all over the place

 it's the middle of my third night with sinusitis, i'm tired and my face is tender and my nose is running constantly and i couldn't sleep so here i am writing in my journal.

wednesday:

the only thing i recall from wednesday is that my boss called me in to re-task me, which was a little sad considering i've been getting into a good groove. and mr smear seemed to be a bit feverish.

thursday:

gd wasn't sure whether to send mr smear to school or not, but the rule is "no fever: school" and we got him there. it's good i was working from home because a short while later i needed to pick him up. he seemed fine, so i strongly suspected that he was playing it up after two days at home.

i now know better.

thursday morning i discovered, during our morning meeting, that all the time i thought i was muting myself with my headset i was on full volume because my macbook doesn't think i intend to use my headset's microphone when i plug it in. i was mortified while thinking back to all the times i've muted myself to yell something to gd or mr smear, or cough, or fart... i'm still mortified.

i was also finally frustrated enough with my lack of slack notifications that i reached out to their support, and what i got back literally shocked me. it turns out that for many moons at least my macbook has silently been putting me into "do not disturb" mode with no indication as such. someone at apple signed off on a "feature" that blocks all my notifications during my work hours. what the actual fuck?

on thursday night there was another terror attack in dizengoff street.

friday:

mr smear seemed well enough to go on his school trip to the museum. apparently he found it boring, i'm not more curious to see for myself than before. i dropped him off a walked straight through to the train station, and took the train to rosh ha'ayin to meet a co-worker and get a ride to our company hike.

on the train i heard a crash, a soldier had fallen down the stairs with a heavy backpack on the other side of the car and she was sobbing and in pain. i made sure she was being taken care of before sitting down again, but it was heartbreaking - i hope it wasn't as bad as it sounded.

the ride to the camping spot was nice, we arrived and i was treated to a breakfast of wafers and orange juice and a story of how everyone's night went. there'd been an attempt at a terror attack in the middle of the night just a literal stone's throw from the campsite, nobody was armed and the only trained fighter was the only one to say "i'm out" and go home!

the hike itself was generally excellent, i was fortunate to be able to borrow a big hate because i would've gotten even more sunburned otherwise. my legs and hips had been feeling a bit stiff, which i attributed to the rollerblading on tuesday night, but at some point i started feeling a bit nervous about my right knee (the one that was operated on).

there were two small kids with us, and one of them decided that he wanted to go up over the train tracks rather than under them through the tunnel. this was fine until we had to come down from the tracks and it was steep and muddy, and that was where i discovered that my shoes had very poor grip. the trouble started with me tripping over a thick metal wire at the top and catching myself with my hand on a very sharp corner of the bridge (the rest of the surface was pretty smooth, so that was bad luck). everyone else made it down safely, some sliding but nothing crazy, but i lost my footing near the bottom and managed to launch myself over a bush and about a two meter drop onto rough stones.

i don't have any clue how i managed to turn myself around and not face-plant, but i'm still amazed by how gracefully i landed even if i did end up rather scratched and bruised. i had such an adrenaline spike that it was a while before i was certain that i hadn't really damaged anything...

we got a bit lost at one point, and the way back was pretty tough. the fact that both kids made it was amazing. the fact that their dad was brave enough to bring them by himself and could handle carrying the smaller one about half the hike was pretty damned impressive.

anywho, we ended the hike on a great note and went to a nearby italian restaurant to celebrate: the geppetto pizza bar in tzur hadassah. i wasn't very excited about their vegan options, and the waitress wasn't confident that they'd be willing to improvise - but they managed to put together a vegan cheese calzone for me that was absolutely heavenly!

i got a ride back to rabin square and walked home from there, very conscious of my legs and my step counter. i think i'd hit about 17000 at that point and i was grateful to get home and slide into the waiting hot bath.

it was good for my legs, but it was too hot for my blood pressure and i stayed in their a little too long, so i needed to lie under a fan and recover for a bit after i wobbled out and got dry.

mr smear and i helped gd bake the challah, and we had a really nice evening.

it was around bedtime when my throat started scratching.

saturday (yesterday, kind of):

i was sick. i was off-balance, felt like shit, headachey. i spent some of the morning playing video games - gd and i started getting into overcooked 2 - but for most of the day i was bedridden or couchridden. i did enjoy listening to absolute mad lads - kevin mitnick, but didn't really have bandwidth for much else. i was sure i'd be taking today (sunday) off.

sunday (today, kind of).

after a surprising amount of sleep for an unpleasant night with heavy sinuses, i got up feeling much better this morning. i walked mr smear to school, then accompanied gd to a doctor's appointment in ramat aviv. aside from a runny nose and slight cloudiness, i was fine.

i worked from home today, which helped. it wasn't an inspirational day, and one of my coworkers and i are having a bit of a disagreement about how i proceed so hopefully we'll be able to resolve that tomorrow (today, kind of).

gd went to the shuk today by herself, so color me impressed. in the evening we picked up mr smear from his animation chug and happened to walk past the street art group on the way out, and the woman running it was only to happy to fit him in to her monday session so we're all really excited for that!

dinnertime/showertime/bedtime was fine, but i needed to get into bed myself immediately after saying good night to mr smear (it's been like that for days), and i struggled to sleep until i eventually got up to post this. an hour or so ago? whatever. i'm just messed up enough to be having trouble sleeping, but not enough that i shouldn't (theoretically) be able to lie down and get some rest.

...

sunday / yesterday / today / whatever we celebrated our first year (back) in israel! i'm filled with gratitude, it's hard to believe we got through all that insanity, and then more insanity on top of that insanity, and here we are. through perseverance, amazing friends, a frightening amount of debt and sheer luck, here we are.