humming along

it's been a weird couple of days. actually, a weird couple of weeks. there're a million things on my to-do list that generate anxiety when i think about them, but for the most part (mr smear's drama notwithstanding) i've been feeling quite relaxed and have been very good at just putting one foot in front of the other.

it's okay.

mr smear had a better day today, long may it last.

we started the day recording a birthday video for my mother, and using clipchamp was a surprisingly pleasant experience!

i did the dishes while listening to an article being read to me by read aloud: a text to speech voice reader, which was a far superior experience to the narrator app (massive UX fail) in spite of the fact that my computer kept sleeping mid-sentence because it doesn't signal that it's playing audio. i figured out that i could work around that by playing a youtube video on low volume/mute in the background and i'm feeling pretty pleased with myself for coming up with such a dumb hack :P

yesterday, i managed to rework my current solution and refactor all the tests by dinner time. it was a lot of work. this morning, i learned that i needed to interface with a third-party that almost nobody in our company has any experience with, so i spent my day figuring that out and managed to get the job done and dusted before leaving the office.

so that felt good.

i also had a one-on-one with my boss for the first time in a couple of weeks, and it was reassuring to feel aligned again.

i ran into the firefighter on the bus home this afternoon, maybe we'll actually manage to arrange a meeting soon. which reminds me that i bumped into daddy-o quite a while back and still haven't made a coffee date with him...

on sunday i started reading the story of hercules to mr smear from edith hamilton's mythology. i've been using the book occasionally as a reference over the years, but the past week or so i've been reading selections from it. it's lighting my boy up! he loved the story of medusa, and he was enthralled by the story of the cyclops. the story of hercules begins very intensely, reminding me of lews therin telemon, and it gave me a good framing for discussing some of mr smear's recent behavior with him. this evening we read and discussed the first two labors, and even though they're only two short paragraphs in the book we had a really good time picking apart the details and implications :)

gd and i are halfway through the season finale of firefly (she needed to go to sleep), and it's kind of sad feeling like the re-watch is almost over...

f*** around, find out

the meme's been everywhere lately.

today it was mr smear's turn to find out.

he hit a girl in his class today, after harassing another kid who was just trying to quietly read a book. it's the first time i've ever spanked him. i wasn't emotional when i did it - gd and i agreed that it was due, and then it was a matter of picking the right moment - but i was emotional afterwards. i was pretty pissed off that he'd brought us to a place where i need to wield physical authority.

a short while later, after giving him some space to steam, i approached and sat down next to him, and asked him what he was thinking. god knows how effective this experience will actually prove to be, but he basically swore off violence and assured me that he's going to start listening to us.

we'll see.

it's heartbreaking to see him self-destructing. thursday's therapy session can't come quickly enough.

...

i slept alright last night, which was the first time in quite a while. i dropped mr smear off at school, got through the morning rituals, then wasted half an hour with my south african bank.

the weather today was somewhat improved, but still crappy.

work was interesting. i effectively lost a day due to a redesign triggered by a review comment, but i'm definitely happier with where the solution is.

i left work early to pick up mr smear, and we had words all the way home. correction: i had words, and he knew exactly how in the wrong he was and appeared to actually be listening.

we'll see.

i'm very glad that gd found my old keyboard, but this evening that's been the least of my concerns. i'm not sure if i'm having trouble because of the upgrade to windows 11, or because i haven't used this computer in such a long time... either way, slow and steady progress...

...

there's been a mosquito buzzing around me all evening, and i haven't been able to catch the bugger :/

the fear

 well, that was a mistake. mr smear's been really scared since friday's ghostbusters experiment. it's a bit of a bummer.

on friday evening i discovered - to my shame - that i was pretty badly sunburned.

yesterday:

the weather's been apocalyptic since yesterday. quite dusty, hot and humid, windy and even a bit rainy. it's weird. mr smear and i joined cm and his kids at the beach, gd unfortunately had to turn back because she's been really struggling with pain the last few weeks. the beach time itself was great - the kids get along well - but as we were beginning to get ready to pack up a heavy wind suddenly struck, throwing chairs and shoving us around.

it was over about ten minutes later.

i got more sunburned, this time with sunscreen. that i now suspect has expired.

we came home, gd and i had a stupid incident that had to do with leftovers and debilitating chronic pain. so that sucked. the rest of the day was mostly spent watching the incredibles (both of them), playing games, reading and resting.

today:

today began with a stressful mission, after dropping mr smear off at school i went to the clinic to see if i could get our doctor to give gd a prescription for the meds she's been desperate for for the past couple of weeks. i managed to get it sorted, to my relief and surprise, and it looks like it's helping already.

otherwise, my second-hand 2013 macbook is feeling like it's on its last legs so i made a move back to my windows machine.the computer itself is great, and windows 11 is actually feeling pretty solid so far, but i'll be damned if i didn't manage to forget how much i loathe using this **** keyboard. voice access is okay, but it's not that good that i can switch to it...

i wonder where my external keyboard is. i guess i'll look for it in the morning.

i was a bit slow today, but i did get my main task taken care of.

then i went to pick up mr smear from school.

fortunately, the councilor caught him before he delivered his "hate letter" to his little nemesis. it was crude and rude, and if he had managed to get it into the poor kid's hands i'm pretty confident we'd have been invited to a little chat with the other parents... we've had a couple of talks with him and we're praying he's getting the message...

i don't know why i struggled with tekken 7 before, i think it's because i accidentally entered story mode. the actual game itself is clean and clear and well put together. gd and i are making good progress with the firefly series. i got too excited by the apple tv preview app, which feels great and does everything except actually play the media :/

the climb

 last night was really nice, in spite of a sudden wave of nausea almost making us turn back on our way to dinner. we all had a good time (even if mr smear needed extra time to warm up), and there was even some food for us :)

this morning was a slow morning (as it should have been), with me up first and getting quite invested in monster boy, then mr smear woke up and we explored cities: skylines. i love the fact that we've got access to a fresh take on the simcity franchise.

we called my brother for his birthday, and i chatted with him for a while - he's really not in a good place... stuck in johannesburg, with an increasing lack of infrastructure and protections and apparently income too...

i took mr smear out for a walk, and we ended up at the sportec. i wanted to show him the climbing wall but he refused, and when pushed he admitted that it's because he's afraid of heights. so i explained to him that climbing is a sure-fire way to cure his fear, and he agreed to give it a try.

i feel like we both leveled up today. him, for facing his fear and getting the hang of "letting go" (both literally and figuratively), and me for being patient and undemanding and just focusing on him gaining confidence.

we had a great time, and we've agreed to make it a regular thing ^_^

then we came home and watched the original ghostbusters. he was a bit scared for some of it, and there were a couple of sexually inappropriate moments, but overall we all enjoyed watching it together. then we played some pinball heroes, q-bert (the reboot is pretty sweet), and he's now diving into the gigantosaurus game.

gd's really not feeling well, but otherwise it's been a Very Good Day indeed.

harvest time

it's shavuot! our harvest festival that's been co-opted by the dairy industry, and now we're taking our dairy-allergic son to a family gathering where everything will be touched by cow juice. so we've eaten early and we're taking our own snacks...

...

this week was much more reasonably paced than i've gotten used to. the work we pushed on sunday was the culmination of months of incremental achievements under fire: our company bleeding money on ci/cd infrastructure that i've been busy overhauling for the past year. the work isn't complete, but we've finally got all the pieces in place and staunched the wound, and the past few days have felt like stopping and taking a breath.

mr smear's week improved, in spite of a couple of rough moments. monday morning was the low-light of the week, though, and the rest of the moments (so far, i guess) have been pretty minor and manageable in comparison.

yesterday:

scrapper's last day in town, so i jumped on a bus to meet up with him. someone cut the bus off and the driver slammed on the brakes and swerved, throwing me into a woman standing by the windscreen and smashing a mirror in the middle of the packed bus and showering everyone (including someone in a wheelchair) with glass.

fortunately, i walked off with one cut finger and a couple of sore ones, and nothing more, and the woman i slammed into seemed to be okay (i asked a second time to make sure, but to be fair she could also have been in shock).

scrapper and i sat and chewed the fat for a while, then he joined me for a quick grocery run and stopped by to say hi to the fam for a few minutes before he had to run. all in all, it was a nice catch up full of interesting stories and i'm glad we got to see him.

today:

a half-day at work, somewhat productive. then we went for a walk to pick up a gift wine for tonight and have a delicious lunch and coffee at cafe ava - it's awesome to have an excellent vegan coffee shop/deli within walking distance!

the afternoon was lazy, mr smear and i tried out untitled goose game, which was a lot of fun, and we've got a bunch of new downloads to try :)

i'm very excited to have a couple of days off. chag sameach!

hopefully tomorrow will be better

it's exhausting trying to teach someone how not to self-sabotage while they're busy self-sabotaging.

saturday:

a long walk with an apparent misunderstanding of what the word "port" meant. some of it was pleasant.

yesterday:

gd and i went to the clinic and the hospital and sorted a bunch of things out. some of it needs to be redone because i have a form to fill in and no idea who's supposed to fill it in nor what precisely it's for.

it was a long day working from home. it ended with me pushing and praying.

mr smear surprised us by asking to go to his classmate's after school. we were a little weirded out by this because he's been complaining about this kid for a while. when we went to pick him up in the evening we found him very busy making sure they wouldn't like him.

we tried talking to him last night about it. he didn't want to listen.

today:

we tried talking to him this morning about it. he didn't want to listen. the walk to school was mostly him being angry with me, and then eventually him bursting into tears and apologizing. it was heartbreaking.

i spent the next two hours putting together fixes for the stuff yesterday's prayers hadn't sufficed for,   then struggling with administrative stuff.

it was a dust-stormy day, and gd and i were both concerned about mr smear and feeling shitty about what he was going through. it was a relief to hear from her in the afternoon that she'd picked him up from school and that things had been mostly okay.

i managed to get a lot of stuff done today. it was a pretty good work day. i came home early to take mr smear out for an ice-cream, gd joined and co-opted and we ended up having laffot for dinner. (i'm exercising portion control after two days feeling very uncomfortable in my body, so two laffot and one pita). we bumped into an old friend from the rollerblading group who's become a vegan activist working with a farm sanctuary, so that was cool.

we had a minor incident on the way home (mr smear accidentally kicked the back of gd's ankle and then got upset when i explained why it was his fault and not hers), but got over it. then we convinced him to shower immediately and quickly so that we could play a game of goodcritters. it started off alright, but then he blatantly cheated and that made it shitty.

hopefully next time will be better.

bedtime itself was mostly good. aside from a quick update with my mom, the evening has been spent playing rayman (we're soooooo close to the final level of awesomeness!) and watching firefly. and battling an extremely patient mosquito.

it wasn't all bad today, but hopefully tomorrow will be better.

west-bank wedding

wednesday:

i don't recall too much of the workday itself, but it certainly wasn't as rough as the previous too days. in the evening we had a company team-building exercise at eureka jaffa, which was a really fun experience! we then had dinner a short walk from there, and i got a ride home from a coworker who's a sudanese refugee and we had a really interesting conversion.

thursday:

it was a short workday for me, but very busy. i left my coworkers with instructions for how to proceed in the testing without me, and i was very excited to get an update later that everything seemed to be working. it's a piece of work that's a culmination of various efforts over the course of the past year, and it all seems to be coming together nicely :)

we managed to get out of the house on time, which was pretty impressive. the drive to the wedding took about three hours (i'm guessing traffic was worse than waze was expecting), i managed to fill up the tank on the way there (which was a big relief) and aside from being directed through a couple of dodgy areas we were fine. i was a little nervous when an agent called to inform me that we had absolutely no business going into areas A or B and that if we got stranded there they'd be unable to assist us, but fortunately (i found this out yesterday after examining some maps) we were nowhere near those areas.

the wedding itself was beautiful, in spite of a relentless, icy wind, and aside from an altercation when we arrived (gd and i have very different ideas of how we should have handled getting into our nice clothes) and one of the way back (a rehash of the earlier one), we had a great time with the family, and even mr smear got over his shyness at some point and busted out all his moves :)

for the first time ever, i'm now confident in recognizing and identifying all seven of my cousin's kids!

we got back to tel aviv just before midnight, relieved to be home safe after a really nice evening out in west-bank desert.

yesterday:

gd and i did some shopping in the morning, then picked up mr smear and went through to dizengoff center. we got heavily sidetracked trying to organize food, but we managed to achieve our primary goal and i'm very excited that we now have a hardcover copy of the complete maus. i've been trying to get gd to read it for years, and coming across the page that changed comics forever yesterday proved an excellent catalyst!

the rest of the day was napping and playing humanity, which we discovered yesterday and absolutely adore.

today so far:

i walked into the living to room to find mr smear trying to make a level for humanity. my back and neck are still threatening spasms, i'm trying to stretch them out and crossing fingers.

purchase

monday:

it was a long work day, with lots of tedium. then i rushed from the office to the school for our last parents' meeting with mr smear's current teacher. some of the report was very good! and some was very... not so good. nothing we weren't already familiar with, though.

gd and i finished re-watching district 9. freaking disturbing, and brilliant.

yesterday:

also a long work day, but less repetitive. one very successful rework of something that has been causing us problems since before i joined the company more than a year ago.

a relatively successful, but somewhat weird, shopping experience after work. h&m doesn't stock men's trousers over size 36, which makes me... too fat to shop at h&m. then we hit renuar, where my suspicions were confirmed by an assistant that their sizes are ten more than the actual size, so a 38 from anywhere else is a 48 at renuar. wtf?

we also picked up shoes for a reluctant mr smear - we'll see soon enough if he's actually willing to wear them - and a pair of sandals for me which seem to be a good fit.

the good part about the shopping was being able to use the gift vouchers i'd been given by my employer! i'd earmarked them for other stuff, but i do feel we made good use of them.

bedtime last night was mostly fine, right until saying goodnight when mr smear threw a tantrum because it was too late for reading him a story and he just would not accept that. that was a sad way to end the day.

now:

i've been uncomfortable for the last while, but i kinda anticipated that. i went to bed soon after mr smear, feeling a bit tired and a bit antsy.

the good, the bad and the gummy

aerospace:

the good: we all like each other and want to proceed. the bad: a surprise upset in yesterday's news that's sent the company into a bit of a spin (a funding setback for their biggest customer).

politics:

the good: it looks like the ceasefire might hold this time. the bad: the government is trying to siphon funds from the big, secular taxpaying cities to the religious nuts and zealots. 

dental hygienist:

the good: gd and i made our appointments, and managed to get to the school (just) in time afterwards. the gummy: our teeth are in a better state than before, but it was still a very scrapey and bleedy experience.

my wristwatch:

the bad: i wasn't able to connect to it with my phone, so i tried a factory reset and for an hour or two it looked like i'd bricked it. the good: i eventually found a video with some helpful suggestions that rescued it. 

work:

the good: a couple of minor positives, but a big relief that i hadn't done anything about the unpleasant feelings from thursday evening after learning that my boss is off sick. the gummy: not making much progress during a rather distracted day.

blogger / blogspot:

the gummy: wtf google. a bunch of my old posts were flagged as violating terms and conditions by the auto-reviewer and were taken down. some of them had links to sites that had once been legit, some of them were considered too racy. some of them were marked as spam, which made absolutely no sense whatsoever. 

family:

the good: getting gd through some steps in the process of making an allergist appointment. mr smear's enthusiasm for "leveling up" in his drawing. a generally good day.

a good weekend

 it was... very weekend. this morning was relaxed, this afternoon we took a walk to the beach, i got in a couple of naps. vibe-wise there was significantly less stress or disagreement than usual.

we're about halfway through a re-watch of district 9. it's so damned gritty and real. it's hard to watch.

gd went to bed a bit earlier and i've been watching a comedy marathon. i'm feeling oddly wired, i hope i can get a good night's sleep and handle the work drama i expect in the morning.

this has been a week

i've barely been able to sleep this week, and i've been really tired. that's kind of been the theme of the week. here are a random selection of highlights and lowlights:

* i've been feeling uncomfortably overweight these days. maybe we should buy a scale. i feel like at this point in my life i should just accept that this is what my body is like.

* work: the work week was very frustrating, it would take until yesterday morning for our pipelines to be released and for me to finally put out the important and "urgent" work that i finished at least a week and a half ago.

* work: for my first time ever, i have options that have vested. this is cool! i hope they end up being worth something.

* work: i had a misunderstanding with my boss, and in a meeting on wednesday night i became upset and annoyed and intense. he handled me really well, but i felt (and still feel) shitty about it.

* aerospace: i had an hour long chat with an investor yesterday that went really well. it seems like everyone in this little circle is like-minded, cool, and technically solid - i hope the money question works out!

* mr smear: we finally got to see someone yesterday, and the experience was a bit awkward but i feel like they've got a good approach and attitude. mr smear started off completely uncommunicative, but slowly opened up; i was absolutely mortified (but giggled uncontrollably) towards the end when mr smear leaned back on his chair, lifted up his legs and let out a really loud fart.

* work: one of my coworkers is very quiet, and can be a bit of a dick. i review a pull request of his and he became defensive, dismissive and passive aggressive. i went back over the comments this afternoon to make sure that i didn't start shit, but even looking at it now it just seems like i'm dealing with the wrong kind of laziness.

* today's shoe-shopping experience has taught me that it's probably worth the extra cost of letting gd and mr smear do it alone. i'll put down good money to avoid that stuff if i can afford it.

* strip search: gd and i just finished the series, and it's been such a great trip the second time around - everything about the show, and the contestants, is just wonderfully affirming and inspirational!

contact

saturday:

saturday wasn't bad, but it was uncomfortable. we all spent our morning doing our own things, then walked to the beach in the afternoon. that could totally have been a great experience if it wasn't for the fact that mr smear whined and complained non-stop, he didn't want to leave the house, then he didn't want to leave the beach, and he only wanted to do what we didn't along the way (there and back)... so that was unpleasant. aside from that, it was a beautiful day and it was nice to be outside for it.

sunday:

i woke up in the middle of the night (around 2am) feeling sore, and spent three or four hours researching and writing an article on restless legs syndrome. i completed it on my two hour-long train rides, though i have yet to publish it because i need to get the photos done first.

dragging myself out of bed was hard. the walk to school was uncomfortable, and i dropped mr smear off with advice that i could only pray he would hear some of.

haifa is a beautiful city with a great vibe. meeting the guys was excellent, i love what they're doing and i love that we're all in a similar headspace. i think both myself and the CTO were taken by surprise to discover that we both previously worked with anti-ad-blocking tech, and he admitted that his team used to "borrow" from my team's work!

i was invited to join a bunch of them for lunch, it turns out half the company is vegan or vegetarian and we went to an entirely vegan hummusia (hummus bar) - the food was excellent, the company was great.

i don't know what's going to come out of sunday morning, but i can say that i really felt at home and would be thrilled to be able to join them!

...

i got home in time to pick mr smear up from school. i chatted with the afternoon councillors, and the picture i have of his general behavior / interactions with the other kids is less clear than before. i also learned that he's been lying to them in order to get out of doing homework... i tried to do some of it with him when we got home, it was really tough to get him to cooperate.

gd had been spending the day with one of our community's rabbis, who came over for a brief visit.

after putting mr smear to bed, gd and i finally continued watching strip search.

yesterday:

mr smear and his enthusiasm for blockbench gave me an opportunity to send him off with an easy message for the day...

i took care of a bunch of things, then went to the office. the first thing i did was push a fix for something i broke on thursday, after which we had our daily meeting. one of the guys complained that things still weren't working, and i asked him when they last broke considering i'd just reported fixing it. "yesterday and the day before". this is not the first time he's done that, it's super weird.

someone else broke something critical yesterday and it still isn't fixed, so we were all stalled... i managed to get through an enormous volume of tedious effort; it's done, and hopefully today will feel more productive.

apparently gd had more luck with mr smear's homework yesterday afternoon, so that's good. on my way home i felt like my belly was a bit exposed, and while i suspect that my t-shirt has shrunk, gd assures me that i've put on a bit of weight :/

more strip search after bedtime.

today:

i slept very poorly last night.

...

today is our cousins' matriarch's 92nd birthday. i feel guilty that i haven't made time to see her and her husband. they're both suffering from dementia, and i really hope they're at ease.

well, bully for us

wednesday:

a couple of weeks ago i mentioned that we were struggling with ringworm, and for more than a month it has been causing us all a lot of stress and unhappiness. so it was more than a relief on wednesday morning to get a second second opinion that it is most assuredly not ringworm. it's not infectious. it's actually, and this is the first time i've heard about this, a case of atopic dermatitus and there's a list of suspicious possible causes. basically, gd's developed another kind of allergic reaction.

immediately, i suspected that it was related to cannabis, but apparently the skin thing started before our recent adventure.

so that's an enormous relief.

on my way home from work, still heavily contemplating monday evening's revelation, i came up with a simple strategy for relating privileges to behavior in a positive way, and i was so excited to share it with gd that apparently i managed to say it in a disagreeable way. and then, although she later admitted that she didn't disagree with what i was proposing, she told me she didn't agree. and then i lost my temper, and we spent the next half hour or so having a massive fight.

i guess it's kind of understandable why mr smear gets so angry so quickly.

thursday:

thursday morning started off okay, right until i needed to take mr smear to school. he began fighting with me in the stairwell, and once we got outside i realized that i needed help. so i dragged him back upstairs so that gd could talk to him. she tried, gave up after a moment, and then told me he would calm down during the walk.

i know my son well enough to be certain that he would not be calming down on the way. he just stews and gets angrier.

we got about halfway when i managed to get him to take a breath and talk to me. things weren't good by the time we said goodbye, but they did seem reasonably less bad.

then i returned home to a new fight, or maybe it was a continuation of the previous night's fight. this time, though, we found resolution, at least.

i took my watch in to a different place for repair, and it was quick and painless. the watch is no longer water-resistant, but that's fine. it was a cheap watch (xiaomi huami amazfit BIP) that i picked up in july of 2018, and although the notifications are inconsistent, it's a decent digital watch with a step counter and heart-rate tracking that still only needs to be recharged every few weeks.

i returned home and settled in to work. i had something big and important that needed to be done.

about five minutes before our daily standup, the phone rang.

we rushed off to pick up mr smear, who had injured a (different) kid in his class by throwing a rock at his head.

we were devastated.

the teacher informed us that he seemed to be remorseful and feel guilty, and instructed us to be gentle with him.

we're trying.

let's just say that the rest of my workday was a little bit distracted. and a bunch of random and unexpected things began failing (and that's how we realized that the end-of-life deprecation phase date for .net 3.1 had come and gone).

at some point gd took mr smear out to go and do something, which is when the fridge was delivered. 

fortunately, that went pretty smoothly. though there was a moment when the movers thought that they wouldn't be able to get it through the door, but after removing the packaging and measuring twice and getting me to sign a waiver that i wouldn't blame them for any scratches they managed to get it to squeak through without any damage (or without ripping off the mezuzah, which they almost did with their initial attempt).

that big and important thing that needed to be done? it didn't get done.

one positive thing that did come out of this awful experience is that we managed to get a contact for a therapist from the school - which we'd asked for more than a year ago - so we have an appointment for next week and hopefully they'll be able to help us get back on track.

whatever "track" means, in our case. we just want him to learn how to enjoy his life and not be so angry and stressed all the time. us too.

we would have been more excited about turning on the new fridge in the evening if it hadn't been for the trauma of the day.

at bedtime, one of mr smear's friends called to assure him that he was still his friend. it was very sweet. very awkward, but very sweet.

yesterday:

mr smear ended thursday and began friday with a stuffy nose and a post-nasal drip, a great start for their school sports day in the park. gd accompanied him, and they ended up coming early, apparently it was just too hot (it was very hot yesterday) and a lot of families bailed.

the other delivery guys arrived to pick up the old fridge, which by this time had been defrosted and cleaned. although their manager had informed me that i couldn't ride in the cab with them, they didn't want to have to wait for me to bus to the destination so they asked me to jump in.

i don't speak any arabic (except for the borrow-words, and a phrase i learned in the army that should never be used unless i'm armed and under threat), so i didn't understand a word that was said when i wasn't being spoken to. i also had some trouble hearing what was said when i was being spoken to, but for the most part our conversation was good. the guys got a good laugh out of the fact that i could not, for the life of me, pronounce one of their names correctly :P

the destination was in a very odd neighbourhood, with no place to park that had access to the building, so that was a thing. but we found a way, and delivered the fridge, and i handed over the money, and we went our separate ways.

for all the stress that went into planning the deliveries, that worked out remarkably smoothly. and although the delivery cost was high (very high, considering the old fridge wasn't difficult for them to move), we're much happier having sent it to someone who needs it - to a lone soldier, particularly meaningful to me as an ex-lone-soldier - than to recycling.

i met up with gd and mr smear at abu ghosh for a laffa breakfast, i was hungry and i stuffed myself. we then did grocery shopping and returned home.

i was tired. it was hot.

in spite of that, i dragged myself out into the weird weather (it was hot, but somehow misty?) and walked to drone hacker's for a beer and a chat, we ended up talking for three hours and it still felt like we were halfway through a conversation.

i bumped into the older parents of one of mr smear's classmates on the way home (i didn't recognize the father, though he recognized me, and as usual i made it weird), and we ended up having a very animated and occasionally heated discussion about the unreasonable obstacles to making aliyah. the father, as a lawyer, made a very interesting bet - that he would represent us for free if the authorities tried to kick my mother out while trying to make aliyah from inside the country - which in the grand scheme of things feels like a bet worth taking but i couldn't possibly imagine my mother packing up and leaving without assurance that we'd sort everything out.

though... that's really what we did. it's crazy to think about it, but that's exactly what we did.

and here we are.

...

i managed to get tomorrow off, and i'm heading north to meet some people. no idea how this unfolds, but just having a point of contact in private aerospace is exciting in and of itself!

revelation

 that awkward moment when i realized that up until now, my boss might have been able to see my interviews on my personal calendar. i think the privacy settings were correct, but my recent experience with broken macbook "features" tells me not to be so sure...

monday evening:

mr smear's teacher called, and unloaded a lot of interesting and mortifying details. there was a lot of surprisingly positive stuff: he's apparently very strong with the math, and participates in class (and often corrects the teacher), he's creative and apparently his weird brand of humor is something the other kids enjoy. but there was something awful, too. the kid who was harassing him non-stop last year? mr smear has been investing a lot of effort in getting revenge - something we've explicitly talked to him about many times - and has been making things really hard for this kid. more than they already are, because he's... a bit slow...

yesterday:

yesterday had a rough start. it began with a family discussion about what we'd learned, some of which landed well and some of which landed... well, let's say it was an emotional and emotionally draining morning. mr smear got to school about fifteen minutes late and i got home in a shitty mood (in spite of having apparent success in improving it in mr smear).

then we learned that gd's appointment that we thought was for yesterday is only in two months, and that's ridiculous. so i begrugingly (i wasn't in a great mood and i needed to get ready for a big work day) accompanied her to the clinic. the receptionist at the clinic was very understanding, and told us that we needed to get to a clinic in bat yam for an emergency appointment in two hours' time.

we raced to find a bus, which was more complicated that it should have been (the moovit app was not cooperating). we finally boarded the bus in a cloud of flecks of dusty something from another passenger which got in both our eyes. the bus ride was long, very bumpy and filled with fleghmy people.

i tried to get some work done, but had to stop due to motion sickness.

we arrived at the clinic with time to spare, waiting twenty minutes or so to see the receptionist. to be told that we were on the wrong floor (better than sunday's "wrong side of town"). while waiting, we met a canadian couple who've just made aliyah and were surprised to learn that their documentation story took a year and they were physically in canada.

jesus.

we arrived at the right clinic, but just over twenty four hours early. the clinic was closed, the receptionist from the beginning of the story had gotten the date wrong and we hadn't thought to double-check.

...

we sat in an aroma while i listened in to an all-hands meeting. it was boring AF.

we then caught a bus back to tel aviv.

it was difficult to get my head back in the game, but overall i think the day was successful. it ended on a good note, at least. then i got some grocery shopping done on the way home, arrived home to crack open a beer and put my feet up. aside from a bedtime story (i read horton hears a who, and pounced on the opportunity - when mr smear yelled angrily about the kangaroos' and monkeys' behavior - to show a parallel with his class behavior), i kept my feet up, ate chocolate and re-watched the first episode of firefly. i'm loving the relationship between adam baldwin's jayne and his animal mother.

today:

neither gd nor i could sleep last night, so we're pretty tired. and we're about to repeat yesterday morning's attempt, hopefully smoother this time.

...

i'd spent a good chunk of the last couple of days trying to make fridge delivery arrangements. i'm still not done, but at least i have a backup plan...

...

forgot to mention: the other day i got off a bus with my headphones in, listening to music, and walked past a bus where i could hear muffled yelling. i looked, and saw a leg sticking out of the baggage compartment! fortunately some other people noticed too and managed to get the driver to release him! then yesterday, one driver almost closed the door on gd and another on a woman carrying her tiny baby... getting eaten by a bus is a real danger here.

sell the rip?

yesterday:

yesterday started off weird. i took gd to her dermitologist appointment, we left a little later than we should have and arrived almost exactly on time. but we had to wait twenty minutes to see the receptionist even though we had an appointment. then we were informed that we were in the wrong place.

the receptionist could not understand why i was upset.

i thought i'd take the opportunity to take my watch in for repair, and the repair shop only opens at 10am. so we went to my old favourite coffee shop for coffee (i sat and worked a bit while enjoying it, but it was still a good experience and totally reset our vibe). we arrived at the watch repair shop at 10.05, and there was nobody there. and nobody was answering the phone.

i know that they have excellent reviews, but surely people who work with watches could be expected to be vaguely on time...

i worked from home yesterday, which was a mistake because they've started work on one of the apartments upstairs. it was a long day. fortunately, it had a great payoff at the end.

we had a bit of an episode with mr smear yesterday, when we picked him up from school we discovered that they'd watched a theatrical production of lassie in the morning, and his takeaway was somehow "i don't need to listen to anyone". so he was deliberately uncooperative for the rest of the day. not only that, but one of his classmates took me aside to inform me that mr smear had called him and another kid idiots. so we had to deal with that too...

today:

that meeting i was excited for took place this morning, not sure what will come of it yet but it was very positive.

trying to arrange the delivery of our fridge (and ensuring that the old fridge goes where it's needed) is a real ballache.

today was a really long, complicated day at work. but i'm off-call, at least, which is nice.