breathing and sneezing

filing years of documents is dusty work.

also: wanna know how i've lost ten kilos in six months (almost exactly) with no exercise? intermittent fasting, combined with incredibly high stress levels.

this past week became more and more stressful and frustrating, both work-wise and bureaucratically, and i spent friday afternoon trying not to let me heart explode.

we have no control over our situation.

while the jewish agency has determined my family to be jewish enough to migrate, misrad hapnim is blocking us and there aren't any humans to talk to. after a long chat with the lawyer who appears to be the right one for us, she ended the conversion saying "you're going to go through all this whether you like it or not. you can do this 'in chill', or you can make yourself sick".

something i needed to hear, i guess.

this weekend has been BAKING hot. my brain was melting before the temperatures rose. i picked up cardboard boxes yesterday morning and got the car valeted, and we've spent a large chunk of the weekend sorting and triaging and packing. and trying to breathe. and even breathing a bit.

also, gd and i watched a lot of cobra kai last night and it's so well-written and cringy that i'm not sure i can handle any more of it. certainly not with all the other stuff going on in our lives.

shaky

was today tuesday? jesus. two intense (and largely frustrating) work days disrupted by a chat with the consulate during which it became apparent that the woman i've been dealing with is a giant spoke in our wheel, it's just not clear whether that's due to incompetence or malice. we're trying desperately to get permission for mr smear to travel next tuesday. we have no idea whether or not we'll be getting on that flight. in a way, this is all considerably more stressful than leaving montréal, and that was hella stressful...

otherwise, mr smear had a meltdown this evening followed by what appeared to be authentic regret, although he did admit to me later that he was hoping an apology would earn him his privileges back... and tomorrow he starts grade 1. if we're lucky, it'll be for only four days and then we can spend the next while fighting to get him into kitah aleph instead.

this morning i commented on a friend's post about flashbacks not being a thing, i spent ages putting it together in a way to make it clear that i appreciated what he wrote regardless of the specific detail i took issue with but what i subsequently learned was that i really should have just left it. *sigh*

rollercoaster (sleepless)

 i feel like i survived the whirlwind that was today. i've been talking to lawyers since thursday, talking through plans that seem saner or more mind-bogglingly mad depending on the number i times i talk through them, each strategy making less sense than the one before and each path at the mercy of organizations and factors out of our control.

i didn't sleep much last night. i spent a good chunk of it pacing up and down, exhausted, working through conversations i was praying i would be able to have in the morning and dreading the continued silence from the people we thought were on our side. or listening to strangers sharing their stories in series' of voice messages, gleaning little bits and pieces of experience that may actually help us.

this morning i shakily got up, my stomache churning and my heart* thumping in my throat, and called someone who i thought was avoiding me.

no answer.

i subsequently tried calling her second-in-command.

no answer.

and then, suddenly, a call back from the first with a sense of compassion. she appears to have heard me, explained to me why nothing's happening as fast as we need (primarily because everyone's come down with covid, funny how south africans discovered the new strain and got blacklisted but we all seem to be relatively functional), and has agreed to plead our case to the decision-makers. my anxiety's far from gone, but it is dramatically lessened.

* which reminds me, i've lost a fair amount of weight over the past months and i've hit 85kg consistently for the first time in many years. i think my skin's responded at a slant because my AURYN (sonnet 19) seems a bit skew and it didn't before.

after that, a half hour chat with an israeli cousin who's disgusted by what's happening and trying to lend a hand. after that, a chat with the second-in-command, who seems very sympathetic.

in summary: the court process will almost certainly take a lot longer than we can afford - two people have reported stories taking eight and nine months, even - and our quality of life with all the stress and uncertainty is already quite low and will only be lower if we're forced to stay here or go to montreal. we need them to make an exception for us, to let us get there and take care of the details once we arrive. the irony is that nobody disputes whether mr smear should be living in israel, only whether his right to do so is by birth or as an immigrant, and them preventing us for moving because they're not sure makes no sense whatsoever.

my mom came over for a bit, and after we discussed the container quotes we've received we've all agreed that it makes far more sense to send all our belongings to an auction house and buy new things there - it'll certainly be cheaper, and it'll also be less headache.

i spent a good chunk of the day shuffling paperwork, trying to sort out some of my documents, and i took mr smear down to the pool for a break which was fun until i realized that he had been developing a real cough so i rushed him back upstairs...

i don't know what happened, but i was buggered. probably exhaustion from the stress and not sleeping, possibly virus-related? who knows, these days. not only did i feel weak and dizzy, but my phone kept pinging... i finally got up around the time my mom came over for dinner (including an unfortunate and unpleasant outburst by gd about my godmother, triggered by our johannesburg cousin's sister doing something ugly), made another call to a lawyer, had a brief text chat with vfmp and made a call to horseman, got dragged off for dinner. then horseman and i resumed our chat and an hour or so later we said goodbye full of inspirations: i do believe he's invented his own branch of the sciences, a "psychematics", if you will. an exciting idea that thoughts might operate according to mathematical principles.

...

yesterday:

"zoomagogue", trying to shabbat and failing with all the stress

our rabbi friend coming over to swim, pool time before it got too windy

chat with a johannesburg cousin (and the awkwardness of getting help from her and her husband when my own brother's visiting cape town and hasn't even bothered to say hi)

tron + abe's exoddus + tron legacy, mr smear loving all of it along with us

a good sync with vfmp (with some uncomfortable talk about the kid we've both tried to help)

the work week:

my work week was thoroughly disrupted by all the things, even though i managed to be relatively productive my manager did express concern that i'm making it difficult for him to plan availability and productivity and that if this keeps up we may have to take steps. that does not spark joy at all.

friday in particular was effectively a lost cause, i spent most of it on phone calls and emailing and generally freaking out. we had dinner at my mom's with cousins and nephew, it was a jolly fun evening and towards the end everyone learned some things about everyone else's relationship/histories with psychedelics which was pretty hilarious.

...

*breathe*

*remember to breathe*

we celebrated too early

 we're not just deflated, we're stunned, shocked, full of anxiety. i got a very rude awakening yesterday morning in the form of a call from the consulate - it turns out they've recognized gd as jewish, but they have *not* recognized me as his father. not only that, it turns out that the last time i tried to register his birth i was told something critically incorrect: that the paternity test couldn't be done here in south africa. so the good news is that the test can be done in south africa, the bad news is that it's only under very specific (and expensive) conditions and may take months.

months that i would have had in spades if they'd only told me this before.

so now we're in a race against the clock (gd's visa to remain here, her police clearance documents) and we've got to be out of our apartment by the end of this month. i spent all of last night (until 3.30am) hunting through documents and social media for any scrap of evidence i could find, but this morning the consulate called to inform me that almost none of what i found was at all relevant. we've spent today trying to piece together a plan for getting there, but this is extremely stressful and disillusionment is at an all-time high.

the one sliver of light in the darkness is that we've managed to get in touch with our landlord from when we moved in together, and he might be able to help us out.

...

and i had to work today. so i just signed off a few minutes ago after playing catch-up because my hours for both yesterday and today would have been very short otherwise. also, we've been getting quotes for moving with containers and they're expensive. like, big debt expensive, the kind that kept us chasing our tails for three years after we moved here from canada. like, we need to consider whether it doesn't make more sense to sell everything we can and buy new there.

mr smear, for the last while, has been much better behaved and more stable but we did have a few incidents today - although the recovery from those incidents on all our parts was actually pretty impressive. and the biggest issue when we went down to the pool with the neighbour's kid and her cousin was that he really doesn't want to get out of the water even when he's clearly too tired to keep himself afloat (－‸ლ) [does that look like a facepalm? really?)

i think i should go to bed now.

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powering into 2022

dec 26th: whatever else happened that day, hido and i met up for drinks with a couple of other people and had a jolly time, after which i picked up mr smear from my mom's.

during the course of the week between christmas and new year's, we tried to organize an aliyah interview but things became very complicated because the shlichim were all on holiday. however! after pleading with the local representative to find a solution - any solution - we were connected directly with the head of aliyah in south africa who happened to be holidaying in cape town! she agreed to interview us on sunday morning!

new year's eve 2022 was very quiet for us old people. we spent the following evening at "family playdate", with one of mr smear's friends - the kids were mostly good, but the adults enjoyed a delicious dinner and played exploding kittens.

of course, i didn't sleep a wink on saturday night, but on sunday morning we met with her for three hours, we had almost all the documentation she needed and she got to meet the three of us as human beings. although i subsequently spent the rest of the day locating and scanning missing documents, she'd already been convinced (officially) that gd is jewish and mr smear is my son, and on thursday morning we received an official letter to that effect so our rush now is to get them entered into the population registry and mr smear's passport produced. as soon as that's done, we can make travel arrangements!

shehecheyanu, v'kiy'manu, v'higiyanu laz'man hazeh.

the relief and excitement are both overwhelming.

work has been pretty great over the past couple of weeks, and by the end of the week our team was back together, bigger than ever (we've had two new hires in two months). i've made good hours in spite of many distractions, and i've actually managed to get some summer holiday time in with my family too.

so... things are good.

posting this was the first thing on my saturday to-do list, now i'm going to post something for my patreons, and then start rewatching Why Everyone Is Quitting Their Job To Play Call of Duty with an aim to provide subject start times and titles so that i can write a post about it. i've now seen 2.5 hours of it, and i'm convinced that it's the most important video ever uploaded to youtube.

happy new year!