, gaming and nursery rhymes, shopping at mambo's turning out to be considerably more expensive than intended, home for a heavy half-challah and hummus lunch, reading the long earth which has progressed from "pretty interesting" to "pretty damned amazing", napping a bit until it was mr smear's turn; things were going well until i needed to wash his hands and he became uncooperative, and there's nothing that'll break my nap-space like fighting with a two year old

getting him to sleep pretty quickly but unable to rest myself so finally succeeding with a work task that had been frustrating me for a couple of weeks

an amusing evening, mom's visit and holiday strategizing, postponing mr smear's shower but making up the effort in a never-ending goodnight that gd and i had to manage in shifts

judah friedlander is amazing

in bed 10.30pm-ish

monday 20th:

an excruciating long night, unable to get comfortable and hurting my back

epic dream of a military course, switching teams, a day at the beach, returning after a break to less food subsidies, waking up from a spaceship simulation where the enemy ship was closing in on me and the weaponized creatures strapped to the front were prepared to board us with their fertility increased by ten percent

the last dream from the top of a building preparing for a celebration by throwing flare guns set to go off on timers to the ground

mr smear refusing to leave his bed for quite a while, hebrew nursery rhymes, multiple struggles to get him showered and ready for school with gd losing patience, dropping her off at the chiropractor and mr smear arriving in class just as one of the girls bit a boy really badly

working at my mom's, picking up mr smear and finding he'd also been bitten

an exciting coffee with sailor (too much caffeine?), a little work and a cloudy and cold afternoon indoors (mr smear playing memory and reflex games, watching my neighbour totoro and asterix)

a few achievements during the day, including booking gd's visa appointment and a night in a lodge, and really worrying news from the CRA that we owe them lots of money for some inexplicable reason

a very long bedtime with the poor kid begging for "falafel be'laffa" that we didn't have

my "me time" involving posting photos and reading how some idiot israelis sold a product to the wrong customer, then diving in to azure / edge.js material

tuesday 21st:

that moment when you realize, after having given up looking for your watch a while ago, that it was on your wrist all along

pleasant rain accompanying a lot of reading with some interesting discoveries along the way

2am to bed, 4.10 up for another night freak out (quicker on the dr horrible draw, it was effective), 5.15 finally moving out of our bed and going back to sleep, everyone waking up late after 8am

a jump start to the day being bullied by some of the class moms who not only made the biting incident public but also took a bullshit story to the principal, trying to get work done in spite of the drama, being frustrated and disappointed by a principal we thought was smarter than that and pulling mr smear out of the school

a long afternoon, a trek for an unappreciated laffa, a struggle to nap, and waking up inexplicably upset

a long afternoon, eventually my mom coming over and discussing the days events, watching robert mugabe's retirement letter being read before putting mr smear to bed; another interminably long goodnight and finally winning with some surprise inspiration... he was yelling to us that he was iron man, so i told him that iron man was going to sleep and he just lay down and went to sleep!

the realization that we need to get him a bed and fast, as he can now climb out the crib

early bed 22.30 on a cold, wet, mid-november night

wednesday 22nd:

up at 6.30 when mr smear woke up but alone as he didn't want to leave his crib for the first half hour

picking up mr smear's belongings from the school and bumping into bitermom, who smugly demonstrated that she had manipulated the principal's inappropriate behaviour

working at my mom's, heading off at lunchtime to meet with the school director who was my middle school principal to discuss the week's events. pleasantly surprised to find him considerably smarter and wiser than i remembered him, the anxiety made it hard to breath at the beginning but whether he agreed or not he clearly heard and appreciated what i had to say. i eventually walked out of there with a relatively good feeling, continued to work until 4.

the mouse usb chip jumping out of my hand and into a half a cup of coffee. taking mr smear to meet our friend at three anchor bay and letting mr smear play in the rock pools for the first time, learning incredible details about the parents meeting that we hadn't been invited to, including who started all the trouble, the psychotic tales of weeping bitermom (the whole community knows! people keep coming up to me and making fun of my daughter!), mr smear's class bestie's mother not interested in playdates with us anymore because *we're* too much drama

discovering another surprise debt to the CRA we hadn't seen coming, and locking out gd's account because it asked my security question expecting her answers. at least the debt is interest free.

mr smear's big potty before bed (he had to be convinced *not* to hold it in)

... falling asleep early from stress exhaustion...

thursday 23rd:

up early and rushing to get to the new school for an 8.30am interview, i have a feeling we shouldn't have been as forthcoming as we were but the principal seemed understanding and we were very impressed with the teachers and facilities. what turned a pleasant experience sour in the blink of an eye was a phone call from my anger management therapist asking if i was on my way, we hadn't realized that we'd been there for over an hour and a half and i hadn't received any alerts. then we realized that gd was late for her therapy too, so THAT was an expensive morning...

we looked at beds for mr smear instead, then met my mom at vida; mr smear loved his almond babychino and did *not* like me leaving for a few minutes. we took him home to nap, and i spent the next couple of hours finally figuring out the azure changes required for my project after four days of struggling (i did a little dance)

taking mr smear for a park walk and ride, coming home to a very quick dinner and shower before leaving him with my mother and going to a particularly exciting class during which gd and i experienced a couple of revelations about genesis

coming home to gd's amazing chocolate cake and a little telly and work and desk clearing

friday 24th:

i can't believe this insane week isn't over yet. oh, hello 1.30am.