the win

 today went as best as could have been hoped for. after a good night's sleep, we talked to mr smear about ice skating and he became very enthusiastic. we walked to the new 24/7 to pick up a treat, then went hunting for the car. between the search for the car and taking a wrong turn to the ice rink, we arrived about half an hour later than planned, but no biggie.

getting mr smear sorted out was a confusing mess, then i headed back to rent a pair of ice skates for myself and got stuck behind a large group of old people.

i managed to keep relatively calm.

a lifetime later, i grabbed my skates and made it to the birthday / prep room in time to give mr smear a hand with his and go through to the rink with him.

what followed was an awesome time teaching him to skate. we both had a great time, he loved skating and he handled himself well both in getting his balance and in bouncing back up whenever he fell. i was really grateful that i could be there on the ice with him for his first time, and that gd was able to be with us even if her role was standing at the edge taking photos and videos and cheering us on :)

when it came time to go, mr smear decided he wanted to go to his friend's place, and his friend's dad okay'ed it so we shrugged and left. i was feeling a bit tired when we got home, but not that tired, but then swordschool called and as we talked i felt my eyelids and brain getting progressively heavier as my need for a nap became progressively more aggressive.

eventually i apologized and ended the call, then lay down on the couch, then realized that with mr smear out of the apartment gd had lit up a joint in the living room and the windows were closed. by the time she understood that i wasn't kidding about its effect on me and closed the windows, i was out cold and i would only wake up two and a half hours later...

after waking up, i lost some time trying to figure out why plex wasn't working properly* and then we took another car to pick up mr smear.

* it's a combination of my dell laptop's performance and the ps4 client, they're both a bit shit. using my macbook works brilliantly, though.

i would've hopped on a bus, which would have been much faster as well as much cheaper, but the buses weren't running yet... i managed to return the car with three minutes to spare, but then got stuck on hold with their service department for almost fifteen minutes because i ended the ride without realizing that i'd left the overhead light on :(

i came home, ordered pizza, chatted with my first boss for a bit, did some dishes, then finished watching the book of life which we'd started last night. it's a pretty solid kids' movie, but the music is really cringey and the sudden change of heart in xibalba really rubbed me the wrong way. overall, it felt a bit rushed.

after finally getting mr smear into bed (very late) - right after i got into trouble because he caught me sneaking a scoop of ice-cream - gd and i watched an episode of evangelion (the one where asuka and shinji get in sync), and after messing about and then posting this i'm now just about ready to get into bed myself.

don't be greedy

wednesday:

after my complaints the previous week, we received a very postive email from our boss - we have a budget for office chairs! so we're all off on sunday for a test drive together.

the contract signing in the evening was... an experience. signing the cheques was a less of a strain than anticipated. then our landlord arrived, and she wasn't more awkward than usual. the signing was fine, we talked a bit (i mentioned that our neighbors had left because their landlord got greedy, and now that apartment's been empty for a year), i showed her the things we had fixed on sunday and we talked about the mold in the cupboard situation (after gd had managed to clear it, hopefully we're done with it now at least for a while).

we then discussed whether she actually needed guarantors on top of the deposit and the cheques, which was very awkward and confusing. then she left. then she called, two minutes later, to remind me how they hadn't been greedy and raised the rent (even though all the rents in the area have been dropping recently) and how i should expect to take care of all the maintenance stuff 🤦

i told her we'd take it on a case-by-case basis. regardless, she managed to add a sour feeling to an otherwise positive evening.

thursday:

it was a tricky morning with mr smear, but we were managing it well. then i breathed out (as a form of self-regulating) in a way that upset mr smear, and then things got ugly.

i didn't manage to de-escalate before getting him to school, but i'm pleased to report that i managed not to escalate things, either.

still a kak feeling.

i had lunch at the sarona market with a couple of coworkers, one a new parent and one with a toddler, and All The Things about discipline and emotional regulation came up - the new parent announced at the end that he's about ready to take his kid back to the hospital :P

in the morning, my boss asked me to put the work i've been doing aside for a rainy day after i intuited an obscure test that managed to break one of the update's dependencies. in the evening, i left with a good feeling having made real progress on an entirely new piece of work.

i passed out watching evangelion again. at least gd's enjoying it.

today:

as i left the apartment this morning, i felt a sharp pain in the right side of my lower back (sciatica, seems like) and i've been struggling with it since.

the school run was fine, but i saw mr smear's nemesis' dad at the gate and i spent most of the walk back thinking about how much i dislike him and his bitch husband (him more by association, to be fair). the bad feelings at the end of the walk were for the old guy dragging his jack russell on a short leash; he didn't like being asked if he'd be okay with doing that to a small human.

gd and i hopped on a bus to dizengoff, where gd got her eyes tested, i picked up a replacement for my broken watch*. the prescription lenses she's getting are ridiculously expensive and not at all covered by insurance in any way, shape or form.

* a redmi smart band 2, it's the cheapest watch replacement available and feature-wise it honestly seems like an upgrade from the amazfit bip, which cost me about twice as much in south africa in 2018 (and costs almost twice as much here right now).

we got home in time to pick up mr smear from school, then we walked down to ibn gvirol for breakfast and coffee. then we came home. we spent the afternoon mostly uneventfully, but at the end of it we had an incident: mr smear decided he wanted to go to the ice-skating birthday party tomorrow, so i asked one of the moms if it was okay to RSVP so late in the game. then i booked a car. then mr smear decided he didn't want to go.

the ensuing conversation turned into a fight and did not go well. eventually, we all sat down and talked, but the process of getting to that point was very unpleasant. we've no idea what we're going to actually do tomorrow morning, but at least for now things are feeling good again.

turning it into a win

kind of. at least the weather's improved.

monday:

the electrician came through this morning, he fixed the broken light in the stairwell. but while we were already paying the call-out fee, we got him to fix and replace a bunch of things, and although it was a very expensive morning our apartment's in a considerably better state.

mold situation notwithstanding.

there were a couple of items which we technically should be passing on to our landlords, but i really don't have the energy to deal with them. it's not worth it. 

leaving work on a successful note

my aunt's boyfriend dropping by for coffee and sad conversation. there were a lot of good points he made that required a recalibration on my part.

a sad conversation with vfmp (his brother in particular)

loads of dishes

bloons adventure time until late (i probably shouldn't be playing it. i don't know)

all day, i kept forgetting it was christmas. *shrug*

...

yesterday:

loads of dishes

getting the morning on track in spite of mr smear's protests, good talk on the way to school: the egg story - he wants to eat an egg because he remembers it from his pre-school where one of the teachers insisted on all the children having eggs, even though he knows how cruel the egg industry is.

more dishes, urgent mini-dryer ordering

the work day: planning, birthday lunch (amazing frena from shuk hacarmel), an emotional parental guidance meeting, coaching my coworker on the magic of npm, preparing the PR for the work i've been doing, leaving on a weird note about discussing technical things with our partners which reminded me of discussing (my thoughts on god and the follow up) when meeting gn1 - that wasn't a great example, in retrospect, because that should have been a red flag :P

we finished watching is it cake, too? over dinner, and got mr smear into bed at a reasonable time. then i passed out on the couch while we watched more evangelion.

...

i didn't sleep so well last night. i woke up god-knows-when thinking about a cartoon character who farts speech bubbles.

this morning's been alright so far, i went on a "free" shopping spree with epic at nystire's recommendation, now about to rush into the pre-work stuff. i'm a little nervous about the contact / cheque signing coming up this evening...

pouring

the past week has been really rough on my lower back, but i feel like it's been better the past couple of nights. not totally better, but a little better. gd's so far very happy with the new mattress we picked up on friday, so that's cool. hopefully it'll last.

wednesday / thursday:

i generally wasn't feeling good, and i was working on something that was way more complicated than it should have been. otherwise, i don't remember much else.

friday:

friday morning was quite something - it was the first time that mr smear went to school on a friday since the end of the last school year. we got some medical admin taken care of, i bought a pair of shoes, it was nice. then we rushed off to the furniture store for another round of mattress testing, and when gd had finally settled on one we explained to the guy how urgent it was. he responded by doing two awesome things: first, he got on the phone, and arranged for it to be delivered within the hour; second, he scratched out what appeared to be a 700 shekel charge for the upgrade.

perhaps he did that for show, i don't know, but it was definitely appreciated. we raced home, i drew cash and returned just in time to receive the couch.

after picking up mr smear from school, we split up and i walked up a few blocks to buy supplements and chocolate. by the time i got home i was feeling pretty worn out, and the rest of the day was spent doing not much. i think. i guess i published an article.

yesterday:

we didn't do anything or go anywhere yesterday. i did finish off another article, but most of the day was spent feeling unwell and tired.

today:

today was all kinds of messed up.

last night and the whole of today saw a lot of rain. a lot of rain.

after dropping mr smear off at school, i scrambled to get through our documentation to find evidence of gd's residence, finding something just as we needed to get moving. which is the precise point at which gd discovered that we have another mold problem :/

we arrived at the social security offices just on time, and were pushed through to the lady who originally helped us last year.

it turned out everything was fine, and gd's residence status was (apparently) never in question. weird.

on the way home i received a message from someone in the neighbourhood who was interested in our old couch. he arrived shortly after i did, and we talked for a bit while he checked out the sofa.

i tried working for a bit, but i just couldn't get into it. then the delivery guys called, and their fifteen minutes turned into most of an hour. eventually they arrived, taking so long that gd had to go pick up mr smear - fortunately between the massive downpours. getting the new sofa went pretty smoothly, but get the old one out? turns out we'd had a miscommunication, and they refused to take it out without paying just as much as they wanted for bringing in the new one.

fortunately, one of our neighbors arrived just as i was dealing with them and offered to lend a hand. between him and the older guy taking the couch, they managed to get it out and affixed to the roof of his car in surprisingly short order!

on my way back upstairs, though, i noticed that one of our stairwell lamps had been broken. i knew it was due to the move, but i didn't see it happen so i can't make any claims. the electrician's coming tomorrow, and he's going to charge at least as much as the movers would have...

fuck.

i then went to the office. it was raining hard again. as i got to the bus stop, a civilian vehicle lurched into the bus lane and accelerated hard, completely drenching me and then other guy waiting. i was so mad i began chasing the car - it was headed towards a red light - i didn't know what i was going to do, but i was at the very least going to yell at them or take a video. i never did catch them, and i ended up having to wade through a flood that came up to the very tops of my galoshes - somehow, my feet remained dry, but i feel bad for the two little girls who waded in with me because they were wearing sneakers...

i spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening at work, mostly working, but some of the time was spent dealing with the electrician stuff and some admin.

while i did something that bothered my boss - i'm not sure why he thought forking a public repo was a big deal, but whatever - i did managed to leave on a positive note with a partial success.

i finally got home, took care of some things, and got through a couple more chapters of the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy to mr smear, who was initially very upset when we explained that i might not have time to read to him...

i've done two rounds of dishes so far - they've been piling up - and watched some evangelion with gd. our new couch is fantastic, and it's big: it feels like a very grown-up acquisition.

two and a half week revelation

a little while ago, as i lay in bed with a sore back, i realized something: i've been working for my new employer for two and a half weeks, and i haven't been comfortable sitting on my office chair at all. combined with the new mattress gd and i are suffering on, my back's been really stiff and sore. and i've been having nerve trouble in my left foot as well.

the mattress we're taking care of, but i think i need to ask for a new office chair. i'm going to try borrowing a kitchen chair today to see if that helps.

i'm learning a lot in my new job. like, a lot. but i'm also spending an inordinate amount of time hunting down information that doesn't exist.

monday was a bit weird, because i was completely alone in the office. in the afternoon, after two coffees and a lot of uncomfortable sitting, i actually had to go for a walk to get my mind right. yesterday was better, but i still needed a barrista coffee after the post-lunch turkish. it feels like a drug addiction.

ugh.

there's been quite a lot of new-job admin stuff to take care of at work, but i think it's pretty much sorted by now. i've been waiting for the cheque-book i ordered three weeks ago to arrive so we can renew the lease on our apartment, it turns out they did send an update, but to gd instead of me, and it was the wrong update.

mr smear's been doing pretty well back at school this week, although the rivalry with his first class friend makes us sad.

gd's been giving the original evangelion series a chance, and so far seems to be enjoying it. this is good.

post-weekend

friday cont'd: learning about the three hostages that were accidentally shot. this is absolutely devastating.

having read this article, i'm left with the impression that the current conditions are extremely unclear for our soldiers - hamas has made it very difficult to identify terrorist from unarmed civilian, and are employing all sorts of tricks to trap them - and it must be nigh impossible to adhere 100% to protocol under such circumstances. i cannot imagine how i would handle myself, and i don't want to imagine the psychological horror that the soldiers who killed the hostages must be going through / will be carrying with them for the rest of their lives.

yesterday:

the biggest part of the day was assisting mr smear with his holiday homework, in spite of it being very non-sabbath stuff. it certainly wasn't fun, but it wasn't as bad as it could have been, and i was very proud of him when he finally completed it - having made sure that i hadn't been doing any of it for him.

in the late afternoon i had a long chat with swordschool, which resulted in a list of interesting things to see and hear (as usual), one of them happened to be a spoiler for inscryption but at this point, i'm going to keep playing and i'm going to keep enjoying it.

i'm definitely addicted to bacterial takeover, even my son says so.

we watched another chimera ant episode of hunter x hunter, and my gods, the cruelty and violence wasn't just inappropriate for mr smear, but it was really hard to watch for us so hot on the heels of october 7th. at the end of the episode, mr smear informed us that he felt it was inappropriate for him, and that he felt that everything from the phantom troupe onwards was inappropriate, but he didn't mind because he'd enjoyed it regardless. but now he wasn't enjoying it anymore.

so that was a revelation.

as a palate cleanser, i started reading the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy to him at bedtime and he found it hysterical :)

today:

mr smear returned to school, and gd and i went to azrieli for a coffee and a consultation. the former was shit, the latter was highly informative and the lady we spoke to really made us feel heard. it's now clear to us that it's not worth appealing the disability judgement, and that we should instead just be praying that gd's situation never gets to a point where social security would be sympathetic.

admin anxiety-wise, that's a load off.

i had a pretty good day at work, my coworker who was on paternity leave returned, and invited me for a chat - it turns out we both served on the same base at the same time, and were both (militarily) seconded from the same unit. i honestly can't tell if i (vaguely) recognize him or not from that time, but it was fun to sync and laugh about the stuff we both worked with back then.

we adventure timed over dinner at mr smear's request, and i read some more of the hitchhiker's guide. there was one sentence i needed to modify slightly, but otherwise we're still going strong.

i've spent most of the evening sorted out gd's email accounts, and now most of the important stuff is taken care of.

...

and now i've just seen the latest terror tunnel that's been uncovered: holy shit.

the friday nap

omg i didn't update most of the week, i don't know where to begin (i only vaguely remember what i did).

post-coffee mistake: i don't remember the night, but i did wake up still buzzing and aside from a small turkish coffee after lunch, everything i consumed was decaf and i was fine.

it turns out the issue i had with downloading pdf professional suite was that i was signed in to the app store with a different account than the app store was showing me. good grief.

gd spoke to one of our community leaders on tuesday, and she was satisfied by what he had to say, and how receptive he was to her complaints. i'm very proud of her for calling them out.

work-wise, i dont remember much from tuesday but i do remember that it took me all of wednesday and thursday to bring one of my tickets to a conclusion. it turns out my first ticket was a proper mystery...

wednesday night was fighty, and resulted in me being responsible for feeding myself and mr smear. fortunately, there were good leftovers. even more fortunately, i managed to talk mr smear down and figure out a way for both of us to get resolve.

the hanukah homework (hebrew comprehension) turned out to be a very big story this week, and things didn't start off so well. but gd and mr smear made really good attempts while i was at work, and i sat with them yesterday morning to go over what they'd done and it was a very constructive exercise. for both of them.

yesterday lunch saw me walk over to the sarona market to pick up a bunch of saborito hot sauces, and we all did a taste test :)

the disability story generated a lot of anxiety, yesterday afternoon i managed to get in touch with two organizations who are supposed to help people navigate the process. the first informed me that they don't work with new immigrants, the second agreed to meet with us on sunday morning, so we're looking forward to that.

today began with a rush on the city market that's closing down on wednesday, by the time we got there most of their stock had gone. it's a bit of a bummer...

mr smear and i then had haircuts, then we picked up laffot for breakfast and joined gd at our favorite vegan coffee shop. it was a really good experience. then we returned, and we were almost home before we realized that we were supposed to be picking up gd's repaired shoes right next to the coffee shop, so we went all the way back and then came home. by which point i was completely exhausted.

i saw that chrono trigger is on sale, so i picked it up and played it until gd and mr smear were done with the haircut fix, then i washed my hair and tried to continue playing but suddenly fell apart and crashed for a couple of hours.

i struggled to get out of bed, but i did. i went through the entire list of hostages taken on october 7th, then took a deep breath and joined mr smear in watching response videos to alan becker's math and physics animations, and then we watched this playthrough of THE CORRIDOR.

then i took care of all the dishes that had piled up.

for most of this post, my son was sitting behind me playing human fall flat with the overclocked plaid muffins - delicious and moist on repeat... now that the game's crashed, i took the opportunity to purchase THE CORRIDOR and he's now very enthusiastically on it :)

the stress ball

monday began with stress and anxiety: not having received a response in the mail from social security, i managed to sign in to gd's account and discover that a) she's not considered eligible and b) it's because the "panel" has given a bad judgement and c) it's partially because she's somehow not considered a resident and d) we have a limited time to appeal, and only one appeal, before we have to take her case to court.

this is nuts.

especially c) - wtf?! so we've got an appointment with them in two weeks to sort that out.

otherwise, it was a bit of a weird day at work. i explored things, but it didn't feel particularly constructive. to be honest, the most productive thing i did today was print mr smear's holiday homework in spite of the fact that "print to PDF" functionality has largely been disabled in macos and the printers can't handle anything in a non-standard format. and my favorite PDF software - pdf professional suite - wants me to repurchase because my apple id's changed since i bought the lifetime license.

my boss brought his doggo in to the office today. she's very sweet, but i don't like how he handles her. not cruel, just... not well.

i left early to hop on a bus with gd and mr smear and head to the furniture store, and i made a big mistake taking a coffee from the office barrista on my way out. i was buzzing by the time i got to the bus stop.

we got to the store, and almost immediately felt a reduction in anxiety. it's a literal mom-and-pop's store, and the old man's convinced me not to worry, and that he'll make sure we're sorted out. he insisted on gd trying a bunch of different beds, but he's ordered the one we came in for and we'll give that a go.

that's one stress down.

we took the light rail home, it was a first time for all of us and it was a really good experience.

...

october 7th was more than two months ago. but it's still october 7th. and it's going to continue to be october 7th as long as hamas continues holding and torturing hostages, and by doing so torturing their families and the rest of us.

when we got home, gd lost her shit. i don't entirely agree with her initial reaction, but i 100% agree with the basis for her anger: our community in cape town has said very little regarding october 7th and the war, and has said pretty much nothing to support jews and israelis, here or there. that's bad enough, but they're still doing their "interfaith" stuff with members of the muslim community in cape town, and i'll wager that community isn't condemning hamas. that makes our community leaders, in our opinion, a disgrace.

anyway, useful / dangerous idiots notwithstanding, it's beginning to look like hamas is falling apart and the brave palestinian "shaheed" rhetoric and ideology seems to be breaking down when the population is actually being faced with real hardship. it's also comforting that the politicians are starting to make real plans for a post-hamas gaza; perhaps the fighters will lay down their arms (lots of them are already), and perhaps we'll soon be able to get to work rebuilding and reconfiguring.

people say i'm a dreamer...

...

i've spent a large chunk of today in discomfort and pain, my hips in particular. i'm confident a lot of it is my office chair / desk. i've also been struggling with nerve pinching, random pains in random places (mostly arms and hands) and so on. between that and the excess caffeine - by the time we got home i was actually feeling quite ill, but it's calmed down since - i've no idea what tonight has in store for me.

read the whole paper first

last week, i posted how i proudly instructed my eight year-old son in the art of taking exams. i specifically told him to read the whole paper first.

how ironic, then, that not reading the whole paper first was the precise reason i've been struggling so much with the exercise i was given! in my defense, the exercise is written very strangely, almost like it's intentionally set up to confuse students...

it was about 4pm when my boss and i figured out that that was the source of the problem, and i made good progress until home time, and enough progress between putting mr smear to bed* and midnight.

i promised him i would finish the last two chapters of the second harry potter book, not realizing that that would take me until after 10pm...

...

last night i slept a bit better, but still not great. this morning, gd informed me that the mattress definitely isn't good. i had a chat with the furniture store guy this afternoon, and tomorrow we're going to go in to try the one we originally wanted... this is such a demoralizing story :/

i can't help but wonder how the sofa story's going to go.

aside from a long day at work, i managed to register for the gym today. i'm going to try to do a test-run sometime this week if i can.

hopefully ready

 thursday was a long and difficult day. coffee wasn't helping, and by yesterday noon i was pretty sure i knew whay - it looks like i've come down with a bug. i'm still not feeling 100%, but after resting most of yesterday and a bit of today i'm certainly feeling better.

psychologically, not so much. i spent today well, but as well as i could have, but then gd approached me a couple of hours ago to inform me that the mattress we bought isn't good. this absolutely stinks, and now it's going to be a scramble to get the shop to a) take responsibility and b) figure out the right mattress(es).

shit.

thursday saw me working on an exercise to write my first smart contract (a liquidity pool), some of it i got and some of it i didn't. it was the first night of hannukah, and i was too exhausted after the candlelighting and latkes to work on it any further. so that's tomorrow morning's task.

yesterday morning started off alright, then had a bit of a sour downturn on the way to do the chores (nothing serious, but i wasn't feeling good so it all came together unpleasantly). we took gd's newly broken shoes in for repair, picked up a bicycle pump (probably fancier than we need), and we stopped for sandwiches and coffee before heading through to the supermarket for a grocery run.

it was only once i walked out of there, laden with bags, that i realized how shitty i felt.

i don't remember much of the rest of yesterday, i know i published an article but i don't actually recall when :P

oh, and two rocket attacks. which led to a lot more time playing bacterial takeover than i'd like to admit.

after a long conversation with swordschool, mr smear and i began the day with hunter x hunter (we're almost through the greed island arc), and we downloaded a bunch of interesting-looking games but got thoroughly stuck in to it takes two, which was refreshingly fun and well-balanced, and has an interesting story that we could have (needed to have) a conversation about. after scheduled downtime (followed by an additional hour of no screen-time because he fought with us about the downtime), he joyfully returned to the world of roblox (i'm keeping an eye on that) until dinner time.

i guess i need to hit the hay early tonight as well.

mixed

 for the most part, this week has been great. i have been really tired the last couple of days - emotionally exhausted is definitely a part of it, there've been lots of things to deal with and a lot of annoying details or frustrations.

a couple of days ago our new bed was delivered. i think it's great, so far, but gd's already sensing problems.

mr smear's class has a lice issue again.

gd had a freak-out while making sufganyot today and called me angrily (to vent, i guess?), which made for a shitty vibe that i think i shared with my teammates :/

...

today's shitty vibe notwithstanding, i really like my new team, and i'm really excited to get into the thick of it. most of this week has been setup and learning, already a vast improvement over my last onboarding experience.

...

the war / political situation is difficult to think about. it was comforting listening to sohail ahmed. it's  also distressing yet comforting knowing that so many palestinians themselves realize the position that hamas have willingly put them in, i only hope we'll be able to move forward with them once this disaster is over.

...

maybe everyone else "got it" because it's so obvious, so... is "childish" the right word?

but i didn't get it.

it's so ridiculous, that although it seemed weird i just never stopped to think about it until today. but now that i've stopped to think about it, i can't stop thinking about it. 

mia schem was operated on by a palestinian veterinarian. why was she operated on by a veterinarian?

it's not because they didn't have any regular, "human" doctors available. it's because they wanted her, and us, to know they think of us as animals. it's the same reason why they've been keeping israeli hostages in cages.

...

mr smear had his first ever "exam" today. i've been helping him with his homework the last while, and yesterday i got home and we worked hard to prepare for it. this morning, when i dropped him off at school, i checked to see if he remembered the three rules, and he did: read the whole paper first, if a question's too hard, move on and come back to it later, and go over everything once you're done. from the sounds of it, he got it, and he did well in spite of the question he insists is "impossible" even for me :)

it's a new day

 today was pretty exciting. i dropped mr smear off at school, posted a farewell message to my previous employer's whatsapp group, and made it to the bank in good time to order a cheque book. which, it turns out, i needed to do in person at the branch anyway because you can't order a chequebook online unless you've ordered one in the previous six months.

wtf.

the new office is in a wework, and the experience has been really cool so far. the offices are nice.

what's even nicer is that it looks like i've fallen in with a really great bunch of people! i spent the day setting up my accounts and computer, having good conversations, and learning about the product.

it's different to what i thought it was, but either way it's very interesting. and, so far, the overall architecture make sense and the way these people operate makes sense.

so, as yet, no regrets.

shabbat

 it's late, and i'm on my way to bed. i just quickly want to write down two things:

1. something AMAZING happened today, and i'm still buzzing from it - mr smear, 100% under his own steam, rode his bike! i'm so proud of him, and the excitement and joy in his voice and face just made my day.

2. the rocket attacks have resumed, and nobody seems to have any idea what that means for us in terms of work and school. and tomorrow's my first day in my new job. when the sirens sounded at 10pm mr smear was sleeping so deeply that i had to drag him off the bed and carry him down to the shelter, and back up again ten minutes later, now my neck's hurting again...

anyway, overall it was a great saturday, i hope i manage to sleep well tonight.

ends and beginnings

the war has apparently resumed. it's a confusing feeling - we feel that the psychological warfare of the hostage / ceasefire situation has been way harder to deal with than the physical fighting and rocket attacks. we're nervous about our government and the world in general. we're relieved to have some of our hostages home and heartbroken for the tortures they and their families have experienced and will continue to experience, probably for the rest of their lives.

...

tuesday:

another rough morning with mr smear, but handled better. he and gd had been having a fight all morning about the usual waking up and getting out of bed stuff, but as soon as we walked out the door he transferred his anger to me even though i had nothing to do with their thing. his shoes were in a plastic bag tied to his bag, and at one point on the way (he stopped moving entirely when we needed to be walking quickly) we had an interaction that saw the shoes swing around and smash into his face. it actually wasn't my fault, but there was no way to convince him of that...

anyway, he was pissed at me when we parted ways but by the afternoon he was totally cool, which was a relief.

...

TRIGGER WARNING: ALL THE TRIGGERS. before going to work, i accidentally heard two stories from october 7th that have traumatized me (even more than i already was). i've been making a conscious effort to avoid details, but gd was listening to a podcast where the speaker suddenly talking about the pregnant woman whose foetus was cut out and beheaded in front of her while she bled out. and about women being shot with their rapists still inside them. i'm still messed up from just hearing about this stuff, and in addition to these montrous acts these depraved fucks then forced their child hostages to watch the videos at gunpoint.

i walked around with genocidal thoughts all day. it's very hard to be reasonable and compassionate when that's the kind of "human" that we're up against. i recently wrote about how there's a bit of hope, but i'm fucked if i know how one negotiates a different path for people who are capable of such atrocity. i don't know if the word "atrocity" is even sufficient, here.

...

a pretty successful day in the office in spite of my distraction, including a comforting guidance session over zoom with mr smear's therapist.

ending the day with a rooftop chat with the CTO that was very positive. and i managed to give some of the negative feedback i'd been nervous about sharing, and it was received positively.

completing my final big task late, just before going to bed. being grateful for having extended my notice period by two weeks (in spite of having to go an additional on-call duty) because i got to finish strong with a satisfying win.

wednesday:

the last day at work, full house (mostly), some emotional speeches, lots of stuff to take care of.

the exit interview with my boss: we both had lots to say, and we both appreciated the feedback.

- my "calming presence" and lack of ego in the workplace

- my maybe-can-do attitude even though i've proven myself capable every time

- their handling of the firings last year

- my positive impact on their processes even though it wasn't as much as i would have liked, and my boss comparing me favorably to the italian "rockstar" who left a couple of months ago and only managed to piss people off

formatting my laptop and leaving it behind, walking out the door on a very positive note.

yesterday:

a bad wakeup for a birthday, but finding resolution eventually

feelings rescued by my smear popping out of bed to give me an impromptu "present"

taking gd to the pain clinic, getting us and the doctor into trouble because we sat down with him before registering at reception. he explained to us why he doesn't think any self-respecting surgeon would operate on her: she's in a lot of pain, but her body is (for the most part) functioning and invasive surgery after invasive surgery only gets more complicated and dangerous because of the scar tissue... 

which leads me to a very strange but intriguing thought - what if a surgeon could deliberately induce scurvy in a patient in order to dissolve the scar tissue and enable a repeat surgery in a sensitive place?

we'll still consult with the surgeon, but we understand now that gd's primary focus needs to be on pain management, both physical and psychological.

a nice, very relaxing couple of hours, then a sudden and unpleasant call to pick up mr smear - we'd gotten confirmation from multiple sources that school was ending around 2pm, and then missed the update that pickup was actually an hour earlier :(

a long lunch / coffee with the googlers, and a stark reminder of how antisocial the air force was in contrast to my years in a green uniform. the guys i met with served on the floor above mine, and didn't remember or know the names of any of the people i was with! meanwhile, a guy who served on the same base as me - but a different unit - joined my previous (!) company a couple of months ago and we not only recognized each other, but know a whole bunch of the same people...

regardless, it was a really nice afternoon, well-spent.

a long dishwashing (i was already tired by that point), and helping mr smear with his homework.

rental contract extension update: we have confirmation not only that we're going to extend, but that we're going to extend for two years instead of one. this is actually a huge relief. on the one hand, the landlords haven't increased the rent, but on the other, apparently rents in tel aviv are dropping dramatically these days. but whatever, we'll take it and take it gladly.

finishing the harry potter and the chamber of secrets movie, early bedtime for everyone.

i didn't sleep very well, but i slept. now to try and make good use of this morning.

the twist

 so... it's always tough getting mr smear out of bed. this morning, after trying the usual tactics, i grabbed him and pulled him towards the edge of the bed... and threw my own back out.

jesus, fuck.

i managed to get it to calm down a little, but it's been threatening all day.

it was a rainy day today, with - as usual - the heavens opening up just as mr smear and i arrived at the school. fortunately, i was armed with an umbrella and was wearing my new galoshes. i think it's the first rain day i've gone in to the office.

on the way to the office, i went to the hospital with gd to book appointments. it took a while, but it was relatively smooth.

it was a nice work day. very social. i learned a new trick and i think i'm mostly done implementing it.

i left work feeling very much done for the day. after getting home and relaxing a bit, i helped mr smear with his homework assignments (still going strong) and we watched a hunter x hunter episode and a little bit more of harry potter and the chamber of secrets.

now i'm trying to decide what i'm doing with the rest of my evening. my brain's all over the place, but not in a useful way...

turnaround

 the day started off wildly shit. i mishandled an issue with mr smear on the way to school and it escalated to the point where i had to bring him back home; every step of the way felt awful. and then apologize, after understanding that what i *should* have done from the very beginning was just let the shit go.

the rest of the day was pretty good, but that shit feeling of i'm-fucking-this-up stayed for a long time.

we all went to the hospital to make an appointment for gd, and failed to do that because there's no reception on sundays.

i helped mr smear with his homework this evening, and it went really well. like, for-reals math homework explaining division problems to him and getting him on track to solve them himself!

oh, look! it's raining. fortunately, i managed to finish painting around the windows this afternoon, so hopefully that's going to help with the mold problem we keep having... but i'm not holding my breath.

work was alright, i guess.

i can't believe i only have three days left. and tonight is my last on-call.

i had a chat with a coworker who's also finishing up on wednesday. turns out he's been in touch with a bunch of others who left, and we're all leaving for pretty much the same reasons...

i think it's bedtime. i'm feeling dysfunctional and i've been watching random shit on youtube for the past couple of hours. i must admit, i'm feeling quite relieved by this analysis from the tom nash report. i'm feeling a lot more at ease than i have since the ceasefire was announced. on the other hand, i'm both very grateful for each hostage returned, and heartbroken anew for each one, for different reasons. the story of avigail idan is so utterly ghoulish i just can't deal with it.

the boomerang

last night i got into marvel snap for a while. i don't know how i feel about it, not to say that it's not fun - it just feels a bit... empty.

...

i woke up this morning with a "poem" in my head that i turned into a meme i believe in but that i'm unable to share.

boomerang fu, on the other hand, is an awesome game. while i started today watching news videos that made me angry (western mainstream media seems to be predominantly comprised of ignorant idiots), i did get to spend a good while playing boomerang fu with my son and we had an amazing time.

i lay down and tried to continue reading diary of a wimpy kid, and was woken up a long while later by gd who was concerned i was in a bad position for my neck. i'm more concerned that i wasn't feeling sleepy before passing out... and even more concerned that until i said something, my son didn't realize that the protagonist is a character one should aspire to be the opposite of.

i shoved a bag of popcorn in the microwave (for the first time since we got here?), and we settled down to watch leo. i was expected standard adam sandler "meh" - i love a lot of his movies, but lately he's been... not great. while there were a couple of "ugh" moments, the majority of the movie was marvellously entertaining, both funny and well executed for its mission.

mr smear asked me to explain "genitals" to him, which i thought was interesting but he got "bored" pretty quickly :P

i don't feel like doing anything this afternoon/evening, and i'm pretty sure i don't have to. having said that, i'm a bit disappointed that i didn't get two coats of paint on all the windows yesterday, and because it's been a cloudy day i haven't felt confident enough that it wouldn't rain to continue.

the next phase

wednesday:

it was a zoom-school day for mr smear, and i decided to go into the new office for the first time. i started the day off on the wrong foot, i should have known better not to click "okay" on the software update when i was in a hurry. it broke halfway and caused trouble for mr smear when i was out, including for his therapy session which is still online because of the war :(

the new office is quite nice, but i think i'm extremely allergic to something near my station because from the moment i arrived my nose was both stuffy and running and i kept sneezing - but when i stood ten/fifteen meters away for our daily meeting it got better. it got so bad that i had to take an antihystimine off our new office manager, and that barely helped.

oddly enough, in spite of the allergic reaction i was so much more awake and focused all day! i now suspect that in addition to the office environment influencing my state of mind, i might be being affected by gd smoking in our bedroom, and smoking more than usual because of her anxiety. i think i'm been operating a little bit stoned for the past month or two. or perhaps it's something else, and it's just coincidental? because now that i think about it i was fine yesterday and today as well... hmm...

yesterday:

yesterday started off relatively well, because i finally figured out the should-have-been-solved problem i got stuck into the day before. but i couldn't continue with the task, because soon after that the pager went off, and i would spend the next hours - and then a couple more around 3am - dealing with a poorly designed mechanism that's supposed to protect us from traffic spikes but actually generates a vicious feedback loop. it's part of the same awful code i cleaned up a couple of months ago, written by an ex-teammate who i really like as a person, but whose competence i keep questioning every time i encounter his work :(

today:

today i painted the second half of the big window frame, and put a coat around a couple of other windows, too. we also went to a furniture store and bought a replacement queen-sized bed for the lumpy one that gd's been struggling on. 

gd's current struggle is extremely frustrating. we were at the pain clinic last week and she said nothing about it, although it's been a problem for months, and now all of a sudden it's terrible and urgent and we have to scramble to arrange surgery.

i swear, the universe thinks i'm super bored.

anyway, we got to the store pretty quickly, and mr smear made himself comfortable on one of the beds. fine. we told him we were going next door to look at something, and he ignored us, so we went, looked, and came back. and found him in tears, thinking we'd abandoned him.

good grief.

apparently he hadn't heard us after all. so that was dramatic... the old lady (it's a family business) offered him mentos if he would forgive us, then asked how many it would take.

"five".

that was funny enough by itself, but it became hysterical when he put one in his mouth and realized they were mint, and he hates mint 🤣

i had a work meeting when we got home due to my being on-call, fortunately it didn't take too long and i think i kinda helped.

the afternoon was painting, dishes, and then spending four hours glued to live streams of the hostage release, some of them boring, some of them infuriating. i'm not used to watching mainstream media, the "reporters" and "journalists" on a couple of channels (especially sky news) were appalling.

anyway, i'm glad some of our people are back, and hopeful that the rest of this "deal" goes smoothly. at least, after watching the latest al shifa tunnel videos and the tom nash report, i feel a little more reassured that things are going to work out for us. i mean, the ceasefire might have been a complete disaster if we hadn't managed to bring journalists into the serious tunnel complex, but we did, so i don't think it will be.

in order to facilitate gd sleeping on mr smear's bed - which is the only good bed we have until the new one arrives - we've put the three beds together in our room... mr smear's excited, and i'm worried about catching knees and elbows when i get into bed :/

it's all "a joke"

how did we get to wednesday??

...

i just found out about the temporary ceasefire, i'm conflicted, to be honest. i don't trust our government to know what's right in the best of times, least of all now when nobody knows what's right. i'm confident this is going to cost us more than we anticipate, but hopeful that we might at least get some of our hostages back...

what's going on in south africa is a joke. a really poor, unfunny joke, like the comedian would have enjoyed. there's scary anti-semitism, and i'm afraid for my family and community. at the same time, it's hard not to appreciate the irony of a government that's composed entirely of a bunch of criminals who are responsible for immense pain, suffering and death thinking that they're in a position to judge anyone else about anything. and they're wrong*. i mean, holy shit.

* not about netanyahu needing to be arrested, just not what they want him arrested for.

...

sunday/monday:

the boss is back, which is a bit of a relief. he finally sent an email to the company informing everyone that i'm out. one of my coworkers left me an incredible recommendation on linkedin.

after days and days of sisyphusian struggle to get the project i'm working on to a point where i could make the actual change, and days and days of building up anxiety because of how complicated the change itself was going to be to implement, i finally made the change. and it was almost no change - two lines of code and one of those was just removing an import. it seems too good to be true.

the other grind of a problem - that was the previous week's morbid mystery - still isn't resolved. it looks like it should be working, but i have no evidence and trying to gather such evidence is proving to be a massive ballache.

yesterday:

yesterday was shit. gd still sick, me feeling sick, another round of dealing with mold and winter hasn't even begun yet.

and a horrible fight in the afternoon; i'm still feeling sore about some of the things that were said.

at least the airconditioner in the living room worked. the other ones worked immediately, but the living room one played "hard to get" and it was only after about ten minutes, while i was recording a video to send to the technician, that it finally kicked in and did its job.

...

as far as on-calls go, my last one (!!!) so far hasn't been the worst. now to pray that typing that out doesn't call the attention of the evil eye...

the war that should not be

off the top of my head, the only thing that's given me any sense of achievement this week is writing and publishing Some Hope Amidst The Darkness: Perspectives From The Ground. i've spent a lot of time "discussing" things with acquaintences and strangers online, it's been exhausting.

work has been pretty miserable, but as i was discussing with my mom yesterday - i'm very lucky to have a job at all, under the circumstances, and my boo-hoo "hardships" are certainly a lot less than what most israelis are going through. i've got so much to be grateful for, not least of which being that my family  is intact.

tues/wed/thurs:

who knows. who cares?

yesterday:

i wrote all through thursday night until about 3am yesterday morning, crashed, woke up about six hours later and continued editing until i felt i could publish. or, at least, until gd advised me to just push the button and get it over with. then we walked to the vegan coffee shop nearby for coffee and sandwiches, then meandered home.

...

we had an unpleasant incident on the way home, from an unexpected source. mr smear suddenly complained about the hostage pictures everywhere, and gd and i were both upset by his initial responses to ours. we were initially quite angry, but i took a breath and tried to approach him with genuine curiosity, which led to a conversation, and an opportunity to do something that i wasn't sure i should do, but ended up proving effective without any apparent trauma: i asked him to imagine if it was him, or us, if he'd want everyone to not think about him (or us) quite so much. 

...

i spent most of yesterday anxiously online. "hasbara" - explaining what israel is doing and why we're doing it - is exhausting. it's thankless. it's anxiety-inducing. it's frustrating. and ultimately, it's demoralizing. it shouldn't be necessary to work hard to convince people of the truth.

combatting disinformation in the face of social media algorithms optimized to drive engagement feels like nothing more than farting into the wind.

this link is to a moment in a video where some journalists/pundits discuss how this is the first war where PR plays a decisive role. we've reached this disturbing point in technology and history where our tools combine with our lack of experience and critical thinking to render us susceptible to whatever's meme-able and goes viral, no matter how wrong, no matter how dumb.

...

i finally - for the first time in days - found bandwidth to play some more inscryption last night. this morning, mr smear wanted me to watch him play a scene from octodad. aside from the pride of watching my boy master something really hard, i don't remember the last time i laughed so much :)

troll tool

jesus, the exhaustion. the distraction. the demoralization.

work has been particularly shit the last couple of weeks, i've been working on stuff that i really don't care about and that every part makes less sense than the last. everything is broken, or not yet implemented, or not planned to be implemented, and it feels like everything i touch was just an ancient, mummified piece of shit that was just waiting for the slightest encouragement to collapse into a fecal dust cloud.

the internet has been particularly toxic over the last month, and on top of worrying about the hostages, and our soldiers, and the victims, and all the people who've been relocated away from the borders, and our own safety... it's very taxing. it's frightening how many "useful idiots" hamas has in its pocket, worse still when those useful idiots are celebrities with large followings or worse - jews.

arguing facts with people is just insane.

meanwhile, today i heard an interesting podcast episode that inspires a little hope in the potential for a saner future: neil lazarus talking to a west bank palestinian.

friday:

gd's jewelery part ii. mr smear and i accompanied her this time, and we ended up having a very nice morning out. we also discovered that the shoe store we saw adult galshoes in - katalina - is completely vegan! and full of cool stuff.

on the way home, we stopped at a supermarket to pick up a couple of things, and just as we finished paying the sirens went off. it turned out to be a good place to get caught in a rocket attack, and good timing, because we just walked through to the back and i enjoyed the baguette we'd bought.

saturday:

by the afternoon, i knew we needed to do something outside. i took mr smear for quite a walkabout, stopping in at dizengoff center to see what card tournaments were taking place (he wasn't too interested, and there was the distinct smell of unwashed teenagers), running into drone hacker on the way back and enjoying a chat, then at mr smear's direction picking up a big, healthy lunch at cafe easy that he just wolfed down. it was a good saturday afternoon experience.

by saturday night, we were freaking out about the smell from the airconditioner. i "did some research", and some of the results scared me, but one forum post include a report that leaving their airconditioner running for 24 hours on the highest fan speed had cleared the smell. i turned ours on on the highest speed, and prayed.

yesterday: 

i dropped mr smear off at school, then walked to the clinic and hospital and got a bunch of things sorted out.

because a frustrating workday wasn't bad enough, there had to be some bad news from sea point. a cousin of mine was on the scene, and it took place right across the road from my mom's apartment. on the one hand, i'm glad the police actually took action, but on the other... these people are mad, and rabidly antisemitic, and their government as a whole is cool with that.

we had a parents webinar around bedtime. insight: a talk from a psychologist who discussed how we process trauma and normalize bad situations. disappointment: while most of the parents are welcoming the 70-or-so kids rescued from the "gaza envelope", a couple were bizarrely and selfishly concerned about their children experiencing second-hand trauma by being exposed to kids who almost lost their lives mere weeks ago. jesus, fuck.

by last night, the smell from the airconditioner seemed to have disappeared, but i wasn't 100% confident so we left it running another night.

today:

by this morning we were convinced that the smell was gone, and turned the airconditioner off. i just tested it out a short while ago, and it seems to be good!

the day began with one downer - mr smear not feeling well - and one thing that got me majorly pissed off: our grocery store order from the day before hadn't arrived. then, after calling them for help and being put on hold by a representative for five minutes, the call was disconnected. then, i had to wait on hold for another fifteen minutes to get to another representative, by which stage i was livid. fortunately, the second representative was legitimately helpful. i'd been angry enough to look up taking them to small claims court, but not quite angry enough to want to put myself through such an admin-heavy process.

while doing the dishes this morning, i caught up with all of tom shapira's (hebrew) podcast about comics called the between-panels's podcast, and i warmly recommend it - fascinating stuff!

i might be very wrong, of course, but gd seems to be doing a lot better. she went out again today by herself.

mr smear's demonstrating a lot of behavior improvement. we had a moment today that traditionally would have become a nasty scene - he was supposed to be on a screen break, i left the room for a few minutes and when i came back i caught his red-handed - but the tension dissapated very quickly and a few minutes later he apologized. and that was the whole damned story. the rest of the day was pretty much good vibes.

aside from another rocket attack just before bedtime, but he's totally into bacterial takeover and big numbers now :P

i was so tired after putting him to bed that i crashed myself, then woke up a while later and was unable to sleep because i needed to a) get all this down and b) respond to people who are wrong on the internet.

god help us all.

another war week over

work:  today was a real struggle, i feel like i've spent most of the week hitting every possible snag, edge case and weirdness. the successes were limited.

gd and i dropped mr smear off at school this morning and then walked together to the clinic, then did some shopping and came home. unlike the last couple of days, i feel like i was relatively focused work-wise.

after picking mr smear up from school, gd put on a brave face and went through to her piercer to get her nose ring switched - i'm actually quite proud of her, under the circumstances, leaving the house by herself and taking the bus was a really big deal.

mr smear was pretty cool today, although bedtime shenanigans turned into bad feelings. not as bad as they could have been, though. i do sense improvement.

i returned to the orthopaedist, who could immediately see wear around my hips. that's troubling. so i have a referral for a joint specialist and i guess we'll see...

i'm tired, i'm contemplating going to bed soon. i did play some inscryption this evening, i'm enjoying it but i wasn't in the right mood.

i've expressed to gd my concern that her with her ptsd and lack of context should really be avoiding news in general. i suggested she'd be better off with cat videos, and she didn't disagree... everything is toxic right now, and i'm personally struggling with the "need to know" FOMO and sense of powerless despair that comes with it, even if the "knowledge" is always suspect at best.

odin-appropriate

 today's wodan's day, and considering the war/death/sacrificed eyeball thing i find it a perfect day to have blasted through the final boss i've been struggling with in inscryption.

SPOILER: i just got through the final battle of act i with the most ridiculously overpowered deck, and am finally in act ii! holy fuck, this is one of the most satisfying achievements ever and i know that the game's only just warming up.

what a freaking rush. 

...

i went to bed early-ish last night, abandoning gd in the living room after she'd had a fight with what she believes was a mosquito (she had surprisingly nasty reactions, apparently this is normal for her).

this morning started off with a visit from the air conditioner repair man, who checked out all the installations and determined that the stinky one needed a professional clean. i helped, it took a while, and while he thinks it's all good now we're still smelling the faint remnants of the ammonia smell that was worrying us a couple of days ago.

after he left, that was when i remembered to inform the landlords... in the evening they got back to me and only agreed to pay half, because they believe it's our fault for not cleaning the air conditioners. which we didn't realize we needed to do 🤦‍♂️

next up: our daily meeting, with our CTO informing all present that i'm leaving at the end of the month. there were raised eyebrows, followed by a couple of awkward moments, followed by a couple of touching messages.

i know it doesn't make sense to say goodbye just yet, so it doesn't actually mean anything, but i couldn't help noting who didn't send messages :P

around lunchtime, i booked a car and gd and mr smear joined me on a mission to drop off bags of old clothes for a donation drive. there was a free hour on the app, and we managed to drop off the clothing (the woman in charge was absolutely blown away by gd's eyelid tattoos), pick up nice bread and a bagel, draw cash for the cleaner, and return the car in time.

that onion bagel was delicious.

i spent the afternoon working uncomfortably while the cleaner cleaned, mr smear had another zoom session with his therapist, and i struggled both with the work and with distractions. at the end of the day, i made progress but i don't feel great about it.

in the late afternoon (which is feeling like evening now that everyone's clocks are wrong again) i went to get imaging done for my hips/pelvis/nether regions. it was quick, a little weird (the poses for them to get clear shots) and i walked away being grateful that at this stage the radiation to my boy parts probably won't make any difference to the world.

the evening was a mixed bag, mostly positive. mr smear's been pretty cool so far since last week's freak-out, even if he's testing boundaries like it's nobody's business... as usual...

it's getting late, i'm still excited by my earlier achievement with inscryption, and now i'm going to try to learn something blockchainy before going to bed.

mon-tues

difficult work days, and everything's a long, unpleasant slog made more unpleasant by the fact that i'm not interested, made far more unpleasant by the raging ignorance and rabid antisemitism floating around on all fronts. i don't think i've ever been this distracted in my life.

there've been less rocket attacks the past few days, but they seem to be getting more hardcore. less warning and more and louder explosions.

gd seems to be a little calmer, though still far from calm. we spent a good chunk of today cleaning the airconditioners in preparation for tomorrow's visit by the repairman, and it looks like she's hurt herself again.

i should have insisted on her not helping me.

i think we did a good job, but the grossness runs deep.

i suggested that mr smear give the stanley parable a try today, he was giggling hysterically for ages as he mercilessly trolled the narrator.

gd had spent the morning talking to a friend who's suicidal, and between that and something mr smear said (in jest) i was inspired to take him aside and discuss saturday's revelation about how life is just like a rogue-like video game, bringing it all together with the book i made for him. it was a good talk.

his math skills are progressing with prodigy, having a dashboard is awesome.

his reading skills are improving thanks to bone.

partially functional

 well, i was feeling a lot better and a lot more on top of things today than all of last week combined. i'm now pretty confident i was sick for at least some of it.

i had two sets of inspiration for two of my tickets this morning, and i completed a long, ugly slog of a job and reached an important milestone in the chaotic messy one.

then i jumped on a bus and headed to an orthopaedist, because i managed to get a same-day appointment when i called this morning. i've been given a referral for imaging for my hip flexors, and clear confirmation that nobody cares about my neck injury unless i'm asking for surgery.

i had a really hard time getting back into work after i returned home, eventually i just gave up.

i made progress in inscryption. and then i died again. but i made progress!

...

the war rages on. we had two rocket attacks tonight, one during dinner and one after mr smear was in bed - he was a dead weight, i had to carry him all the way down the stairs and then all the way back up again. the explosions were way louder than usual.

what's going on right now, globally, is legitimately terrifying. it's bad enough that we're fighting a zombie army on our borders with guns and rockets, but we're simultaneously fighting a war with an even larger zombie army on the social media front. and the most significant platform on that front is run by the CCP. there's a whole generation of young people who've been raised on the internet, who have barely any concept of history and no wiring for critical thinking.

the truth is screwed.

this is what we're really up against.

the pause

 yesterday:

we managed to go to the pharmacy and grocery store together with gd, which felt like an achievement. mr smear and i ate laffot for breakfast, and i bought him books five and six in diary of a wimpy kid series.

i played a fair amount of inscryption, but nothing that mr smear couldn't witness.

mr smear and i went for a walk in search of coffee mugs, and came home with coffee mugs and ice cream. we ate the ice cream watching hunter x hunter, and it was brilliant (vanilla halva flavor!).

i've eaten a lot of junk food this weekend. and this week. and it's showing...

i finally put together a request for our landlords to not increase our rent and ran it by firefighter, i'm going to send it tomorrow. it was initially a demand, rather than a request, i never can figure out which is appropriate...

today:

i made pages 31 and 32 publicly available today.

nystire and i went for a long-overdue beer and a walk.

i bought forbidden island on the ipad today, and mr smear and i played it. it's an amazing translation. and we won our first game! it was nerve-wrackingly close.

i had a long chat with horseman this afternoon, things turned philosophical (as usual) and i came up with an analogy of real life being just like rogue-like games.

my machine's now set up for me to experiment with qt, xamarin and android studio.

wtf wodan and thor days

 it is the end of thursday, the beginning of the weekend, and i'm pretty sure my thursday - from a work perspective - was an almost complete waste of time.

wednesday? wtf was wednesday? i was still struggling with the extreme exhaustion. otherwise, i don't remember much but i did actually get my main task accomplished. and we had a couple of rocket attacks.

...

on the one hand, things for us seem to be normalizing even though the entire country, the entire world is being plunged into madness. on the other, it's difficult not to read the news / social media and realize that the real world is suddenly much scarier and much more bizarre than it should be.

i'm scared for jews all over the world, in particular in south africa right now when the kids at the jewish school now have to hide their identities (incl. not wearing uniforms) for their security. and the stories coming out of the top western universities are extremely discouraging.

...

oh! yes. and something made me realize that i hadn't spoken to scrapper since the war broke out, so i messaged him and discovered that he just happened to be in israel and getting off at our train station. so he came in for a surprise visit (and a berating over not having told us he was here), while a lot of the subject matter was unhappy it was good to see him.

thursday? feeling much better, though still very tired and consistently unmotivated. i dropped mr smear off at school, paid a quick visit to the clinic to sort out some admin,

gd seems to be doing better.

mr smear was mostly fine, until we had an incident this afternoon. on the one hand, it was something ridiculous that i could have just let go of, but on the other - he was being extremely rude, far beyond the line, and we had to establish the boundary. things got heated and emotional, but i managed to pull him back (even while he was still angry) and after some time on his own he came out and everything was good.

i feel really bad for him, but in spite of how outrageously insane he can be i'm relieved that he's developing the ability to re-center. i also feel like i'm levelling up in how i handle these things. far from perfect, but definitely improving.

...

i've been playing a lot of inscryption. it's addictive, it's fun, it's infuriating. and according to scrapper's spoiler, the bit i'm struggling to get through that feels like it's closing in on the end of the game, is only just the beginning. that's insane.

flat

it is now (technically) wednesday. 

monday and tuesday: pure exhaustion, what feels like a solid combination of physical and emotional. a few rocket attacks, for some reason sounding a lot more aggressive - more rockets, louder. gd's still recovering so she can't go down to the bomb shelter, so it's me and mr smear downstairs while hoping that gd's safe enough in the stairwell.

at least she's got some company - our much older neighbor can't scramble downstairs very well either.

work has been frustrating, but whatever. mr smear's been a mixed bag in terms of behavior, but yesterday he went to a friend who lives close by and apparently he was just fine.

i've barely been getting anything done these days. i know i shouldn't be too hard on myself, but goddamn - i've got it relatively easy and i don't feel like i'm coping particularly well.

i guess two of the biggest sanity-restorers at the moment are inscryption and a family rewatch of hunter x hunter. also, mr smear reading pages from a hebrew-english dictionary the other day to avoid the homework i assigned him (he's really got to improve his reading), and today successfully reading two pages of the hebrew translation of bone: out from boneville which doesn't have nikud (vowels, kind of) and sports a non-trivial font.

prodigy's math game is also going well; we did have a moment the other day where he decided that it wasn't fair that it was forcing him to battle all the time, and i explained to him that most wars are between people who want to fight and people who don't want to fight, just like hamas and israel... war and rocket attacks give a kid a different perspective.

when we came up from the shelter two days ago he was very grateful to find his mother still alive.

dst/procedure day

the political situation - specifically the global rise in explicit antisemitism - is getting scary.

it's been a long day. i slept poorly last night (in spite of staying up late and playing some more inscryption, which i've done tonight too), and got up this morning to daylight savings time and a long and generally unsatisfying work day.

mr smear and i accompanied gd to her nerve block this evening, which took much less time than usual, and so far we haven't had any rocket attacks today (although we've heard the explosions from neighboring areas), which for us at least is a blessing.

i've got so many things to do that i'm not getting anything done.

shelter

thursday:

yak-shaving day at work. not a complete waste of a day, but i didn't make much progress on what i was supposed to be doing. it was basically me trying to fix yet another problem that shouldn't have been, caused by my coworker's generally shit attitude towards getting their tasks complete with no regard to safety, stability or maintainability. "i'm gonna do this and let some other schmuck deal with the fallout". well, this schmuck's not going to be around much longer, good luck with your steaming piles of crap. as i type this, i realize that dog owners who don't pick up after their dogs is the perfect metaphor.

mr smear went to school in the morning, it helps everyone. i'm grateful that i'm able to work from home so that i can drop him off and pick him up, because gd's a mess and she needs the support.

mr smear's friend came over in the afternoon, and we introduced him to the powerpuff girls over gd's quesadilla dinner.

we all had to go down to the shelter together, where mr smear decided to pull out michael jackson's signature crotch grab with no context whatsoever. it's something that bothers us anyway, but it's even less funny when other people see it.

i finally completed a play-through of crying suns, which is just brilliant. unfortunately, i was so tired by the time i hit the ending sequence that i think i may have skipped some of it by accident :P

yesterday:

we started off the day with grocery shopping, where we encountered an american with his family trying to get potassium iodide in case iran nukes us. jesus christ.

"security council": a video call with a bunch of ze germans after the first rocket attack and before the one where a building was hit, it was great catching up and seeing each other's faces

followed by long chats with sailor and my brother. then kiddush with my mom on zoom (as usual) followed by dinner (we're continuing a re-watch of hunter x hunter)

before going to bed last night, i learned about silica. this is the concept i dreamed of building when i was younger, and it's blowing my mind that it's been brought to life by a single person - martin “dram” melichárek is my hero.

today:

today's been a bit tense so far, but not because of the war - although i do have a sickly feeling from having to respond to disinformation on an instagram feed of someone i know. we've only been down to the shelter once today, and that was because gd forgot to update her alerts app so that it doesn't alarm for other areas of tel aviv... gd and i have been having a bit of a day for a variety of stupid reasons.

on the other hand, mr smear and i spent a good few hours playing inscryption. it's outstanding! i didn't even understand that it's a rogue-like until my second death, the narrative and mechanics are really interesting.

we've just picked up mr smear's friend, whose mother's come down with some nasty flu/cold/covid... i hope we don't end up with it...

to tears

 today (yesterday, now) was wednesday. i last posted on monday. on tuesday, we got our anticipated rocket attack - it had a very loud precursor in the form of a massive strike to neighbouring areas, and then we all got to scramble before a massive volley exploded overhead.

gd's not managing too well. as in, she's falling apart, not only out of fear and worry for us over here but because she's seeing what's happening in the rest of the world as well. i'm not going to lie, i had a brief vision of what the world would look like without israel earlier and it's pretty damned bleak. and to think that our escape route - canada - has gone from harper's decade of destruction to trudeau's social media news blackout, debanking and out-and-about antisemitism in only a handful of years...

yesterday (tuesday) was mr smear's grade's turn to go to school. i took a break from my miserable task of about a week now, and went to work on something palate-cleansing. kind of. because i ended up being driven crazy until late into the night, and then continued on this morning until i was finally about to piece together all the data and figure out how the hell the requests_mock package is supposed to work.

goddamn.

today was a zoom-school day, and while there were some initial bad feelings it went well, for the most part.

it's also awesome - so awesome that i'm willing to put down money for it - that mr smear has really gotten into prodigy's math game. their tech support stinks, so that's annoying, but the overall impact is exquisite.

our cleaning guy came in today for the first time in a month, it was long overdue even if it was very intrusive while i was busy trying to motivate myself to get back into the misery task.

i made zero real progress, by the way. whatevs.

when saying goodnight to mr smear earlier i continued reading the second harry potter book which we started last night. i don't recall what brought us to discussing changelings, but i asked mr smear if he could prove he wasn't a changeling and the conversation that ensued was both fun and touching. and then i realized he was a bit upset because he'd thought that i actually didn't believe he was him :P

for the first time in a looooong time, gd and i watched a complete movie tonight. golda. excellent movie. best/worst time to watch it.

...

psychologically, obviously the last couple of weeks have been hard - and i'm feeling it and seeing it in another weight fluctuation. i eat 'cause i'm unhappy... in vaguely related news, i'm now very confident that the pain and discomfort in my hips that keeps me up at night is a direct result of my post-surgery compensation by walking heavily on my left leg. it's four years on, and my left's still noticeably shorter and more muscular than my right.

waiting for the next one

 it's been quiet since the weekend, and it's very unclear whether we're done with rocket attacks for a bit or if this is just the calm before the storm.

saturday was pretty peaceful, in the evening we went over to friends for dinner and had a really nice time. we rushed to get home in time for an anticipated 9pm attack, but that didn't happen.

on sunday morning mr smear went to school (they're alternating days between grades to reduce pressure), and on my way back from dropping him off i happened to look in the postbox and pick up the invitation to gd's medical panel that we'd been told was cancelled. just in case, i called to check and they informed me that the medical panel had not been cancelled.

oh.

so what followed was a mad scramble to gather all our documentation - not realizing that none of it would count because we were supposed to submit it weeks ago - and find someone to take over my on-call responsibilities for a few hours, and someone to pick up mr smear from school, and hop on a bus (a couple of buses) to get to the hospital complex.

it's a good thing we arrived an hour early, because it took us almost an hour to find out where we needed to go and get there.

the medical panel seemed to go alright, although it's obviously impossible to say. at least we know the appeal process is somewhat reasonable.

about halfway home, mr smear's teacher called us to ask why nobody had picked him up. flat panic ensued, he'd been waiting for half an hour with the guard as his friend's au pair had forgotten about him.

fuck.

by the time we got to his friend's place (which was on the way to the school) they'd already picked him up and returned, and when i tried to apologize to him and explain what had happened he cut me short with "uh, dad - do you mind? i'm kind of in the middle of something" and asked to stay over for a bit.

uh... okay.

the rest of the day, including picking him up and taking him for an ice-cream, went smoothly.

yesterday: oh, shit. that was only yesterday. wow.

so... today:

i woke up this morning from disturbing dreams after having been woken up earlier as punishment for going to bed relatively early. i'm going to call it insomnia, but i really don't know what's going on with my brain and my body these past few months. or years. goddammit.

today was another zoom-school day, not as bad as thursday but not great. it was nice to not be on-call anymore, but it's now the third business day in a row that i'm working on a steaming pile of shit and it's very unpleasant and demoralizing. the progress is extremely slow, i keep bumping into nasty surprises, and the biggest question that keeps coming up is "how the fuck did any of this work before?!"

aside: a wasp flew into our apartment today. gd's got a serious phobia, mr smear's scared of flies and cockroaches, and there's me taking at least a couple of minutes to find something i could (relatively) safely hit it with. at one point i managed to knock it (with impact or with air, i don't know) and i raced to stand near the window, fully expecting a very angry wasp to come straight at me. it kind of did, but when i went to push/hit it towards the window it just continued in that direction and flew away. leaving me with my heart racing. i immediately shut the windows and we turned on the air conditioner for the rest of the day. ain't nobody got time for more o' that.

so it was a difficult day, physically uncomfortable, stressed. at the end of it i took mr smear for a walk to eat laffot for dinner, which was a great idea. we enjoyed the walk together, and the meal, 

the bedtime routine was going well until gd - joking around - upset mr smear and he decided he needed to get back at her, and he was so mean that he just stuffed up the evening for everyone :(

to be honest, i'm so used to the shoe being on the other foot that i didn't know what to do. i tried to fix things, tried to get him to fix things, tried to get gd to fix things, and then eventually just gave up. i feel bad for gd, but i'm also a tiny bit relieved that it's not me for once :P

i'm not physically tired yet, but i'm emotionally exhausted. i don't know what i'm going to do with my night. probably play some more crying suns like i did last night for a bit.

*jumps to retrieve all the groceries which have just been delivered after 10pm*

telling stories

i'm getting used to the war, and i feel pretty solid about how i've managed to compartmentalize. i'm able to focus a lot better, and it certainly helps feeling that i've been heard. the new fronts opening up to the north, east and south are very concerning, though, and while i'm confident we've got it covered i'm not 100% confident. i've assured gd that we'll be able to leave if the level of danger increases, but i've spoken to people who aren't so sure and they've sown seeds of doubt.

wednesday:

wednesday was such a mess that i ended up having to take a half-day vacation. i was very happy with how the interview turned out, and i'm very grateful for the opportunity to tell our side of the story.

at least mr smear got an uninterrupted therapy session.

on wednesday night, after our fouth rocket attack (i think), gd lost her shit - she just couldn't take the stress and the fear any more. i tried to be helpful and supportive but she said some things that triggered me, and i've also been stretched taut and struggling. the "discussion" was not pretty, but as uncomfortable as the feelings were we did actually manage to say some constructive things.

thursday:

sleeping on those things was beneficial, and we all woke up in better spirits. additionally, i actually managed to figure more steps in the getting-help-for-gd story, and she had a positive conversation with a hotline worker (as opposed to the last one we called). we've also taken some steps towards more long-term help.

at some point we'll possibly even start looking for me as well.

in stark contrast to that relative positivity, mr smear was being an absolute rotter yesterday morning and it got so bad that i had to physically restrain him, which resulted in him screaming for the police (he subsequently apologized for that). once i managed to get him to stop fighting, i gave him some space and then checked on him occasionally until he was ready to talk. and once he was ready to talk, everything shifted and we were cool.

it was a massive relief and we've been good since.

yesterday was a more productive workday, but only barely.

in the evening, i had a talk with some members of our jewish community in cape town, answering very different questions about our wartime experience in tel aviv. it was therapeutic, but i think i ranted a bit :P

last night, the rocket attacks came much later than we've become used to, and around 11pm i had to grab a sleeping mr smear and carry him all the way down to the shelter. that was rougher than usual.

today:

mr smear and i started the day watching this play-through of before your eyes. i was not expecting to tear up. i feel like it's a real spoiler, but i honestly don't know if i'd have been willing to play through it myself in the first place. it is an intriguing mechanic, though, very thought-provoking.

we went shopping at azrieli today for the first time since the war broke out, it was a much quieter experience than usual but still pretty busy. while in the grocery story i began to feel faint, it looks like my backpack (which i had to carry because i'm on-call) was pressing on a nerve and it was really messing me up.

i managed to get the groceries home, but it took a while on the couch before i was functional again. mr smear got into spiritfarer on the ps4, while i spent those hours trying to figure out what the hell was going on with an issue i was paged for.

emotionally, it was considerably easier to hate my job knowing that i'm already on my way out.

i played a bit of it myself when i was done, then i made a fake movie poster for my own personal amusement, then did the dishes and now i'm posting this while listening with half an ear to the friday night service and praying for a quiet shabbat.

a face for radio

 today was hard. distracting. a visit to the clinic (for nothing, it turned out), conversations with and research for gd, an uncooperative mr smear, a parent guidance session, and a whole bunch of chores: distraction upon distraction.

in the afternoon, i finally had that chat with the CTO that he'd asked for just before the war broke out. it wasn't unpleasant or uncomfortable, and he surprised me by asking me if there was any way for me to stay on an extra couple of weeks past my notice period. in the evening i had a chat with my new boss, and after assuring him that this was purely a favor in light of the current situation, he's told me that he'll consider it.

i really don't mind, but the conversation left me with a good feeling overall.

i had a really hard time not falling asleep during our all-hands meeting. i had to keep turning off the video to yawn uncontrollably and rub my eyes. about a quarter of the way through i realized there was no way i was going to be able to function for the radio interview at 10pm with coffee. so i had coffee.

we dropped mr smear off at his friend's birthday party, and there was a rocket attack just as we arrived so everyone hustled into their bomb shelter. and promptly brought out cake and sang happy birthday, and as surreal as that was and as trivial as it was, it was also quite charming and comforting, and i think it really helped gd in making sense of things.

we had two more rocket attacks while mr smear was at the party, and then i went to pick him up and was relieved that everyone had had a good time (he'd been very nervous about the other kids eating dairy near him). then it was time for the bedtime routine, and that was so late that once i'd said good night it was time for the talk.

it felt like the interview went well, the journalists did a good job of putting me at ease and i'm very grateful that the caffeine and adrenaline were well-timed and worked well together. they were primarily interested in what it's like to live in israel right now, i think i did a good job of answering that in addition to covering a good chunk of where this war comes from and what it is we're trying to achieve. now that it's over, i'm still very wired, and i'm super-curious to hear how it comes out after editing.

now to try to wind down. video games? reading? watching youtube videos? the possibilities are endless.

all over the place in the rains

(rains of water and rockets)

 i had a whole lot of urgent and important things to do today, but instead i wasted a good couple of hours running around trying to get security keys cut for our bomb shelter, with zero success. although the second mission did teach me a lesson - not to buy falafel from our "usual" place any more - and not to leave the house in closed shoes without an umbrella. i got caught in a massive downpour, and hid out in a coffee shop that shut its doors right in the middle of it :/

my first day of my last on-call was okay, i guess. the collaborative part went well. it was weird constantly missing the CTO who's (apparently) been trying to speak to me since i handed in my notice.

my employer sent a lego set for mr smear, he was really excited - that was awesome ^_^

gd says we were in the shelter four times today, but i'd lost track by the time she said it. one foot in front of the other. we were interrupted by the siren in the middle of dinner, and mr smear was visibly panicked - that broke my heart. even so, he enjoys going down to the shelter because i let him play games on my phone. that doesn't help when we're - for the second night in a row - interrupted while i'm reading to him in bed... $#@!

i'm also finding it very difficult to balance getting him to do things quickly and efficiently in case there's an attack, and not making him paranoid that there's going to be an attack any minute. this shit is hard.

gd's had two offers from very generous and concerned friends to help us get to montreal. she also managed to get in touch with the canadian authorities responsible for airlifting citizens out of the country. (not very far, but whatever). she hasn't been able to decide whether to actually go or not, though, and it's proving a tough call for her. i've told that i'm happy with whatever she chooses, and i really don't think that us being separated for a short while is too big a deal.

...

a while ago we watched j'accuse!, an incredible documentary about the efforts of my (half) sister's cousin (from the other half) and the granddaughter of one of the villains to get some kind of justice for some of the most brutal massacres my people (both sides of my family came escaped lithuania) have ever suffered. the description of what was done to us then by the lithuanians (before the nazis even arrived) was absolutely shocking. when trying to compare the pogrom of the 7th of october to anything, i find that comparisons to 9/11 just don't cut it, because they don't take into account the personal, vile, evil, perverse and brutal nature of the attacks. the lithuanian massacres, though? that's it. that's the comparison.

we've been persecuted before, we'll be persecuted again. we promised ourselves after the holocaust "never again". well, here we are. "again". the only difference is that this time we're not taking it lying down.

...

i just spoke to my mom for a while, and i'm concerned that south africa's become even more dangerous for jews than it was before - i mean, the whole world just exploded with antisemitism, but in south africa the goddamned president himself is in on it. i made my mother promise me that if things take a turn for the worse, she's to remember that i told her that i'd rather worry about the money to bring her and help than to lose her.

it's exactly what i've been saying the whole time, but i think the current situation is beginning to drive home just how dangerous south africa is.

war: week 2 begins

 another long day.

work-wise, this one was all about fixing a broken test that was essentially a dungeon full of traps. it was a very frustrating and demoralizing day on top of everything else that's going on. and from tomorrow i'm on-call again... the only comforting thing about that is that it's my last for a while.

on my way home from getting bloodwork done, i was power-washed by god in a sudden, dramatic downpour with thunder and lightning that lasted about a minute, and then became an undulating wave of drizzle/rain/drizzle. i was sad i didn't have an umbrella, glad that i wasn't wearing closed shoes.

i picked up mr smear's books from the school today; that could have been a better experience. it all went south when i arrived in front of his locker and discovered that he - along with half his class - doesn't have a single piece of paper or sticker identifying his locker or any of his stuff. and he was on gd's phone talking to a friend, and for five solid minutes he just ignored all my calls. i was pretty upset.

but i did get hold of him eventually, and brought his stuff home without having to open up the umbrella.

we had a couple more rocket attacks today. gd's been in a bad way, she's still very scared but something about today feels a little different somehow. all round. i mean, i'm still in shock, but i feel like i'm managing to merge in the new narrative a little. one day at a time.

[a break from writing to calm down from imagining some of the horrors of last weekend. this is going to take a long time to deal with]

there's talk about the kids going back to school in phases. i don't think we're ready.

...

gd and i have been watching all sorts of random things this past week, and what's gotten in my head is what the terror attacks on israel mean for end times prophecy (with greg laurie), along with raptor news updates. if this is the end times, what are they the end of? it sounds like we might be seeing the end of the middle eastern reign of terror, with us leading the free world into battle. i mean, it's just a thought...