the not-so-good days that followed

 wednesday: a nightmare of gd's visa renewal, not only did they leave important items off the checklist but she encountered an obstructive PoS who raised all of our anxiety levels (i was trying to work, my mum was accompanying her). they finally got hold of some sympathetic humans, but my gods, *my* nerves were shot after that and the experience really threw me off for the rest of the week. and by "threw me off", i mean that i felt completely wiped out and wouldn't feel right before the weekend. 

on wednesday morning i dropped mr smear off at school and witnessed an event that inspired us to teach him to handle stuff differently. i'm no longer a fan of jim jefferies, 'cause he's turned out to be more of a shit person than his on-stage persona, but he makes a good point that's directly applicable to my six year old's life. so we've been teaching mr smear to be super-kind to assholes as a form of revenge, and reminding ourselves to as well (gd even got good use out of that exact technique with the obstructive guy from before). it's not clear whether he's ready to put it in practice, but he definitely gets a kick out of the idea.

the consulate hadn't contacted me since i sent them my payment details last monday, they were passive-aggressive on the monday and didn't let up on the wednesday. a short while ago they finally gave me a time for the pick up - next week - so hopefully that'll go okay.

friday: dropping mr smear off in the middle of an intersection in salt river was a weird experience, even if it was with his class. they had fun!

on friday night i went to shul in person to commemorate my grandfather's yahrzeit, it was a good experience. after getting mr smear into bed, i spent some time practising leyning properly for the first time since covid struck.

saturday: i'm amazing that i managed to get up early, practice some more, get to shul, and (mostly) do alright (i needed a couple of prompts, but otherwise i was fine). i was feeling super awkward by the time we got to the end of the service, dunno why.

mr smear had excitedly agreed to go to a casting, and when the time came to get in the car he refused. it was with much drama that we eventually got there, and got through it. we have, during and since the incident, explained to him that it's all about the importance of keeping one's word and sticking to agreements (although him being rude to us also wasn't appreciated), and, except in certain, very specific circumstances, we've "cancelled" his screen time for a week. we had no idea what to expect, but in a mere two days things have become... easier. also, and in our opinion incredibly, today we heard that they'd like him to come in again, and we made damn sure that he understood that if he didn't want to do it he needed to tell us immediately.

he wants to do it.

i'm still in disbelief.

if i was wiped out before, saturday afternoon's episode exhausted me to the point of feeling ill. i spent the rest of the afternoon and the entire night feeling terrible and tired, in bed and sleeping fitfully.

sunday:

and then i woke up, and felt... better. not great, but pretty decent. i published the latest page publicly, and aside from that the biggest achievement of the day was installing pikmin bloom. mr smear came out for TWO walks yesterday, voluntarily, once in a light rain with sailor. sailor joined us for dinner, after which i put mr smear to bed (he insisted on switching from the neverending story to the ocean at the end of the lane, go figure), and then i napped for an hour or so before joining vfmp for an exciting game of thunderstone in which he utterly crushed me.

today:

huh, i guess i should mention that i've been playing a lot of sudoku recently. i find it intriguing that hard is sometimes relatively easy and sometimes really hard.

the first thing that happened today was me saying something surprising (to me) out loud: we're staying here until the end of january. if we don't have our shit sorted out by then, we'll have to live out of luggage for a bit (probably at my mom's), but if we get everything sorted out before then we're still going to stay here until then. it doesn't make sense to not know anything about our own timeline, it's stressful and unnecessary.

my cousin came down with covid, so i dropped off our covid kit this morning, filled the car (shocked at how expensive it was), drove all the way home and only then remembered that there's heavy construction work happening over our heads.

another half-day of work, not good.

during my lunch break (breakfast break, i guess? i'm still intermittent fasting) i took a walk to get t-shirts printed. the first place on the map was non-existent, the second place difficult to find (inside the golden acre, i tried three floors before giving up), the third and fourth places turned out to be the same.

i don't understand why so many businesses don't bother to fix their google maps details.

anyway, i was there for quite a while negotiating with the dude, who seemed genuinely grateful to me for showing him a new way of thinking about doing his job, and i really hope he manages to get it done the way i want it before thursday.

mr smear came out with me for another walk today, so enthusiastic that he was happy to go an extra bit just to grow one of his seedlings. he was excited to name the pikmin, and excited to enter their names himself. and then, when we got home, he was excited to drag me to the jungle gym for a bit, which he hasn't done in ages.

i'm tired, it's late, i'm going to bed. soon. after another quick game of sudoku. i feel better about having posted this. maybe tomorrow or the next day i'll be back into some kind of groove and figure out how to manage my "free" time.