the stress ball

monday began with stress and anxiety: not having received a response in the mail from social security, i managed to sign in to gd's account and discover that a) she's not considered eligible and b) it's because the "panel" has given a bad judgement and c) it's partially because she's somehow not considered a resident and d) we have a limited time to appeal, and only one appeal, before we have to take her case to court.

this is nuts.

especially c) - wtf?! so we've got an appointment with them in two weeks to sort that out.

otherwise, it was a bit of a weird day at work. i explored things, but it didn't feel particularly constructive. to be honest, the most productive thing i did today was print mr smear's holiday homework in spite of the fact that "print to PDF" functionality has largely been disabled in macos and the printers can't handle anything in a non-standard format. and my favorite PDF software - pdf professional suite - wants me to repurchase because my apple id's changed since i bought the lifetime license.

my boss brought his doggo in to the office today. she's very sweet, but i don't like how he handles her. not cruel, just... not well.

i left early to hop on a bus with gd and mr smear and head to the furniture store, and i made a big mistake taking a coffee from the office barrista on my way out. i was buzzing by the time i got to the bus stop.

we got to the store, and almost immediately felt a reduction in anxiety. it's a literal mom-and-pop's store, and the old man's convinced me not to worry, and that he'll make sure we're sorted out. he insisted on gd trying a bunch of different beds, but he's ordered the one we came in for and we'll give that a go.

that's one stress down.

we took the light rail home, it was a first time for all of us and it was a really good experience.

...

october 7th was more than two months ago. but it's still october 7th. and it's going to continue to be october 7th as long as hamas continues holding and torturing hostages, and by doing so torturing their families and the rest of us.

when we got home, gd lost her shit. i don't entirely agree with her initial reaction, but i 100% agree with the basis for her anger: our community in cape town has said very little regarding october 7th and the war, and has said pretty much nothing to support jews and israelis, here or there. that's bad enough, but they're still doing their "interfaith" stuff with members of the muslim community in cape town, and i'll wager that community isn't condemning hamas. that makes our community leaders, in our opinion, a disgrace.

anyway, useful / dangerous idiots notwithstanding, it's beginning to look like hamas is falling apart and the brave palestinian "shaheed" rhetoric and ideology seems to be breaking down when the population is actually being faced with real hardship. it's also comforting that the politicians are starting to make real plans for a post-hamas gaza; perhaps the fighters will lay down their arms (lots of them are already), and perhaps we'll soon be able to get to work rebuilding and reconfiguring.

people say i'm a dreamer...

...

i've spent a large chunk of today in discomfort and pain, my hips in particular. i'm confident a lot of it is my office chair / desk. i've also been struggling with nerve pinching, random pains in random places (mostly arms and hands) and so on. between that and the excess caffeine - by the time we got home i was actually feeling quite ill, but it's calmed down since - i've no idea what tonight has in store for me.