one foot in front of the other

 as per usual, i guess. i'm tired, brain-strained, slow. and kinda panicking a little because i didn't realize until today that we don't have enough money in our bank account to honor tomorrow's rental cheque, the past month was waaaaaaay more costly than anticipated and i've been way off when it comes to keeping tabs on just about anything.

i spent a good hour and a half this morning on the phone and between two clinics trying to sort out insurance cover and authorizations, and ultimately i came to the conclusion (yet again) that everything is broken and everyone is incompetent.

ho-ly - fuck.

work was alright, i guess. i was a bit nervous about my interview this afternoon, but i feel it went alright. i also feel like it makes a bad impression when you're asked if you have any questions and your brain shuts down. it's also weird interviewing on the same day you have a really positive chat with your boss.

that's kinda the problem, though. sometimes things are great, but often they're not, and i really don't have any faith that they won't just surprise a bunch of us with pink slips at some point.

ugh.

i've got to go to my mom's bank branch tomorrow morning because they've locked her out of her account. i'm so over shit like this.

climbing x2

 yesterday was big, and today was even bigger. i *did* take mr smear to the climbing wall. it was a hot walk there, but mostly in the shade, and i sorted out a 12-entrance card and we got him into a harness.

it was a long, trying experience, and for all intents and purposes we may as well have never been there before. it took forever for him to relax enough to trust the harness even from low heights, and i tried to be as lenient and tolerant as possible (including letting him go to the kids walls). but i wasn't going to let him get away with his usual - giving up - and i didn't want to let him get away with less than he did the last time.

so we started with a goal, and then eventually lowered the goal a bit, and i tried both carrot and stick: the carrot was an ice cream, the stick was not leaving until he got it. we had until 11pm, but i didn't *really* want to put that to the test.

every minor achievement felt miraculous, especially getting him to calm down after he was terrified about coming down and with his screaming i was sure that the other people thought i was actively abusing him. at the end, he managed to get up pretty close to the original goal and come down by himself, and while i was really proud of him i don't think he could really wrap his head around the idea that he'd actually done it.

i told him we would come back in a week's time, and not to forget what he'd done. he said no, and told me that he wanted to come back today, and i said "deal". then i bought ice-creams and we enjoyed a really nice walk home.

gd was really sore today, so i took mr smear to his mma class and worked from there. then we bussed home, and i realized as we got off the bus that we were pretty much halfway between our apartment and the climbing wall, so we walked that way instead.

we arrived, checked in, suited up. aaaaand... we were back to square one, basically. this time, he got to choose the carrot (he's got a thing for sprite and fanta, i acquiesced), but we still had a panic moment (similar to yesterday's, though easier to get him out of), and we still had a lot of giving up and not trusting the auto-belay.

in the end, though, with lots of patience and manipulationcoaching and encouragement, he did it - and he did it his way (he stood at the bottom of his final run and planned out his route). i don't know which of us was more excited by the end, but he reached yesterday's goal, which was actually about a foot higher than today's goal, and he got his reward and i got mine.

i am so damned proud of him, more for facing his fears than for anything else. this is an achievement that nobody else can claim credit for, and that nobody can ever take away from him, and i'm doing my best to impress that upon him.

so damned proud ^_^

...

otherwise, i've still got the cough and it was a bit of a weird night/day. as great as yesterday afternoon was, bedtime was messy (he was angry with me because we didn't agree on the terms and conditions of bedtime, partially because he'd messed around so long that there wasn't time for a story). but as messy as bedtime was, i put on my best face when i woke him up this morning and we had a good conversation about the bedtime debacle and we started the day off on the right foot.

i worked from home, and it was a mixed bag, some of it successful but some of it feeling rather shitty.

oh, well.

at least i have the climbing wall experience from today. that really made my day.

so far weekend

 still not sure about the coughing. definitely sure about the not sleeping making me tired, though - i passed out around 3.30am this morning, got up around 7am and yanked the article i posted before i crashed, then finally surfaced around 11am feeling... pretty good.

yesterday was all about finishing things. it began with tales of the neon sea, which i was getting through fine until i hit a known bug in the middle of the final boss level. after half an hour of bashing my head against the wall, then finding out about the bug, i became demoralized and just watched the ending sequence on someone's playthrough video. not the most satisfying end to an otherwise excellent game.

then i finished braid again. what a brilliant, insane game!

mr smear's playdate went much better than last time, with barely any interference from us, and then we got a big grocery shopping done, during which i had an entertaining chat with horseman. i was so tired when we got home that i passed out on the couch for a couple of hours. in the evening - friday night dinner and bedtime notwithstanding, i got deep into getting american mcgee's alice installed and i was so excited that i had to write an article about my experience, which involved tumbling down quite a few rabbit holes...

this morning, after panicking and deleting the article (not without backing it up first) because i was concerned that i'd run into trouble with licensing/piracy, i edited it and republished it and i'm hoping it'll be fine. the article's more about my own relationship with alice and her adventures and spinoffs and reboots than anything else.

mr smear wanted to play subnautica, which is stunning but proved a bit too scary for him even in creative mode, and then we played biped until we both got frustrated with each other trying to cross a particularly difficult bridge.

since then, we've been reading and relaxing and now we're planning on moving out - possibly to the climbing wall.

upset

 the day was going alright, actually, until an argument before mr smear's jiujitsu class got ugly. i still feel shitty. it's tough to be respectful when you don't feel respected. and that can easily become a vicious cycle of self-prophecy. today... did not go well.

...

every day i think i'm getting better, then the next morning i wake up still a coughing, spluttering mess. this morning my cough was so bad i ended up dry-heaving. i don't get it.

the rest of the day was alright. it started with me verifying and pushing fixes to a problem a couple of us have been working on for a few days, followed by a positive chat with a company recruiter. the rest of the day was a bit topsy-turvy, as i managed to make progress on the highest priority task only to be distracted by the second highest, and i can't remember what the justification was (only that there was one. or two, but at least one). at least i managed to get that done, though, so it wasn't a bad day from a progress point of view.

i accompanied gd and mr smear to his jiujitsu class, and worked from there. it was hot. i was wearing a very heavy t-shirt. did i mention it was hot? it was hot.

we then went straight through to his therapist, doing a quick walk and shop in the shuk, dropping mr smear off, and then going around for a mostly-pleasant but not-always-pleasant walk around the area.

at least we know where to print t-shirts now. finally.

*stops typing while being harassed by a tiny flying insect*

we bussed home, showered, and mr smear got a rainbow burger while we *kills bug* split a toasted sandwich. then it was bedtime followed by me trying and failing to be productive.

what was a bit disconcerting was discovering - in the evening - that the toughest part of the stuff i figured out yesterday was unnecessary. weird. at least modifying the article i'd written wasn't a huge deal.

now i've levelled up another character in steamworld heist, posted this, and i may go to bed soon. i'm not confident about the sleeping and the coughing. we'll see.

a weird one

 still a bit gross today, seems a little less though. i began the day with coffee, washing dishes and then a visit to the clinic. the stuff i thought would be complicated was easy, the stuff i thought would be easy was complicated. and then there was muffled yelling from the pharmacy, and somebody hit the alarm, and the receptionists all filed out to go help - apparently the alarm gets hit when patients get violent, but i can't imagine those poor women doing much more than just bearing witness / yelling at the offender...

work was a bit weird. i found a workaround to our ci/cd problem - it turns out mocha now supports parallel runs, but doesn't guarantee root hooks will work - but it's difficult to be confident that the results of my refactor are safe enough to merge.

i then spent a good chunk of my afternoon figuring out how to build a python lambda layer that includes a compiled binary dependency. once i got it, and i'd done it in an easily repeatable way, i was able to make good progress on the ticket i was working on and actually managed to score a feeling of victory.

i was too late to pick up groceries on the way home because it's tisha b'av, one of our saddest days and particularly poignant considering this week's passing of the first dark laws.

i came home, relaxed a bit, enjoyed a good dinner while rewatching here we are: notes for living on planet earth, and was very pleased to have thought of bribing mr smear with a handful of skittles to eat all his zucchini and green beans. he's pretty good with a lot of greens, but those two he doesn't dig and it felt like a win.

i've spent the evening reading (including making more progress with gina kolata's flu: the story of the great influenza pandemic of 1918 and the search for the virus that caused it - i don't know how many months i've been reading it already in fits and bursts, but it really is good), and playing steamworld heist and doing random things.

it's late, i've got a big day tomorrow. i can't believe tomorrow's thursday already.

persistence

yep, still coughing. my mom too. this is ridiculous.

i'm hoping that calling out yesterday's "surprise" urgency nonsense doesn't backfire. nor my unintentionally passive-aggressive response to my boss asking me to respond to something that he'd been asked for input on after i escalated to an expert. nor my working on the variety of things that landed on my desk today, each one "urgent" and "important".

i'm hoping that my next interview goes well, even if i'm not particularly thrilled about it.

i managed to get some filing done this morning, so that was good. apparently mr smear's playdate this afternoon was a mixed bag, he did a couple of things that he was embarrassed about, but at least he had the good sense to be embarrassed. and he managed to get permanent marker in our bathroom sink, but i think my method (hand sanitizer and vinegar) and strength should have it off in another round or two.

still tired, still wired, still anxious.

still coughing.

dominoes

 today, the first domino was pushed. it's sad, but things are probably going to be okay. maybe, somehow, they'll turn out for the best?

to everyone who's been protesting, i'm sorry to say this again, but... unless the people protesting are the same people who voted in the people calling the shots, protesting means very little to them. israel is still - at least for the time being - a democracy, and while protesting hasn't done much aside from being a fun group activity and dividing people into teams just like a football game, it's not too late to try something different.

often, being right is less important than being effective. let's focus on the next elections. let's focus on what we'd like israeli society to become. if we want reasonableness, we're going to need to be reasonable in order to generate that reasonableness on the ground. 

politicians aren't going to generate it. they have no incentive to. right now, the government has a solid majority of our country backing them, regardless of their variety of reasons. whatever you may think of all those reasons, we're going to need to confront them, and we're going to need a way to break down walls if we're to move forward in a constructive way.

good luck to us all.

...

i woke up this morning with... unclear... sinuses. again. and a nasty cough. i'm back to starting off my day with dishwashing (my mom was doing them every night while she was here, i won't say i didn't appreciate the break), then hurriedly rifling through papers until i found what i needed, and then i rushed off in the already-intense heat to the pain clinic and hospital to take care of yesterday morning's bill.

then i headed to work, and began my ninja week.

so far, so good? almost. the day went pretty well, and i took care of a few things while still getting some other things done. then i left work and discovered that all the streets around our building had been blocked off with trucks and buses, there was a large post-law protest underway.

i stopped by the appliance warehouse and made sure the electronics guy understood what the problem with our soundbar is, then i walked through the protestors to do some grocery shopping. on my way to the clinic i had to stop and "assist" drivers to get out of the way of an ambulance (i'm wondering if they legitimately didn't know how to behave?) and arrived at the clinic too close to closing time to get the form i needed.

then i returned home.

fortunately, i had time to play some toodee and topdee with mr smear before dinner, because just before dinner was served i got a call from our turkish coworker to pull me in to something "very urgent". i don't think it was urgent, and i don't see why she seems to think that 8pm is a good time to get everyone on board when she's known about the "very urgent" problem since at least this morning.

******* *****.

fortunately, i managed to eat with my family in spite of that noise, and hear a bit about mr smear's first juijitsu lesson with a gi.

i'm very excited for him ^_^

bedtime was okay, only after bedtime he needed me to come in a few times because he was scared and that wasn't easy to deal with.

i've been feeling tired and restless, and i'm anxious, i don't know what to do with myself and i don't have bandwidth to do much of anything (although i'm finding steamworld heist a good meditation).

...

good luck to us all.

a bit of distance

i'm still coughing a little but, occasionally, but at least my sinus has cleared up and it looks like i don't have a csf leak after all... thanks, dr google!

i'm still a bit of a mess regarding my mom, but after a little bit of time and a long chat with my sister this afternoon i'm at least feeling a little less crazy.

mr smear and i accompanied gd to the pain specialist this morning, then the clinic, then raced home so i could get to work. it was a very long work day, it began with a positive sync with my boss but was interspersed with some awkward conversations with recruiters (and a potential employer).

i'm just full of discomfort from the interviewing so far. this is precisely why employers get away with treating their employees horribly - the switching cost is just so damned high.

i go on-call tomorrow. and then again the week after next. hoo-ray.

at least the work i got done today was alright.

i feel like my insides have all been smooshed together. i feel really tired, but restless. i'm still coughing.

egg on my face

 well, i guess i've been wrong all this time. apparently, it's possible to put a price on one's personal safety, on one's health and wellbeing, and on being with one's family.

what a fool i've been.

i don't know what to think right now, but i'm gobsmacked and heartbroken. i don't know where to put all these thoughts and feelings, but i do know that i'm feeling sick to my stomache and i'm going to have to reevaluate a lot of things.

at least i managed to get my wife and son out of danger. that's not nothing.

...

in spite of my uneven state of mind, i managed to convince mr smear to face his fears and give the first toodee and topdee boss (without cheats) another go. he did beautifully. not only did he persist until he got it, but he did it in a different way to me; in fact, i would say he did it in a considerably harder way than i did.

then, to make that success even better, we completely demolished the entire next world including the boss and he did most of the work and the puzzle solving. i'm very proud.

...

nystire came through to drop something off, and i'm very grateful for his timing, his warning, and his giving me a lift through to the car after i brought our reservation forward half an hour. getting to my family was crazy - i got blocked and turned around twice - and getting through the protests to the airport required second-guessing waze a couple of times. we arrived at the airport just on time.

mr smear needed the toilet, and i had to wait with him while he took what felt like forever. during which time a number of people used the facilities in a way that made me confident that they were very sick and that there was a good chance we might have picked something up.

and i'm still not over the cough thing. i thought i was getting there, but that's like every day for the past couple of weeks. it's just not going away.

the drive back was okay until we hit tel aviv, and we got stuck and turned around for ages, mostly because there were two closed off roads around the diamond exchange in ramat gan that nobody had marked as such. after our second time around, i marked it and we managed to find a clear route home, and i eventually dropped gd and mr smear off around 11.30pm. then i had to get the car back, and was just becoming despondent as i stopped across from a blocked road that was my only route to the parking when the light turned green and the cops and blocking bus cleared off in time for me to get straight through.

that was a huge relief.

i stewed all the sweaty way home (it's stinking hot outside), and now that i've had some time to cool off (including doing some more grinding in steamworld heist) and shower and write this, i think i should probably be getting to bed.

the ostrich

 it's saturday afternoon, and my mom's about to start packing.

yesterday morning saw us do a grocery mission, by the time we got home we found urchin here with her puppy (which was great, aside from the peeing on the couch). i skipped out to pay the falafel guys and have a very interesting "hands" chat with horseman, and the biggest thing that happened for the rest of the day was us finally hanging curtains which look great and work really well :)

this morning my mom wanted to go to the sea, so we dragged mr smear with us and had a nice walk, stopping by the mongoose for a chat. the beach was great, and we left *just* before god turned up the heat. we stopped for a big, delicious (and expensive) brunch on dizengoff, then walked home, by which time the heat had become thoroughly oppressive and we arrived in dire need of a nap.

now we've rested a bit, now to get through the rest of the weekend.

...

i'm having a really hard time explaining to my mother - who doesn't want to think about any of this stuff - that no matter how she might feel, she needs to be here. she's so busy worrying about the stuff that we know will be okay once she's here, that she's incapable of considering the stuff that's going to put her and us in deep trouble and is getting more and more likely the longer she's over there.

i don't know how one deals with this stuff.

talk talk talk drip drip

i've just gotten up at 2am on friday morning uncertain as to whether or not i'm out of the woods on this sinus/chest thing. it's been a looooong week, sunday's drip came back with a vengeance to the point where i spent an unreasonable amount of time looking up csf leaks and wondering if i'm going to need to make an appointment for it... (i don't think so? but maybe? if it doesn't stop soon i will)

i've been playing a lot of freecell and sudoku this past week. i really haven't been in the headspace to do much else. it's soothing.

tuesday:

due to nationwide protests, tuesday was a work-from-home day which suited me just fine. i felt horrible all tuesday, it was the kind of day that under normal circumstances i would've put in for sick leave for, but putting in for sick leave on a day sandwiched by vacation days probably isn't a smart move.

so i felt horrible, and unfocused, and i struggled all day, eventually managing to get whatever tuesday's job was mostly done.

in the evening i took mr smear and my mom on a tour of the neighborhood parks, which was good until mr smear did his self-sabotage thing...

i had a couple of interesting chats with potential employers / recruiters during the day.

wednesday:

i woke up into a mild anxiety attack around 3am, dreading that the bad-feeling HR interviewer might have actually contacted my current boss without my permission. i put together an email, went back to bed, then fired it off when i got up again.

was sending that email a mistake? perhaps. but i really don't trust their HR manager. he'd asked me about red flags, and the only red flag i noted was him :/

gd and i started the day with a guidance session, which was quite emotional for both of us.

in spite of my health situation i went in to the office. i wasn't feeling great, but at least i was doing better than the day before. i managed to get my previous day's task completed pretty quickly, and then moved on to something new and out of my wheelhouse that i didn't know where to begin. i was advised to set up a similar scenario, which involved a bunch of things i've never worked with before, so i tried using an example from our italian coworker's test repo. his cdk repo Didn't Work. so i ported the example into my own, and over the course of a couple of hours a) figured out that his example was constructed badly and missing a bunch of critical things and b) finally completed the base setup by home-time. i mean, i ended up leaving a little later than planned because of it, but i at least left the work-week ready to move forward during the next one.

it was a bit late to begin constructing mr smear's side table with him, but we at least got started and only put the tools down when we got to the hammering bit.

i had a couple of interesting chats with potential employers / recruiters during the day.

there was a bad-feeling incident at bedtime, but i think i handled it well.

yesterday (thursday):

happy "aliyaversary" to gd! it's been one full year since our ridiculous saga came to an end, and i think we're doing okay.

another difficult night/morning. another baking hot day.

another day off, but with my mom and i still feeling shitty enough to make it not-really-a-vacation. i began the day finishing off mr smear's bedside table with him - he was very excited about it - we were interrupted a couple of times for "quick chats" with recruiters that took ridiculous amounts of time. my mom went off to meet a cousin and mr smear and i accompanied gd to the clinic to get meds and assure ourselves that the tiny thing on his face that he scratched is thoroughly benign.

i rested a bit when we got home, woke up dripping and freaking out and searching dr google.

my mom, mr smear and i headed to the museum of art, which didn't have the installation that upset mr smear last time but also didn't have a whole lot of other installations that we were hoping to see. there was a lot of good stuff, and a fair amount of amateur wannabe-artist shit stuff.

between the two, there was a phone call from the company i interviewed with on sunday, with the anticipated "no".

oh, well.

we bussed through to mr smear's weekly appointment, getting off early and sitting down at goodness for really nice drinks and vegan ice-cream. after dropping him off, my mom and i milled through the shuk and then took a long walk up and around sheinkin.

did i mention it was baking hot?

after picking up mr smear we returned to ibn gvirol, walked past crowds of protestors, discovered that most of mr donuts' donuts are vegan! we grabbed a box and continued on to the falafel stand where we celebrated gd's aliya victory. unfortunately without gd present, but at least for her we had the not-cooking and donuts :)

the guys working there weren't the regulars, and only after the falafel were ready were we informed that they didn't have any hummus. i was stunned. "what, bro, did you expect me to say 'hi! we have no hummus?'" - yes, that's exactly what i would have expected. as i was finishing up my meal - which was surprisingly good considering there was no hummus in it - i considered telling the guy "oh! i forgot to tell you before i ordered, i don't have any money" to make my point about the transactional nature of falafel purchasing and value.

ironically, as i typed this, i suddenly realized that i completely forgot to pay! we just walked straight home, i guess i'm going to have to go back tomorrow and take care of the bill :P

we got home pretty late, both my mom and i were thoroughly exhausted and sore from a lot of walking (about 18000 steps for me, more for her). as usual, we're the only two awake (she's been giggling to herself while reading on the couch behind me this whole time) - as I'm pressing "publish" she's just said good night and gone to bed :P

...

i'm sad that another visit from my mom is coming to an end, and especially sad that - just like last year - we've spent almost all of it sick and unable to enjoy it properly. hopefully we'll miraculously manage to get her moved here soon...

lol at the word recovery

 two days have passed since i last posted, and i thought i was getting better. no, no, no.

firstly, it's been a terrible heat wave for the last week or two, which explains why, in addition to this awful cough we've all had, we've been feeling like shit every time we've gone outside.

it's been brutal.

yesterday:

yesterday was a big day. after spending saturday with a sinus headache, i woke up yesterday morning with a sudden *drip* that i was totally not expecting. it was so bad that i slugged down some pseudoephedrine before heading out to my interviews.

the first interview did not feel good, and it had nothing to do with the weird, familiar buzz from the meds. it was an HR interview, and the guys asked me some questions that raised some red flags - not about the company, but about him personally and professionally. the second interview was architectural, and i feel like it went well.

then i took a lunch break and walked to meet my family at the sarona market. the sarona market at lunch time on a sunday during the holidays was a very bad idea. we wanted sandwiches, but the fully-automated ordering system wanted everyone's contact details before letting them order and there was a long queue in front of us, i eventually lost all patience and we couldn't find anything else so we ended up going home and putting something together there.

*TRIGGER WARNING, GROSSNESS* not before i experienced something utterly mortifying: i was walking with mr smear when all of a sudden, after about four hours of medically dried-up sinuses, i felt something release and i barely managed to catch a disgusting drip that caught me completely by surprise. fortunately we were very close to the bathrooms and i rushed off to clean myself up, but i still can't get over the fact that that actually happened.

you can be damned sure i took another dose just before returning to the technical interview. that interview was a little weird, i'm really not sure if it went well or not. at this point, i'm hoping for a call back but i'm not expecting one.

i spent a while chatting with firefighter and playing with his new puppy, then returned home completely done.

today:

today was exhausting from the get-go. first, i finally, after almost a year, took the soundbar in for repair/return. that was the second time i've encountered the woman who was supposed to help me, and it took everything i had to not go full-karen and call for the manager and ask for them to discipline / fire her, she was thoroughly and actively unhelpful. fortunately, one of her coworkers overheard and stepped in, and now i'm thinking i'm going to need to go in tomorrow and check in to make sure that they're actually taking care of it.

then i returned to the train station to meet up with my mom and mr smear, but after they took longer than expected while i stood in the baking heat i called and discovered that they were still at home and searching for mr smear's ravkav card. i was pretty angry by the time i got in, both for being stood up without anyone thinking to call me and for having to go and replace the card, especially when we had a timeline and we were now most certainly not sticking to it.

i searched thoroughly. i didn't find it.

we went to the train station and had a new one issued, then walked back out to the buses to catch one to the ikea.

on the way, i went through all the recruiter messages i've been ignoring and responded, which was a fair amount of work. then we arrived.

the ikea on a monday during a holiday sale was pretty packed, but manageable. we succeeded in finding what we came for, but also a few things that we hadn't planned for, and we eventually got through the labyrinth intact and headed to the train station, arriving just in time to drink something cool and get on board.

we spent almost as much on drinks today as we did on our purchases.

we got everything home, ate, and rested a bit. i woke up from a nap into a really intense coughing fit. eventually it calmed down enough and we headed out again to the natural history museum. we were able to get there in time to enjoy a little more than an hour going through the exhibits, which were interesting and engaging, and we all enjoyed the experience.

then we did a grocery shopping on the way home, which was mostly uneventful (although a lady cursed me when i didn't pay for her water, which got weird), and we're finally home and about to sit down to dinner.

we're all exhausted.

...

my tooth is still hurting. i'm definitely going to have to get the root canal and crown done, and i'm not looking forward to any of it.

less cough, not-quite-recovery

there's a little bit of coughing happening, but today started with a really sore, blocked eustachian tube that really hurt and it took a long time for it to relax.

partially as a consequence, i've primarily spent today doing nothing. i've barely been able to read, i've logged in and out of various games but been unable to stay interested (except for freecell and sudoku, go figure), although the most important thing i've done today is have a very long and engaging talk with one of my nephews who's been having a really shit time and who i hope gets the help that he needs.

i felt awful for a large part of the day, but i am starting to feel a bit better now.

...

my mom and gd went out earlier to get something, and i was pleased and amused to overhear my son enthusiastically reading his spongebob comics to himself.

...

last night gd and i finished watching guardians of the galaxy vol. 3. thoroughly different tone from the others - i would never have expected it to be a tearjerker - but absolutely exquisite.

now with extra cough (the dead sea)

 well, it's friday evening already, and the cough's still here and apparently has no intention of leaving. my mom's also still struggling, although gd and mr smear seem to be done with it.

tuesday:

i worked from home on tuesday, because the country was very busy going nuts about the judicial reform. quick summary: netanyahu and his cronies are rapidly and successfully undermining israeli democracy. from my perspective, i feel like for the next few years at least things are still going to be okay, and i'm fervently hoping and praying that the next elections will bring a counterpoint to the current madness.

at least my family has a potential fallback. thank you, canada.

okay, that was grim. let's move on.

it was a day reminiscent of sunday. i wasn't feeling great physically, and i wasn't feeling motivated. it took me until well into the afternoon to gather steam for my primary task (partially because i spent all morning trying to make sure i thoroughly understood the code i was reviewing), and it was precisely at dinner time* that i managed to complete my task and make sure that it was in a state somebody else could easily move forward from if they couldn't wait for me to return from my vacation.

* okay, that's not fair - dinner had been waiting for me for a little while :P

tuesday night was another rough night for me.

wednesday:

we got up early, i picked up the car, and we drove through to ein gedi. it was a long drive, but a pleasant one, and we were saved from a dodgy route by accidentally missing a turn and going through jerusalem instead.

we arrived at kibbutz ein gedi instead of where i thought we were going, which gave us an opportunity to use clean toilets, mill around their botanical gardens, and drink good coffee. it's a really nice kibbutz!

we then drove back to the nature reserve, but decided to visit the ancient synagogue there instead. it was really special for all of us, but my mom suddenly felt faint and we scrambled to get back to the car and continue on to ein bokek.

we stayed at the "enjoy" hotel, and it was a pleasure. gd and i picked up really good hummus from the mall, and after eating we headed down tot he beach.

it was too hot. we couldn't figure out where the mud came from. the water felt like a hot bath, and although i enjoyed floating for a bit and then cold-showering, gd couldn't handle the heat and mr smear had a scratch that was hurting him and my mom was really not feeling well, most likely a combination of the heat and the not being well.

we were really concerned for her, and we've been generally concerned about her for a while - i think a lot of it has to do not just with her getting on in years, but with how ridiculously and disproportionately difficult her current jobs are.

she deserves a break, and a real rest. with all the hardships she's been through over the past two and a half decades, what she deserves most is to be able to retire.

we spent the rest of the afternoon in the swimming pool, mr smear geeked out over the games at the little arcade, and we all had decent vegan mexican food at the mall for dinner.

TRIGGER WARNING: GROSS STUFF. so it was the end of a Very Nice Day, a very "vacation"y day, and all was good. then i stuffed up my shoulder trying to open a bottle of "mojito" with my keyring, and chased that with a night that was interrupted by horrible coughing that was so bad that i ended up puking for a good ten minutes. it would take at least another hour to be able to go back to sleep.

thursday:

it was not a peaceful night. not for me or my mom, who also had terrible coughing fits, but not for gd either - she hadn't been able to sleep because she was having an allergic reaction to the down pillows.

mr smear really wanted to swim after breakfast, so we enjoyed a good breakfast and then hit the pool. we had originally intended to leaving the hotel around 10-10.30 and head to masada, but by the time we left it was 11am and gd was in too much discomfort for us to even give that a try.

the first part of the journey was quite unpleasant, but it got better. about three hours later we arrived in tel aviv, tired but in one piece, relieved by the relative coolness of 37° compared to the dead sea's 45°.

for dinner, gd rested while i took my mom and mr smear to the green cat for an excellent pizza dinner, showing mr smear around levontin 7 while they conducted a sound check (he was so excited!) and we eventually got home, full and content and ready for bed.

today:

we got off to a slow start today. one great thing that happened was finally managing to get online in SPORE, someone finally responded to my cry for help on reddit from over a year ago and we're now able to play the full game in all its glory!

my mom and i took mr smear to check out bikes and buy a couple of standing fans, then returned home to drop them off and pick up gd and hit the mall. we bought some shorts for me, rested with cold drinks at aroma, and came home with a large grocery shopping. the rest of the afternoon has been all about napping and gaming.

except for the bit where mr smear woke me up from my nap, and decided to make up for it by reading to me. that could have been really sweet, except that the book he decided on was you can say no so i just lay there being disturbed while hoping he was internalizing the lessons in a positive way (ie without becoming more anxious than he already is).

so that was weird.

now he's creating things with blockbench while i tried out a couple of games, and i'm a little shocked to note that it's already 7pm even though it feels like 3am in two days' time.

more cough

i began writing all this down at the end of a long day, which mainly felt long because of the coughing. it's exhausting. it's the only symptom of whatever the heck this is, but it's hardcore nonetheless. i got about halfway (and it's not even a long post) and urgently needed to lie down. i've just gotten up, it was a night that was part coughing fits, part vividly weird dreams, and i'm a bit confused right now because i'm not sure if my cough has lessened or not. i'm also not sure if my neck's okay or not (i've been having trouble with my left arm going numb, right now it's only threatening).

friday:

we began the day with a shopping run at azrieli, then took a break, and then my mom and i walked to pick up gifts and coffee.

we went to our cousins on friday evening for a really nice dinner in spite of our coughs.

saturday:

we all got up later than planned, but got through to our cousin's kibbutz at a reasonable time. we had a delicious lunch and then headed to the pool for an absolutely lovely afternoon that really did feel like vacation. then we drove home, returning just in time for dinner.

sunday:

i worked from home, while my family tried and failed to get to some museum in holon and then accompanied mr smear to his mma class. it was a difficult day, primarily so because i wasn't feeling great and had exactly zero motivation. partially "just because", but partially because i needed to do something big and complicated without any way to verify that i was doing the right thing. i eventually managed to build out what i needed, but kept hitting brick walls trying to get it to run. 

and then it was time for a meeting with one of firefighter's team.

it was a fascinating evening of oversharing in both directions, and by the end of it i was convinced that i'd like to join them. apparently he feels the same way, so i'm waiting to be informed about how we proceed.

i came home feeling very good about things.

yesterday:

i slept badly and woke up badly. in spite of that, it was a reasonably good morning and i managed to take care of our holiday reservations for tomorrow and thursday. yay!

i had something to take care of at the clinic before work, and arrived there just as a blind man entered, and he was having trouble and needed assistance. i sorted him out with a ticket and showed him to a chair, then left him (with other people who i assumed could help him) to get mine. i heard them call his number and saw him move towards the door, but then registered that he was going in the wrong direction.

i went to go and check on him, and then registered something really messed up - he'd bumped into a woman who'd been standing at the door, and instead of helping him, she took his turn! i was stunned, and i told the pharmacist what had happened, and then i walked out trying to put together a narrative that made sense.

but i couldn't. and it's still bothering me that i didn't do what i *should* have done, which was a) yell at the woman for being a piece of shit and b) tell the pharmacist to stop serving her immediately and give the poor man his turn.

the day at the office was alright, with a funny interlude for lunch. i'd brought leftovers and ghost pepper hot sauce (not as hot as the scorpion pepper sauce, but still pretty got) and was offering it to everyone. the american girl who works with us is also a fan of hot ones, she used a lot of sauce, and the results were amusing 😂

the next hour or two were spent with our feisty italian, the time was spent constructively and there was a revelation at the end because he hadn't understood why i wasn't phased by a problem that he'd thought he'd conveyed effectively, when in fact i'd thought he was talking about something else entirely.

context matters.

the end of the day was triumphant, i finally managed to get my code running as intended and left just in time to pick up mr smear and my mom and head to the shuk. we picked up some things, we had a beer, it was a pleasant evening.

...

i'm no longer confused about my coughing, it's definitely back with a vengeance.

the cough

 gd's still coughing, and my mom and mr smear have been coughing pretty badly too. i've been a bit post-nasal-drippy myself, but i'm doing somewhat alright. the three of them did rapid antigen tests yesterday just in case, so apparently it's not covid. that's something.

this has been a HUGE week, and i have to work backwards because just trying to remember what happened a few days ago is overwhelming. so i'm writing the rest of this post from the end, but trying to keep it in chronological order nonetheless, so i'm feeling a bit like a detective right now :P

tuesday:

we started the day pretty early, my mother needed to get her phone sorted out (she'd been here three days already) and gd and i navigating legal cannabis. that turned out to be surprisingly straightforward! our next step was trying to sort my mother out with a ravkav card, which we failed to do. i took mr smear with me to work while my mom and gd went to ikea, and i was quite nervous about how the day was going to go... the last time i took him we had an incident.

it proved to be a corrective experience for both of us: he started the day with blockbench, and then when he got bored of that he moved on to video games. we took a break for lunch, and in the interests of expediency (he just wanted to get back to the office) he elected to get sumsum for lunch, and was very proud of himself for putting together his own salad. although he has since admonished me for interfering with his selection, even though i know that if i hadn't "helped" him it was just have been a giant bowl of pickled cucumbers :P

so he ate well, had a good time, and when gd eventually arrived to pick him up he needed to be coerced rather aggressively to leave :P

gd, meanwhile, had had a brilliant idea after she and my mom had picked up curtains and a small desk for - that it might be much cheaper and easier to bring the stuff home by taxi than to get it delivered. and she was totally right!

after work, i walked to firefighter's office for an informal chat. everything was going great until his two "officers" asked me about my professional history, and i finished talking about my previous employer. at that point, unprompted and unplanned, my jaw continued flapping and i just blurted out how unhappy i was with my present employer. not only unprofessional, but a couple of the things i said were far from accurate. i was mortified, and that was while my mouth was still working.

ugh.

i'm still cringing.

the follow-up conversation apparently went well in spite of that, and firefighter helped me put a finger on the root cause of my complaints: i may like the people i work with and get along with them, but we do not have a good culture fit. and the main reason for that is that they're a thoroughly reactive culture.

i came home to recover with my family, simultaneously buzzing with excitement and shame. i spent quite a while thinking about what transpired and what was potentially on the table.

i also put together the new desk, and i'm sitting at it right now - i'm very happy with having a proper space of my own to operate ^_^

wednesday:

the day began with gd and i going for an extended hour and a half of guidance, which proved very helpful, but made me a bit late for work.

the workday began with two revelations: the first, that our italian colleague is leaving, and the second, that a few months ago he ripped out a whole bunch of functionality that i needed in order to complete my work.

in the middle of the day i met up with gd and mr smear for his initial consultation with the public mental health people. we were taken by surprise that the meeting was just for mr smear alone, and we were very concerned that he wouldn't be comfortable with that, but he handled it just fine and actually had a good experience.

this is good.

the next couple of hours were me finally completing the work that i'd spent three days suffering from, and i left the office when i realized that i was effectively done with my week and didn't need to be looking for anything else to do. it was a really, really good feeling.

i did a decent-sized grocery shopping and arrived home just in time for a call with copywriter, who i haven't chatted to properly in years. we had a very interesting chat until dinner time, and he opened with one of the biggest points that is a lesson that i definitely needed right now: it doesn't matter what you're going through, you give positive vibes when you start talking to someone. even if just to set the tone. i've always had trouble with the question "how are you" when i'm having a bad day, and that conversation really clicked for me.

yesterday (thursday):

i needed a vacation day to get my head right, i started the day by chopping a number of items off my to-do list and it felt good.

gd wasn't feeling up to leaving the apartment, and nobody was feeling up to the planned jerusalem mission, so my mom and mr smear and i went on a shopping mission instead. we began by sorting out her ravkav card, which was a bit of a story but we got it right eventually. our first stop was bash gal, where we picked up all of mr smear's mma gear, all right-sized for him, and for much cheaper than getting it through his gym.

i cannot tell you how proud it made me to see him wearing his jiujitsu gi! (even if i've never worn one myself, it looks really good on him ^_^)

then we picked up (apparently) exactly what we needed to get our curtains sorted out, and checked out the gadget store where i thought we'd pick up a pokémon starter kit. 1. we didn't pick up a starter kit, and in retrospect i'm glad we didn't. 2. mr smear may or may not have broken one of the toys on display (i'm pretty sure it was broken already), but the look of abject horror on his face and the deep understanding of why we don't play with items we haven't bought? priceless.

we got to the mall and immediately found the pokémon battle academy, which is what i was looking for. and the sales guy threw in an extra booster pack to wish us luck :) we got slushies, and then i managed to pick up exactly what i needed - a proper usb hub and a simple keyboard that's a) got hebrew letters and b) way more comfortable than my other one.

[GROSSNESS WARNING] on the way out i threw something into a bin with a flip-top, not noticing that someone had spat a giant gob with chunky green snot on the other side. that slammed into the back of my hand. i couldn't get to the bathroom fast enough, and i was incapable of taking the disgusted look off my face for a while.

between our morning adventures and the evening ones, we had a couple of hours to rest at home. mr smear cracked open the new pokémon battle academy and we had a great time following the tutorial! our play was interrupted a couple of times, as i spoke to our neighbour's sister about my mother's aliyah obstacles. hopefully she'll be able to help, but it can't hurt having someone in the foreign ministry aware of the madness that real people (ie non-politicians) are experiencing.

on the way to the shuk, i was chewing gum. on the right side of my mouth, to avoid The Tooth. at one point towards the beginning of our journey, i got adventurous and chewed, twice, on the left side.

my mouth proceeded to HURT for the next couple of HOURS. it was deeply upsetting.

my mom and i sat for bit over coffee and iced tea after dropping mr smear off at his therapy session, and i made plans to meet with one of firefighter's guys who seems to think we're on good footing - this is very exciting! we walked around the shuk for a bit, picking up a french press along the way. i could probably have paid less for it, but it seems good. i'm still a bit nervous about the glass exploding.

we stopped at kongress bazel for falafel on the way home, mr smear ate most of a huge laffa and my mom and i had pitot. it was delicious.

i went to bed almost immediately after saying goodnight to mr smear, because when i bent down to say goodnight my hand suddenly hurt intensely: nerve pain from my neck.

i would wake up around midnight due to reflux (or something similar), caused by me going to bed after eating such a a heavy meal... 

this morning so far:

i woke up feeling a bit better, but nervous about my neck. mr smear's voice is almost gone, so in the interests of protecting it he's taken a page out of the adventure time playbook and he's writing notes to us. so far, it's hilarious!

family ties

 i scrambled to get some work done this morning before we left, but i'm not sure how much i achieved because at this point the morning seems very far away. i know i took care of some admin stuff, and mr smear built something cool in blockbench and we were all super excited by it.

then we headed out to herzeliya. the old age home was a bus and a short walk away, and we arrived in good time. it was sad to see the birthday boy (99!) and his wife so out of it, but it was really nice to spend time with some of the cousins and meet the newest addition (she was born three weeks ago). it was a good morning.

getting back to tel aviv was a bit of a story, a stark reminder of how good our public transport is compared to anywhere else in this country. and the train station we were planning on getting a rav-kav car from was closed for renovations, so we bailed on that plan and i went to the office.

i was only in the office for four or five hours, but it felt like a really long four or five hours. at least there was a nice leftovers-lunch of build-your-own falafel, apparently to celebrate the new quarter. i spent half my office time making an effort to not physically smash my own head into a wall, but eventually made some progress and walked out with two out of three of my goals achieved.

sadly, the third goal is the biggest and i'm still not sure where to begin :(

i also got good feedback from a coworker, who was pissed off that we'd both been instructed to work on the same thing and had duplicated efforts - he apparently preferred my solution, so he's co-opting it. that's nice.

i eventually left around 7pm and did some grocery shopping, then came home in time to sit with my family while they ate dinner. mr smear had a very successful day at his jiujitsu lesson, in spite of himself and his misgivings (he walked off the mats) he got a hold of himself and climbed back in. this is big stuff for him, and we're really feeling good about the whole thing.

...

HUGE news! gd's just been granted her license for medical marijuana, so we're off tomorrow morning to try and figure out how to use it ^_^

this is great for a number of reasons, not least of which because we're struggling with the costs and this will bring them down considerably.

on a related note, though, and a troubling one - she's been developing a really bad cough the past few days. i hope it's going to pass...

...

i was supposed to get some more done this evening, but i just can't. so we watched some more of the animatrix, and now i'm faffing around until antibiotics time. tomorrow's the last of the course, hopefully i'll stop feeling so shitty soon.

the meeting

 my work day was weird, i spent all day fiddling with something confusing and broken. in the middle of it, though, gd and i went to the school to meet with mr smear's teacher and the principal.

while waiting for the principle, we were talking to a teacher while petting the dog she had on a leash. suddenly, a little boy hears our son's name and enthusiastically says "you know mr smear? kids tell me where he is and i love hitting him in the face!"

just as he finished his sentence, his carer suddenly appeared from the classroom he was supposed to be in and hustled him away.

i was stunned. i was furious. i wanted to threaten him, and beat him. and his carer. i don't care if he's autistic - he is - he's been picking on, hurting, and traumatizing my boy.

the good news is that we've been informed that the school has recognized their inability to handle him, and he's out. the bad news is that it's not before he's done immense damage to a kid who was already struggling with anxiety and feeling unsafe.

it's really not fair.

it's also the first time that any of mr smear's stories have been completely, thoroughly proven true. this little fucker just confirmed everything. there was no exaggeration.

...

i was a bit nervous about the meeting itself, having no idea in which direction it would be going. i think we got everything out on the table, and by the time we were done each side of the table had homework to do. while i'm still bitter about the autistic bully business, i am happy with the principal and teacher's efforts to help our son integrate in a healthy way.

...

mr smear's second mma class went really well! i was so surprised by gd's reports that i wasn't sure if she was trolling me, or if our son had been replaced by a doppelgänger :P

...

in the evening, tahoma arrived for a quick visit that ended up being quick a few hours. the circumstances are sad (his mother passed away last week, so he and his husband returned to israel for two weeks from their year-long travel adventure), but we had really interesting discussions and debates and we were really glad he managed to make time for us.

...

tomorrow wasn't going to be complicated, but it's our cousin's 99th birthday and a whole lot of us are going to celebrate him. even if he's lost his faculties, we're at least going to be with the family. i've been feeling uncomfortable that i haven't seen him since we arrived (my mom and gd and mr smear saw him last year), but it's a weird sort of discomfort because at this point he and his wife don't always recognize their own kids...

permission to rest

 we all took turns napping today. mr smear had quite a bit of downtime and occupied himself nicely. in the afternoon we took a leisurely walk to get ice cream and let mr smear play in a park.

on the way home, mr smear was harassing me to buy furniture mods for minecraft - that's a no - and i offered him an alternative that a) really excited him and b) might help us get through the next two months with only mild loss of sanity: i won't buy him mods, but i will support him and help him to make his own.

we have installed blockbench, and we'll see how this little experiment goes.

we had a lovely evening, which helped reduce my anxiety about the upcoming work week and our meeting tomorrow with the school guidance councilor.

one foot in front of the other. i'm really glad i gave myself permission to rest today.

...

one thing that i *did* do - i started looking at the next page's script for the graphic novel, and i came up with something very exciting for the next two pages! additionally, i've decided that i'm going to shrink the scope of the first issue down to the mythology and the first sonnet, so i've laid out the remaining pages for the illustrator and i'm feeling good about having a good reading experience within our grasp ^_^

long friday

 i was tired yesterday - i'm feeling a bit better today, but yesterday was rough. gd and i did a huge grocery shopping in the morning, and then went to pick up mr smear and two of his friends from school.

the playdate - was - difficult. we had to intervene on a number of occasions, and the hours were exhausting both physically and emotionally. it felt like the end of the playdate was ultimately successful, at least.

after dinner, gd and i watched another episode of titans before going to bed.

i managed to get up at 3.30am to pick my mother up from the airport, and was busy parking when she called to say she was ready. it was so exciting to welcome her back!

this morning has been slow and busy, and nobody's making any plans for the rest of the day just yet. it's a beautiful day and it's nice to not be under pressure.