the week and weekend in brief

it took me a day to breathe better, two to relax a bit (our lawyer helped).

for most of the week gd struggled with a terrible migraine and was effectively incapacitated.

i spent yet another week trying and failing to get hold of someone at customs to get them to release our personal effects without taxing the shit out of us. we're getting desperate enough that we might pay the tax just to get this over with, and that's another lovely few hundred dollars.

i started wednesday with a personal visit to misrad hapnim to sort out my id and passport, and the contrast in treatment was refreshing / jolting / insulting all at once. the woman who dealt with me was kind, helpful, caring, human. she sits no more than two metres away from the evil **** who's putting us through hell. afterwards, i joined my company at the AWS summit, instead of enjoying a few talks and checking things out i spent the entire day on my feet pitching and demoing. i won't lie, i kind of enjoyed it.

in the evening i took mr smear to his class treasure hunt in the park for lag b'omer. it was a very pleasant evening, he had a great time, and i ran into grootbek and we chatted for a while until my boy finally came back into view.

thursday morning was a mixed mess of work and bureaucracy, but i went into the office for a productive afternoon and finished the week on a good note.

friday: friday was a perfect day, right until dinner time. gd joined me after i dropped mr smear at school and we went into town for a haircut and to find stickers for our postbox and front door, and we made it back to the school just in time to pick him up again. i then took him for a walk and we ended up at the beach, with plenty of playing on the way, at the beach, and on the way back, and i even enjoyed a beer on the beach while waiting for him. we really had a lot of fun together, it was awesome.

we then had an incident at dinnertime that was caused by something really ridiculous, and we all had a horrible night after that.

i was still feeling raw for most of today, we spent most of it doing not much (although i had some good times with mr smear playing video games and watching fun videos) and we sadly missed out on my cousin's pre-wedding family gathering as well as a birthday party for a bunch of the kids in mr smear's class.

everyone's gone to bed already, i just needed to put this all down before i go myself. according to our lawyer we have everything we need, now we just need a bit of luck. praying and breathing. praying and breathing.