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!