fog

heavy fog creeped in this evening, the foghorn is sounding and so is one of our neighbors' alarm clocks. for at least half an hour already. 

yesterday was quite social, our ex-neighbors dropped off their child and we took the kids to the promenade for a bit, in the evening protoplasm and his partner came over for a really fun dinner.

sailor also arrived for dinner, but exactly 23 hours and 50 minutes late.

i spent a lot of yesterday playing games / trying to figure out what i wanted to do with my day, and ended up playing day of the tentacle with mr smear. we continued with a couple more sessions today.

i had a long chat with mongoose yesterday, a strategy session, and between conversations with him and my mom and sailor i'm beginning to worry that i'm not earning enough to live in tel aviv. a new stress... 

i managed to get through a fair amount of filing this afternoon, so that's good. i also managed to sort out travel-friendly 2nd factor authentication for most of my accounts, in spite of the experience being so awful it made me really angry.

uninstalling sudoku

it's 4.15am and i'm uninstalling sudoku. i've been playing it constantly for weeks. i need to make space for other things. like reading. 

post-twosday + two weeks

 twosday came and went, and i'm honestly a little taken aback that it's thursday night already. this has been a week.

work-wise, it's been pretty cool - mostly kinda fun, actually. mr smear's been doing pretty well, although we're a bit concerned about his eyesight (he keeps creeping up to the tv, but it *is* significantly harder to read after the enormous projector screen we've gotten used to ), and i dropped him off at school the other day and got to witness his class bully antagonising him entirely unprovoked.

speaking of reading - he's reading really well!

we ran into my nephew and his girlfriend on the promenade the other day, mr smear really enjoyed playing with their dog (and their dog's friends) and catching up was pleasant.

it's my grandmother's yahrzeit day today, my mother and i went to the synagogue this evening. going to an orthodox shul gets weirder and weirder as time goes by.

i've put some hours into my side project, and i'm making a bit of progress. all things considered, i'm quite pleased with myself.

we just finished watching vampire hunter d. it's really not a good movie. i was so excited about the graphic novel coming out that i'd somehow conflated it with ninja scroll. i hope that is as good as i remember...

...

we got a call from someone a the consulate this afternoon, it appears they know just about as much as we do... i guess we'll keep an eye on things, but right now it seems pretty clear that we can land and that the best course of action is to get on the plane and go.

two. weeks.

better and better

 well, it's not 100% certain yet, but everyone's pretty damned sure that the new regulations coming in will enable us to get on a flight in a couple of weeks and get started with the next phase of our lives. i was so excited this morning i was shaking.

it was also a good day because i got up early and powered through until mid-afternoon for a generally successful day. i then took mr smear for a walk along the promenade, where he sold me a virtual falafel which put me in the mood for a real one, and the falafel guy was close by so we went there and both thoroughly enjoyed a full pita.

gd and i watched about half of vampire hunter d, and then i suddenly realized that the movie i was thinking of when i got all excited was actually ninja scroll. D'OH!

i'm sad that nightbirde passed away. i don't like much of the rest of her music, but her it's okay is on our family playlist. probably like a billion other people's.

i'm going to bed, tomorrow's promising to be eventful.

more positive

 things i didn't mention yesterday: we started off the day watching spiderman: homecoming - we've agreed with mr smear that we're all (especially him) going to ignore bad language in movies. i could only remember the half of far from home that i'd seen that had put me off, i'd completely forgotten how great homecoming is! we also watched cars (my and mr smear's first time) - although i passed out for a chunk of it - and it was enjoyable. it also renewed his interest in the video game, which is a win (he's not usually into anything competitive).

last night gd and i discussed his punishment, and then punishments in general, and this morning we hit the reset button and sat down with him to discuss a new strategy. so far, so good.

...

last night, we watched jackass 3. in retrospect, we should have watched vampire hunter d (we've picked up a digital copy of the vampire hunter d: message from mars graphic novel and gd's not familiar with the original) - not because we didn't "enjoy" it, for a given definition of that word, but because it really was just more of the same stuff with a sprinkling of some really uncomfortable bits where we just felt sad for these guys.

in the middle of the night, when i was having trouble sleeping, i got up and started cleaning up and updating my side project repositories which i haven't touched in ages. a short while ago i managed to bring the final component up to speed and i'm ready to start the next bit of work.

this morning was the second not-great-weather day in a row, gd's still very sick and mr smear has been a bit feverish the past couple of days. one thing that we're not sure what to make of is that whatever pest attacked me and mr smear, seems to have stopped. i'm still "feeling things" but i'm not sure if it's psychosomatic or not.

anyway, we watched avatar (the extended version), which was amazing, and i went rollerblading in the afternoon which was mostly relaxed talking time - i might have made a good connection for a business idea i've been bouncing around - and then to "stretch my legs" i raced against the wind to the pavilion and back, a fifteen minute race after which i was out of breath and sweaty.

after a pleasant evening getting mr smear ready for bed, i put on jimmy carr: his dark material (i'm not a jimmy carr fan, but this was pretty good) while fiddling with the repository updates, and am now about to make a quick call to horseman and go to bed.

i forgot to mention watching simon amstell: set free last week - it's really, really great.

being human is complicated.

this week ended on a strong note, and it feels like my team (and manager) relationships have improved. i've also mailed off the documents that the lawyer needs to initiate the paternity suit, so that's done. we're praying that the proposed regulations change lets us get on a plane soon, but at this point we're really not expecting anything.

mr smear and i went to the temple in person yesterday evening, which was really nice!

unfortunately, we've had a couple of mr smear incidents, although upon review thursday's bullying incident seems to have been at least partially instigated by the other kid (who's not only a liar, but apparently is particularly good at finding other kids' metaphorical pressure points and squeezing on them). we're still embarrassed that our boy is finding his way with his fists rather than his mind, but we'll just have to see how things proceed.

he's also been fighting with us a lot, and in completely irrational ways that don't serve him at all. today was the first time i properly spanked his bum until he stopped trying to physically fight me - as in, he was physically trying to impose his will on me in spite of me warning him that "this really isn't going to go well for you".

poor kid... at least he came around a short while later and we had some positive discussions.

...

in other news.we've had a couple of days being bitten and "feeling things", and it looks like we're in for another round of pest control even though we haven't found a shred of evidence. and my mother's been taking strain, in general - it sounds like our trials and tribulations are exhausting her - but also because we've been openly trying to fix broken things and she's been taking our complaints personally.

mid-week status

 i'm definitely in a better place psychologically, in spite of the occasional flashback from sunday's trauma.

i'm a little concerned that during the high-stress weeks leading up to us leaving our apartment, i burned some credibility with my teammates and it feels like a bit of an uphill battle reclaiming it. otherwise, the past two days were a successful culmination of a week of frustration with the codebase i've been working with. so there's that.

everything else is a blank. although it does come to mind that gd and i had a fascinating conversation about the tower of babel last night, i feel like that's not the first time but horseman's ideas about thought-mathematics came into play as well.

controlling the narrative

sea point promenade on a sunday afternoon with my six year old, a strong-looking, very aggressive 6'4" man came towards us and started threatening me, yelling about how i stole his phone yesterday amidst a bunch of other things. i kept backing up and trying to get away without getting into a brawl in front of my kid, and after thirty seconds he just walked away with an ugly laugh then angrily repeated "i'm just joking" until he was out of earshot.

according to the policeman i spoke to (this happened across the road from the station), they know who this guy is and there's literally nothing they can do even if i could press charges.

ha. ha.

...

 that was earlier - i seem to have handled myself well enough that mr smear didn't feel scared, and i tried to take him for a double-thick shake at royale right afterwards to bring us back into a positive space but sadly they had two cashiers who didn't have a clue how their vegan menu worked... we got a nice drink from newport instead and enjoyed the walk back. he certainly hasn't forgotten the incident, but at least he doesn't seem phased by it.

thursday and friday were pretty straightforward as far as workdays go. friday morning i tried and failed to get in the car to take mr smear to their class outing at sanccob, i really don't like our car, this time the battery was drained by the front inside light which i must have turned on by accident, and of course there's no warning light or sound and no mechanism for it to turn off automatically after a set period of time... and, of course, i hadn't charged the emergency battery pack since i bought it so we had to wait for someone (my mother and a neighbour) to come to the rescue with jump leads.

gd's been feeling sick, and the weather yesterday wasn't great, so we watched the goonies (which was even better than i remembered!) and pirates of the caribbean: on stranger tides, although mr smear got bored halfway through and missed the mermaids because he was busy playing lego batman.

we had a bit of an incident at shower-time last night, and while i was feeling horrible about the whole thing (not the first time), i watched "you are the creator" - nothing new, just very well-packaged and well-timed. i've been reactive and exhausted for years now and it's long past time to retake control of my narrative.

i woke up this morning feeling better about life, the universe and everything and i spent a few hours putting together the script for the next couple of pages, including spending a fortune on the license to the only script i could find (gd helped) that made any sort of sense for use as a stand-in for shakespeare's handwriting (his actual handwriting is practically illegible for most of us). one thing that gd and i both found amusing is that i had a great idea this morning for the pages before i reviewed the existing script (that i wrote about six or seven years ago) which i sketched out for her, and when i did get to reading it i discovered i'd had the exact same idea back then and recorded it in pretty much the same way.

this afternoon i decided that mr smear was ready for invader zim, and we were not disappointed by the first few episodes ^_^ (only the original season or two, beyond that the writing stopped being clever and original)

we're also halfway through the heaven's arena arc in hunter x hunter again, and mr smear is super-excited about the idea of nen :D

right, it's dinnertime. i'm a little sunburned from taking mr smear to visit my mom and her friend's pool. after the evening routine i plan on being a little more productive than usual and then gearing up for a new week with a better attitude.

(mostly) better than anticipated

 i barely slept last night, i spent at least five hours churning mental simulations with an imagined consul and no matter what i imagined nothing made me feel any more capable of sleeping. although i did have one seemingly good idea - trying to apply for refugee status instead. a little research into that in the morning made it seem a little less plausible, but still...

what really happened was that we finally sat down with the consul, who immediately lowered the tension by admiring gd's tattoos. ultimately, there's not a lot that can be done for us but it made a huge difference speaking to somebody with a sympathetic ear and they've assured us that they'll try to speed up the notarization of the documents as much as possible.

otherwise, we really don't know what's coming and we're looking for a less temporary - but still temporary - furnished place to stay in the meanwhile. and if one thing positive's coming out of this ordeal, it's that we're taking on a bunch of much-needed fixes and minor renovations in my mom's apartment so we're leaving it better than we found it.

...

mr smear and i have been in an interesting space the past few days - we've had some rough moments, but we've had some constructive conversations come out of them. by and large, i think we're doing well.

...

gd's friend's passing is still shocking. the funeral was utterly heartbreaking.

eye rubbing

a friend of gd's, part of her closest circle, who just gave birth a couple of months ago and has another child about two years old, suddenly had a seizure a couple of days ago and died. we're all reeling and heartbroken.

...

 i finally got a real night's sleep on thursday night for the first time since we started moving, what a pity it was flooded with nightmares.

the end of the work-week was strong, although mr smear and i both appear to have picked up some kind of bug that's going around ("stomache flu" for both of us, and a throat infection for me). pure joy. it was a great excuse to have some me-time yesterday while gd and mr smear joined my mom at her friend's pool, i finally watched the entirety of harlock: space pirate. it's a great movie, really convoluted plot twists and turns but i guess the nature of illusion and manipulation is kind of the point.

certainly, it was more satisfying than don't look up. gd and i watched that during the week and it's pure horror (too real) with zero catharsis. i'm still glad i watched it, i guess.

i guess while i'm writing about my media consumption i should mention that we watched the latest hotel transylvania movie yesterday morning* and i was mortified to see genndy tartakovsky's name all over the credits of such a completely trashy film. i *hope* it's the low point of his career.

* in spite of mr smear being "grounded" for hitting a kid in his class yesterday - i guess it doesn't matter if you're not violent with your kids when other kids are :/

...

we've been granted audience with the consul next week to sign and notarize the lawyer's documents, i'm trying to prepare myself for meeting her because we have some things to say that need to be said very carefully about how they've been treating us.

...

we finally met my nephew's girlfriend on friday night, we had dinner at my cousin's who i managed to meet with during the week for a coffee - he's finally accepting that his divorce is actually happening and i was able to provide him with some measure of relief, so i was happy for the opportunity to help.

...

i'm VERY excited about the latest two pages of the graphic novel which we managed to finalize yesterday! they came out even better than planned due to a slight misreading of my script, and the visual clarity is so good that even mr smear knew exactly what was happening when he saw it ^_^

moved

 well, that was an intense week. gd, my mother and i were all terribly misaligned when it came to our visions of how we would leave the apartment. the root cause being that until very recently, we thought we were going to pack up our lives into a container and meet them on the other side... but then we got a bunch of quotes in and learned that it would cost us more to ship our things than to put them up for auction and buy them again on the other side*.

* as opposed to how we moved from montréal, where we just left most of our stuff and had to buy everything again. that took years (and one delores umbridge) to recover from.

so *i* thought that come tuesday morning (the 25th), we'd have everything cleared out except for a few pieces of luggage and we'd either take that luggage to my mother's, or to the airport.

on monday we confirmed that we would not be going to the airport. the consulate is being obstructive and treating us really badly, and they really aren't interested in providing any sort of assistance. on tuesday, we started moving. we moved every day. we moved multiple trips every day. we had the auction house come in on thursday to take all the furniture, and realize that we hadn't agreed on what wasn't going to be sold just yet :(

finally, a week after displacing my mom (again) and sleeping here, we grabbed the very last of the things and handed over the keys and said goodbye to our home of three and a half years - just as long as i lived in montréal in total. and now we're here. the place is still strewn with black bags and boxes and tons of stuff that needs triage, but slowly but surely things are coming together and making sense, and in a weird way we're almost grateful for the unwanted delay...

speaking of which, after some uncomfortable negotiating we've engaged a lawyer and are now attempting to get the consulate to let us sign documents before a notary...

in the meanwhile, mr smear is loving his first weeks in grade 1. my mom's place is getting a little more TLC than it's used to. i'm finally able to focus on work again after weeks of feeling like i was making a fool of myself (anxiety matters, y'all). i'm starting to consistently beat sudoku at the expert level without guessing. and the next pages of the graphic novel are looking really good.

deep breaths.