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.