double jeopardy

oh, yes - and my fancy, exclusive bank managed to double charge me when transferring a large sum of money last week and they still haven't resolved it. i really don't know what to do at this point. 

breaking of the fast

i not only fasted this yom kippur, and not only did i fast about an hour longer than mandated, but it was a) an easy fast and b) a generally good day of services that ended on an inspirational note. in the rabbi's closing sermon yesterday he alluded to (or perhaps said so explicitly, i heard most but not all of it) the idea that yom kippur serves as a sort of annual near death experience, one wherein we're encouraged not only to be introspective about our behaviour but all to reevaluate who we are and what our priorities are.

as for the fasting being easy, gd and i have both picked up a little weight we're not proud of and i think my having a spare tire helped. (i think a lot of my spare tire blew up from around mr smear's birthday celebrations, we did eat a LOT of cake and donuts. also, living right near an amazing vegan donut shop is definitely a part of it.)

work-wise, thursday and friday were legitimately exciting and today was overall pretty great. the code changes i made amounted to a handful (okay, perhaps even a double-handful) of lines, but the amount of changes we've made peripherally to our testing and deployment process have put me in a much stronger position to take over from next week so we're both feeling pretty good about things.

i dragged mr smear out of bed and took him to school this morning, not realizing that the calendar changed due to the pandemic and he's still on school holiday until next week. if nothing else, we had a good time singing and dancing along to some good rock on the way :)

...

i've been wading through bureaucracy lately and seeming to claw my way up to breathe, which is a nice feeling. now that gd's eligible for permanent residence, we've looked into it and it turns out to be completely meaningless to apply - we'll be gone before the authorities grant it, and once we're outta here it's very unlikely that we'll be coming back any time soon even for a visit. my mother's admitted that she'll be following us to israel, and i'm really hoping that as many of our friends and family as can manage follow suit.

the only disturbing news of the day has come from gd's aliyah application, after a short back-and-forth via email i'm quite worried that the apostille has mislaid all our documents and those things are a) expensive and b) take forever to acquire and c) are preventing us from actually making real plans for our migration.

anyway, it's mr smear's bedtime and i'd like to finish the first season of the hunters AND get some sleep tonight.

middle of the road

wednesday night, in bed after a long but pretty successful day that included two meaningful achievements at work, a pleasant lunchtime walk in the sun and another excursions in the evening (the weather's improving).

there's pressure on, but it's okay.

hopefully i'll sleep well tonight. our physio finally worked on my legs a bit this afternoon and it was torture, she's got a theory that this whole rls thing i've been struggling with for the past decade might just be rooted in a lack of a good stretch or two. we'll see. 

a calm storm

 this week has been a whirlwind. it was a lot more relaxed than the previous one, but not necessarily good. i was mostly unfocused, and the one big job i had i never got around to because i was busying myself with everything else. uh, anything else, if i'm being totally honest...

mr smear finally went back to school, which was a bit of a relief. i've been doing what i can to circumvent resistance and at this point i've got no idea what's working and what's not.

i've had zero time and headspace to work on anything outside of my main gig, and have been making a point of catching up sleep. i'm not sure it's helping.

taking care of my tattoos has been annoying as always, but this time the aftercare has been a lot more time consuming and going over each individual line has become an interesting little ritual. i'm really stoked by how good my arm looks, now, and i'm really glad i got this done before breaking for swimming season.

it's the tail end of rosh hashana right now, i'm not sure this has been a great couple of days but i'm hoping that it's the start of a much better year than what we've all been going through. that would be nice.

"one moment"s

i began this post while sitting here listening to our friday night temple service after a painful and exhausting week, thinking about All The Things and being really grateful for the right now.

two new tattoos, and a beautiful sketch for the next page of the graphic novel in hand.

a beautiful family.

enough space to breathe, even if i'm desperate for a holiday.

a rough plan for the coming year, both in work and in where we'll be.

one small step at a time. details are just details.

one foot in front of the other

i cannot believe it's wednesday night, i'm completely buggered and i'm finding it very hard to be effective and productive.

the big changes this week are about mr smear and independence; setting things up so he can do as much as possible on his own seems to be making a bit of a (positive) difference in his behaviour. it's not all roses, but another side-effect is that we're somehow managing to bring his bedtimes under control and this is the third night in a row that we've gotten him in bed at a more reasonable hour.

other good news: gd's police clearance is ready! we're waiting for the courier to pick it up and then we're one step closer to getting all her documents apostilled...

i found this ted talk on posture and movement fascinating, and it seems to be helping a bit.

i'm a bit sad that the past couple of months have been devoid of new tattoos, but i'm excited to have completed another one yesterday and i'm looking forward to my friday and saturday sessions!

the end of a good weekend

 i'm tired, and i've been very tired for a long time. this weekend was relatively restful, though. yesterday afternoon i took mr smear to my mom's and helped her hang paintings and set up a micro-ups for her router, and last night gd and i started with season 2 of the boys - we've just finished the second episode now, and i'm not disappointed.

oh! and mr smear and i started playing the gardens between yesterday, it's beautiful but it goes from kid-friendly to wtf in only a couple of levels... beautiful game, though, and we can play it together.

this morning was a slow-starter, i did spend a fair amount of time learning flutter things before we headed out to bakoven to meet a cousin and hike a bike trail... it was a beautiful day, and we all really enjoyed the outing! we then headed to plant and sat down to enjoy the buffet, the food was great and i definitely had more desserts than i should have.

the afternoon involved a nap (for me) while gd and mr smear played video games, i joined for a bit before getting motion sickness (toy story 3's sunnyside daycare area and way too much with the driving / riding), then the neighbour kid came over for a couple of hours and i spent wasted most of that time trying to point a subdomain at my api gateway. yee gods, why is it so damned hard to find an explanation as to how to do it? (i think i've figured out everything from the aws side, but my domain host's dns settings are clearly doing something wrong)

tonight's struggle with mr smear was about getting him to practice eating with a knife and fork. ffs, it's the things we expect to be easy in this parenting shit that always seem to be the hardest.

i'm tired, i feel like i should just call it a night.

de/motivate and going up

thursday:

thursday was a bit mixed up. the good parts involved an exciting consultation with my tattoo artist and booking three sessions for next week, a little bit of success at work, a couple of pleasant short walks outside in our first spring weather and some great moments with my boy. the bad parts involved having difficulty focusing on work, realizing i've only done half my hours this week, and a moment over spilled coconut water that triggered a painful talking-to about my anger issues...

the big news from thursday was shocking and a bit surreal: my israeli passport has been renewed, but only for two years. they're literally giving me two years to return before i lose my passport. we were tentatively planning on moving before 2022, but now there's external pressure and that's made everything a lot more real.

after getting mr smear to bed i worked with SxS until late. i'm sad that the issues we're having are with the deprecated solution that's still being sold (silverlight is awful), but i enjoyed seeing what's become of the replacement project i initiated!

yesterday:

 a general sense of the day being out of control, working at my mom's, a weird dmv experience (none of us could figure out what we were waiting for, and i somehow picked up my new license ahead of the handful of people who'd been waiting longer than me), eventually getting through it and back for breakfast-lunch (i hadn't eaten a thing until 1.30pm, and then i ate too much) before diving in to strange mysteries that we only managed to resolve about an hour after i'd planned to leave for the weekend.

...

loadshedding didn't quite happen to us last night, but it did drop our internet connection:

MY ISP: "press 1 for support"
ME: *presses 1*
MY ISP: "press 1 for support"

because that's what i'd rather be doing on a friday night than watching a movie.

...

this morning:

it's been a chilled morning, except for the bit where a stripe support agent effectively deleted my account (intentionally!) because i'd complained about receiving 30 copies of the same sms. wtaf.

*yawn* second coffee and try-to-continue-doing-nothing time.

a-flutter

 godsdammit, flutter IS awesome. i've got a good grasp on which components i need to Do The Thing, and i'm pretty sure that i can produce functionality incrementally in a way that solves the real problems from the get-go.

it's also been nice to receive positive-seeming feedback from our rabbis after i mailed them all a letter regarding kashrut and veganism. we really need to start moving forward.

gd's new tattoos are hardcore, even if i had to go out in the rain to pay for them (they're only accepting cash payments now) and i was ten blocks from home when i realized that i'd forgotten my mask :S

i've got another consultation tomorrow - i'm a bit bummed that our artist hasn't been communicating with me but he seems enthusiastic enough whenever i get hold of him...

i've had a bit of a head-cold (it seems) the past couple of days, but at least mr smear seems to be better. he's really loving the activity books i picked up yesterday, just in time for miserable weather :)

1 kilo off my shoulders

 two passport applications, lots of bureaucratic details, loads of double-triple checking, and i finally couriered off two half-kilo bundles this morning. not that i didn't know these things were stressing me, but i didn't realize how much until they were gone and i could fill my lungs again.

yesterday and today were both less-than-half-days at work, so i'm not feeling entirely constructive. but overall i feel like things are okay.

yesterday i had a horrible experience with mr smear that was triggered by a failed attempt at a martial arts lesson, we all learned some shit and i think our dynamic's shifted a bit. i kind feel like it's for the better, but i guess we'll see?

i was going to work with SxS this evening but he delayed, so i've been watching steve hofstetter instead and am very soon on my way to bed.