surreal

after two and a half years of losing battles and frustrations and mini-victories and setbacks and fear and anxieties and stress and living in limbo... we made it to our meeting. we arrived with what we were asked to bring: gd's passport and her passport photos. i also brought all our documents, just in case. mr smear brought his spongebob squarepants comic.

those last two items? turned out we really needed them. we were there for ages, with mr smear entertaining himself and anyone within earshot as he read all the stories out loud, doing voices and accents and generally being both adorable and out of the way. we had documentation issues, and i was able to resolve them with my magic folders of everything.

but we didn't really believe that we would be getting through the meeting until gd was asked to take photos and give her fingerprints, and we had her temporary id handed to her along with some instructions for the next couple of months.

it's done. the great adventure of the past few years has been completed, and we can finally begin our lives proper. there's plenty more in the way of bureaucratic challenges to overcome, especially in the coming weeks, but the most important item has been taken care of and it's literally amazing and surreal to finally be on the other side.

...

aside from finally celebrating the real win, it was another nasty day as far as being sick is concerned. a week into this, absolutely desperate, my brain suddenly went "omg! wouldn't it be good to use sudafed?" and then "holy shit, we have some!". and i took it. it didn't completely dry me up, but it helped a LOT. and i'm so desperate at this point that i've decided that i don't give a shit if i can't sleep, as long as i can breathe. i mean, i'm not really getting much sleep anyway, so whatever.

also, my back and neck have been mostly fine for the past week but this evening spasmed without warning and i'm just a tad bit miffed about it.

we had to pick mr smear up early from school today - another incident. we've spoken to a bunch of teachers by now, and it looks like he's getting more and more frustrated with not being able to express himself in hebrew and so he's expressing himself in other ways. we've *very* excited that he got into the hop website / content the other day, i've been meaning to sign up for ages and he was loving the games and watching his favourite shows dubbed and i think it's a great step forward.

all things considered he's doing amazingly well, but still - it's hard for him and hard for us because we haven't found a strategy yet that works.

finally, it was a surprisingly good half-workday for me. my team lead came back from sick leave and was very happy with the work i've been doing, and we had a discussion about technology choices for a project that i'm creating and we seem to be well-aligned.

i'm still feeling really grateful to have signed up with these guys.

...

right, it's closing in on midnight, we've had a big day / week / couple of years. i'm going to lie down and either sleep or read, and pray that my nose and chest give me some respite over the next few hours.