troll tool

jesus, the exhaustion. the distraction. the demoralization.

work has been particularly shit the last couple of weeks, i've been working on stuff that i really don't care about and that every part makes less sense than the last. everything is broken, or not yet implemented, or not planned to be implemented, and it feels like everything i touch was just an ancient, mummified piece of shit that was just waiting for the slightest encouragement to collapse into a fecal dust cloud.

the internet has been particularly toxic over the last month, and on top of worrying about the hostages, and our soldiers, and the victims, and all the people who've been relocated away from the borders, and our own safety... it's very taxing. it's frightening how many "useful idiots" hamas has in its pocket, worse still when those useful idiots are celebrities with large followings or worse - jews.

arguing facts with people is just insane.

meanwhile, today i heard an interesting podcast episode that inspires a little hope in the potential for a saner future: neil lazarus talking to a west bank palestinian.

friday:

gd's jewelery part ii. mr smear and i accompanied her this time, and we ended up having a very nice morning out. we also discovered that the shoe store we saw adult galshoes in - katalina - is completely vegan! and full of cool stuff.

on the way home, we stopped at a supermarket to pick up a couple of things, and just as we finished paying the sirens went off. it turned out to be a good place to get caught in a rocket attack, and good timing, because we just walked through to the back and i enjoyed the baguette we'd bought.

saturday:

by the afternoon, i knew we needed to do something outside. i took mr smear for quite a walkabout, stopping in at dizengoff center to see what card tournaments were taking place (he wasn't too interested, and there was the distinct smell of unwashed teenagers), running into drone hacker on the way back and enjoying a chat, then at mr smear's direction picking up a big, healthy lunch at cafe easy that he just wolfed down. it was a good saturday afternoon experience.

by saturday night, we were freaking out about the smell from the airconditioner. i "did some research", and some of the results scared me, but one forum post include a report that leaving their airconditioner running for 24 hours on the highest fan speed had cleared the smell. i turned ours on on the highest speed, and prayed.

yesterday: 

i dropped mr smear off at school, then walked to the clinic and hospital and got a bunch of things sorted out.

because a frustrating workday wasn't bad enough, there had to be some bad news from sea point. a cousin of mine was on the scene, and it took place right across the road from my mom's apartment. on the one hand, i'm glad the police actually took action, but on the other... these people are mad, and rabidly antisemitic, and their government as a whole is cool with that.

we had a parents webinar around bedtime. insight: a talk from a psychologist who discussed how we process trauma and normalize bad situations. disappointment: while most of the parents are welcoming the 70-or-so kids rescued from the "gaza envelope", a couple were bizarrely and selfishly concerned about their children experiencing second-hand trauma by being exposed to kids who almost lost their lives mere weeks ago. jesus, fuck.

by last night, the smell from the airconditioner seemed to have disappeared, but i wasn't 100% confident so we left it running another night.

today:

by this morning we were convinced that the smell was gone, and turned the airconditioner off. i just tested it out a short while ago, and it seems to be good!

the day began with one downer - mr smear not feeling well - and one thing that got me majorly pissed off: our grocery store order from the day before hadn't arrived. then, after calling them for help and being put on hold by a representative for five minutes, the call was disconnected. then, i had to wait on hold for another fifteen minutes to get to another representative, by which stage i was livid. fortunately, the second representative was legitimately helpful. i'd been angry enough to look up taking them to small claims court, but not quite angry enough to want to put myself through such an admin-heavy process.

while doing the dishes this morning, i caught up with all of tom shapira's (hebrew) podcast about comics called the between-panels's podcast, and i warmly recommend it - fascinating stuff!

i might be very wrong, of course, but gd seems to be doing a lot better. she went out again today by herself.

mr smear's demonstrating a lot of behavior improvement. we had a moment today that traditionally would have become a nasty scene - he was supposed to be on a screen break, i left the room for a few minutes and when i came back i caught his red-handed - but the tension dissapated very quickly and a few minutes later he apologized. and that was the whole damned story. the rest of the day was pretty much good vibes.

aside from another rocket attack just before bedtime, but he's totally into bacterial takeover and big numbers now :P

i was so tired after putting him to bed that i crashed myself, then woke up a while later and was unable to sleep because i needed to a) get all this down and b) respond to people who are wrong on the internet.

god help us all.