the trip

it has been a completely insane week, with both gd and myself upside down and inside out for a good chunk of it. wednesday seemed like a better day, but thursday was even worse than monday.

this time, though, i was pissed. i was absolutely raging at the bitch father who i'd spoken to on monday evening, who'd been condescending and to whom i'd avoided - in the interests of civility, which was a mistake - pointing out that they and their rotten kid bear plenty of the responsibility for putting my son through hell last year and him coming out swinging.

we don't approve of how mr smear is fighting back, predominantly because he's hurting himself far more than the kid in his sights.

fortunately, all the things blew up just before mr smear's visit to the therapist, and i stole a few minutes of their time to get counselled myself. what she said calmed me down in one sense, but enraged me even further in another: i realized that in my conversation with the kid's dad on monday night, i'd let my son down by not defending him sufficiently, and in a way given him license to feel like they're on moral high ground.

that made me sick.

really sick. gd and i were both fully engaged with our PTSD and in full fight mode, and we got to the school early this morning in the hopes that we would see these sons of bitches and give them a proper piece of our minds.

in retrospect, the universe did us an enormous solid and we didn't see them, because we sat down with mr smear's teacher for a long while, as she'd done a pretty thorough investigation into the goings-ons the day before and... it really does look like mr smear brought the bad stuff on himself... he's really struggling, and the more he does what he thinks he needs to do the more harm he brings to himself. it's very difficult as a parent to deal with this.

...

wednesday: i'm officially on a completely different project now as our company's in the middle of executing a pivot, and we've all been asked to warn our families that we'll be less available to them for a while.

it's a whole new thing, with broken tools and time pressure and my boss on my case. it's fantastic.

thursday: gd and i began the day with anxiety, calmed down somewhat, and then *WHAM* picked up mr smear from school and went straight into full-scale drama.

i went on the "i'm so anxious i can't eat" diet for most of a day :(

...

this morning was the worst. in spite of how we were feeling, we got mr smear to school and then paid the clinic a visit, then walked to the barber shop, on the way meeting up with an ex-coworker's sister and her partner who were kind and gave some good advice.

the barber shop experience would have been great if gd hadn't uttered the words "i don't want to insult you" when she tried to fix a mistake of his, i'm pretty sure that without that phrase it would have been fine. as it was, she still had more to correct when we got home, but it's okay now.

we had about ten minutes at home before heading out for the school pick up, including the aforementioned fix, and i was honestly such a mess that i was feeling dizzy and faint. thanks to all the gods that the universe threw us a bone and we didn't have that anticipated encounter.

we felt much better about things after the meeting with mr smear's teacher, and immediately rushed to catch a bus down to florentin, where we picked up a good mattress (or so it seems) which should be delivered in time for us to be able to host my mom comfortably from next week :)

i've also registered mr smear for a couple of trial classes of mma and jiujitsu next week.

mr smear started getting the hang of knock-knock jokes on the way home, and we had lunch and played some toodee and topdee, single and coop, and mr smear and i had a great time. then we got ready for the beach (or so we thought) and headed out to join the mongoose and his family.

we were about five minutes from the beach when i realized that i'd forgotten swimming trunks 🤦

anyway, we all had a great time at the beach, i even went in a little bit in my shorts, and it was about 8.30pm when mr smear and i finally arrived back home for a quick shower, kiddush, and dinner.

at toothbrushing time there was utter pandemonium, when two out of the three members of our household screamed and panicked due to a rather large cockroach appearing on mr smear's towel. i tried to get it with a paper towel, but wasn't quick enough and it disappeared under the washing machine. i tentatively bent down and put my face to the floor (partially expecting it to rush me) and spotted it hiding in a corner.

fortunately, we had bug spray, but hitting it with the bug spray was a mission. it ran this way and that, included right under me (i jumped over it), but i hit it enough times with the spray to slow it down and eventually caught up with the bugger and crushed it. gd began retching when she came to help me clean up the bathroom (she claims it was the smell of the bug spray), which combined with the whole ordeal triggered mr smear's gag reflex, and he threw up.

there was cleaning up to be done.

i did the dishes after putting mr smear to bed, and was thinking of crashing myself but wanted to get down as much of these bizarre, trippy days down as possible before doing so. i really hope we manage to sleep properly tonight.