herding cat

 it was a shitty morning to begin with, after a rough night, and we woke up to a cat (stray / our upstairs neighbors, it's anyone's guess) crying in the stairwell. gd opened the door to take a look, which was a big mistake as it launched itself past her and it took us a good five / ten minutes to get it out, but not without it clambering all over our couch and bed and leaving me with a nice red welt on my wrist.

gd's deathly allergic to cats, and she started breaking out with something even though it didn't touch her. i began getting chesty. so we both took antihystamines and i've called the municipality in the hopes they can make it possible for us to leave our apartment safely.

this sucks.

precipice

 i went to bed tired and full of shit feelings after a very long day, and then an impossible-to-reconfigure alarm woke me up and i've been having trouble calming down since. not to mention that i think i'm developing eczema again.

there're so many different sources of stress to choose from.

the biggest item of the day was me taking mr smear to his jiujitsu class in the afternoon, and mr smear flat-out refusing to participate. this led to a massive same-old-fight with gd that has nothing to do with mr smear's story.

as for mr smear, i've had a lot of insightful discussions with him since we left the gym, and it looks like we're going to have to find (a/some) alternatives to mma. which makes me sad, because mma really has been the perfect answer to a bunch of different requirements: self-defense, self-confidence, discipline physical exercise, affordability and the ability for gd (at least most of the time) to be able to take him.

fuck.

i'm so tired of things being relentlessly hard.

...

my work day was frustrating. i made extremely slow progress on my own tasks, although i have plenty on my plate. i did not finish the day with any sense of satisfaction, but i did shut my laptop with a solid sense of not having done enough hours due to distractions beyond my control.

seder

 we got to the car on time, but as we did so i began to feel like i might need to pee shortly, so after inspecting for damage and connecting my phone i stopped across the road from our apartment and made it to our bathroom just as it became an emergency.

i was worried that that was going to be a feature of our drive - an hour or so on the road - but fortunately that was it.

the evening was a bit surreal. it was wonderful and comforting to have most of the family together, even though kc's brother-n-law had been called up for reserve duty so we only saw him briefly via video chat. kc's two week-old and kc's sister's two month old were both there, and it was quite special to meet them. mr smear was being aggressively / unpleasantly shy and awkward, though he did participate in the singing of ma nishtanah and very enthusiastically joined his cousins on the hunt for the afikoman before it had even been hidden.

he was weird about the "prize" - he didn't want to take the twenty shekels from kc's dad - but yesterday he informed me that it was because he felt that it was unfair to him 😂

he also got angry with a little girl for "stealing", even though he had no real evidence that that's what had taken place.

the seder itself was mostly "the usual" for that side of the family, very loud and fun, but we made space both physically and emotionally for the hostages, even singing along to habayita (which triggered a fair amount of tears around the room).

the drive home was a bit mad, it was long, with heavy traffic and scary drivers on the road, but we made it to tel aviv safely and got home around 1.30am after dropping off the lady who'd helped in the kitchen.

yesterday:

i didn't sleep well, and i was exhausted and lazy for most of the day. i finally got mr smear's phone account sorted out in the morning, at least. in the afternoon, we went out for a walk to the park by the beach, which began with ice cream, ended with chips, and its middle was full of whining because mr smear wanted a sandwich and it's passover, where a) we don't do bread and b) passover bread is horrible.

anyway.

i bumped into an old friend at the park with some friends of his, and i was very awkward. or they were. maybe we all were. oh, well...

at dinner we watched more of the magic prank show, which is just amazing.

after putting mr smear to bed - after he very proudly called my mom from his own phone to say good night - gd and i watched another fallout episode.

today:

i slept much better, but started off the day all wrong. otherwise, it was a pretty good morning, but very hot; we're experiencing a heat wave right now, and it was an oven-like 37 degrees this afternoon with more of the same promised for tomrorow. the work day was good, but a bit weird. the thing i'm thinking about a lot is that a few of us had a particularly heated debate the other day, and after diving a bit deeper today i discovered that two of us were decidedly wrong - an apology is in order to the third, but he's on vacation for a week.

it was nigh impossible to find lunch today, it bothers me that the salad places are all closed down for passover. so i ended up getting hummus from an arab place, which turned out to be the best hummus in the area by far. after waiting twenty minutes in the line in the extreme heat, i ordered something that turned out to be with meat in it, and i was embarrassed and disappointed. i had planned to just take it out of my dish and give it to my teammates, but in the end we discovered that it wasn't meat after all, just really nicely-made fava beans :P

the wework management provided matzah and chocolate spreads, but nothing vegan, so one of them disappeared into their storeroom and returned with a whole slab of panda chocolate for me ^_^

at dinner we finished watching the magic prank show, and after getting mr smear into bed we watched the season finale of the fallout series. holy shit, they really did an amazing job and we both thoroughly enjoyed it! i'm really pleased that gd can now appreciate a world i've been so captivated by for over two decades ^_^

iran's cave

 this morning i made the mistake of opening instagram and scrolling down my feed. each post was more demoralizing than the last, and this is after filtering out so many accounts that are spewing antisemitism and blatant lies about us, the war, and our history.

i don't know which is worse: terrorist regimes trying to destroy us, or the useful idiots supporting them, or the cautious walking-on-egg-shells they're being met with. or maybe it's none of those three. maybe it's seeing clueless jews serving as mouthpieces for their enemies and speaking against their own people.

either way, i'm grateful to be here, the one place on earth where jews are allowed to be jews, and where as jews we are able to defend ourselves. where the answer to "should our hostages be freed" is obvious and unequivocal. where we don't have to defend singing a national anthem that calls for us being a free nation in our own country of origin.

we're pushing further and further into a future of fake news, and deepfakes, and twisted narratives and propaganda engines the likes of which even george orwell couldn't possibly have imagined back when he wrote 1984.

2 + 2 = 5

if this past six months has taught us nothing else, i hope we learn from it that western civilization is in terrible danger of losing its mind, and its heart. i hope that the world will collectively take steps to pull itself out of the endless sea of quicksand that our media and social media platforms have become.  i hope our children don't wake up in a dystopian future controlled by radical ideologies in which it's impossible to know what's real and what's not.

the sim

i'm tired, i'm sore, and we're leaving in an hour to drive for an hour or two to our cousins' seder. i've just had four cups of water after realizing that the only liquid i'd consumed today was black coffee. ugh.

firstly, today was a huge day for us and mr smear: i've bought him a sim card, and given him my huawei, and he now has his own phone. well, shit.

secondly, it was a big morning in the mall, and then when we finally got home my mom called to ask us to take some chocolates as well. i walked to the chocolatier (cardinal) on ibn gvirol, amazing vegan stuff but no hechsher. i walked back to leonidas, nothing gift-like that was vegan. i then walked all the way to max brenner, arrived before they closed and finding a couple of items that reasonably fit the criteria for a gift.

i returned home with sore legs and 10.5K steps on my watch. i tried resting, but found that hard to do with mr smear very noisily playing among us and gd struggling with our old iron that almost destroyed her shirt (fortunately our neighbors could help us out with theirs).

oh! she very successfully made potatoes in the oven today. she's now rather embarrassed that she's been ovening wrong all these years, but we're very glad we don't have to buy a new one just yet.

...

gd and i had a very difficult conversation this morning, one that lots of jews are having right now: how do we celebrate our freedom, when we have up to 129 hostages still trapped in gaza?

limbo

yesterday:

i didn't sleep very well. at all. then i got up and published an article on how ridiculous the facetime reactions are (well, that they're enabled automatically and affect all video call apps), which i only realized was a thing while chatting with my mom before dinner.

after hours of doing not much, i found a couple of interesting games available via our playstation plus subscription, and i didn't realize until we were on our way to the park that mr smear preferred walking because he believed that it would take longer than cycling, and he didn't want to come home before the downloads were complete.

wtaf.

then he made it weirder by getting upset with me for suggesting that next time we take the bikes we take a frisbee as well, because he thinks that's too complicated.

eh?!?

anyway, most of the walk was nice, and he very enthusiastically (ahem) dived in to dave the diver when we returned. and then minecraft legends when it was ready.

the generally good vibe was brought to a screeching halt in the evening when the oven tripped the board, and then we heard a small explosion when we tried again (and it tripped the board again). our landlords are garbage. they're refused to fix the plumbing until it bursts again. we're concerned we might have damp behind the kitchen cupboards.

...

my mom bought him an activity book (tricky puzzles) ages ago, i think for when we flew here, and he never showed much interest in it until now. now he's thoroughly enjoying it, and it reminds me of how much i enjoyed those things when i was a kid.

gd and i watched another episode of fallout, then hit the hay.

today:

i didn't sleep well, but i did sleep a bit better.

the last day of fight camp, getting out of bed went relatively smoothly but then we made the mistake of rewarding his cooperation by letting him play a game. and then he refused to stop playing without a fight.

goddamn.

by the time i got him into the gym, i felt like i deserved a medal. perhaps two.

anyway, i made sure he was fine (apparently it wasn't a great day, but whatever) and then returned home, did some work and waited for the oven repair guy. he was great, at least, and gd's going to test the oven tomorrow morning and we'll see if we need to buy a new one or not. if we don't, though, we've at least learned that the "turbo" setting she's been using for the past year is probably the reason the oven hasn't been cooking things properly.

we both went to azrieli and then i said goodbye and continued on to work. it was an interesting workday, both socially and work-wise, and overall i feel pretty good about it.

i came home, we had dinner, put mr smear to bed, and watched some more fallout. i should probably go to bed soon.

...

i'm very grateful we have the day off tomorrow.

ai gone wild

my favorite part of this is that these images will now be fed into the next generation of ai models... i was explaining the concept of a golem to mr smear earlier, a thing that follows your instructions but can't understand your intentions, and he responded "so chatgpt and dall-e are golems, then?"

abso-freaking-lutely.

speeding up before applying the brakes

 so... i didn't just feel that inspiration and go to bed... i ended up starting the original fallout game and realized about halfway through clearing out a cave full of radscorpions that it was 2am already...

whoops :$

the day started really well in spite of waking up from a bizarre and disturbing dream about cartoon depravity. i woke mr smear up, explained the expression "the carrot and the stick" (which already got him in a good space because that's how you ride pigs in minecraft), and informed him that the stick was no screen-time if he didn't participate in the fight camp and the carrot was a homework-free afternoon doing whatever he wants if he did.

he did. and not only did he, but gd quietly called me after picking him up at the end to tell me he'd said he had an amazing day! he wouldn't say anything other than "it was okay" when i eventually got home, but that's just how he rolls...

between dropping him off at fight camp and getting to the office, i spoke to dod who's not just interested in a project i've been cooking up for about a decade now, but who presented an interesting re-focus that makes it much more likely to get off the ground. he (digitally) introduced me to someone he knows who's in the industry i've been dreaming about disrupting, and i'm excited to see if we can push this forward ^_^

the work day itself was manic. by the time we'd safely tested my previous evening's fixes it was already thursday afternoon, which is a not-good time to deploy to production. the deployment was a bit tricky, though it went smoothly, but it took hours of general disarray to be confident that the patch had been deployed safely and successfully.

for our weekly end-of-week happy hour, i convinced my team to order from mr donuts. four vegan donuts and one not (i feel confident they got it on principle), and everyone agreed that a) they were great and b) the not-vegan option was the least successful :P

i ended up leaving the office late again because i wanted to finish up our first official runbook.

it was a pretty peaceful evening (arguments over what to watch during dinner notwithstanding, mr smear doesn't like giving us a turn to choose and we wanted to continue with baking impossible). i was soooo tired after putting mr smear to bed, but we started watching a little more fallout and then stopped when i passed out on the couch.

today:

i didn't sleep well, but i did sleep. i woke up with a sore neck and shoulder, which followed me around all morning. it's still not great but it's much better, at least.

i began the day trying to figure out what the attack on iran means - i still don't know, to be honest - and wondering if ze germans are going to get together or not while SxS is in town. after a quick breakfast, we took the bike - i mean, mr smear walked his bike alongside us - to be repaired, and i had a coffee while gd and mr smear enjoyed sandwiches at cafe eva. the woman i asked for a chair was extremely rude to me, in english - "take the chair and GO!" - and i think she thought we were tourists. what an asshole!

afterwards, we hopped on a bus to the ichilov mall, where i figured out our next steps in getting mr smear a cellphone and we did a grocery shopping. then we walked home, dropped gd and the groceries off, and mr smear and i walked back to the bike repair shop.

eighty shekels for a new tire, gears examined and a new rear brake. nice :)

we picked up a really nice wine for our cousins' seder on monday evening, and we came home for a lazy afternoon. mr smear's been human fall flat-ing, i've almost cleared my daily quests in bloons adventure time, and i even killed all those damned radscorpions before doing most of the dishes so that gd could bake a challah in time for shabbat.

so far, it's been a good day.

unusually me

yesterday:

a very positive start to the day, getting mr smear to his fight camp on time.

mostly meetings, with me forcing a retrospective that felt appreciated by most of the team. a good start to sorting out potential on-call rotation issues. very little time for my own work.

leaving the office early and coming home for an early meal with my family before heading south.

efrat gosh in levontin 7 with tahoma - an interesting catch-up, a very intimate performance that really blew me away, as i was simultaneously quite emotional about being in a show in levontin 7 for the first time in about twelve years.

getting home late, showering and snacking even later.

today:

3am mistakenly looking at facebook and seeing a post recommending that a tel aviv family consider relocating to cape town, finally going back to bed an hour and a half later

rough and rushed wakeup, but mr smear being pretty cool

a really good chat with his instructor when dropping him off

a surprising conversation with gd about spirituality.

meeting up with my cousin's kid for coffee to discuss career options, a sudden and dramatic plot twist into a romantic adventure story

arriving late for work, being dropped into an unfamiliar production issue for a customer. an emotional rollercoaster of an afternoon, with gd getting on the wrong bus and picking up mr smear late, and mr smear continuing his struggle to get out of the fight camp, and me getting lost trying to figure out all the pieces of the work puzzle, and then getting news that my nephew just received his british ancestral visa and is finally able to join his mother and sister in london, and then hours trying to decipher truly pathetic documentation (google's envoy) and figuring things out with trial and error (with the AI assistance being the opposite of helpful), finally being inspired to ask a different question and hitting the jackpot, then a loooooot of debugging implementing the solution and eventually leaving the office late, but in time to eat with my family, and feeling exquisitely exhultant.

the evening was great until bedtime, i tried to have a conversation with mr smear and it went south (for no obvious reason), and then gd and i watched the third episode of the new fallout series. it's full of fan service, even if i feel like the pacing's a bit slow it's really inspired me to get back into it.

power play

 so far, the fallout series doesn't suck, which is actually very high praise. having said that, i was too tired last night to watch much of it. we woke up in the morning, having prepared for the attack - eight hours knowing that rockets are coming your way is a very long time. but then it was morning, and we woke up to see videos of rockets being shot down.

and then read that iran was saying that was it. and everyone discouraging us from retaliating. wtaf is going on?!

anyway. mr smear's mma camp was still cancelled and we were all confused, so i ended up working from home while he spent most of his day playing valheim. it was a long, tough day, but i ultimately enjoyed some success. in the evening, mr smear and i accompanied gd to the clinc, then we did some grocery shopping.

it was a good evening.

gd had to leave early this morning for an emergency dentist appointment, and we were confident that there wasn't going to be an mma camp today.

we were wrong.

i'm feeling particularly proud of myself for - with gd's guidance over the phone - getting mr smear's gear ready, and for convincing mr smear to eat toast with peanut butter on it, and for getting him out the door in generally good spirits and good time. we only found out the camp was happening around 8pm, and i managed to get him in the door before 9.30, brief his jiujitsu instructor on using the epipen, and see him join the class.

leaving him there felt like a big deal. like his first day at school. 4-5 hours on his own dealing with a "new" framework.

and then i was off to the office.

i'm really, really glad i didn't work from home. the only other person in the office was the one person i needed to interface with, and between the two of us i made great progress on my tickets. i didn't finish them (and our sprint ended today), but i made great progress that i'm satisfied with. additionally, the CEO messaged me in the morning to ask for something else and i delivered it with a really good feeling. and our CTO, who's been missing in action for a couple of days, posted a photo of him and his wife with their newborn. that's two in a week, but the fourth in four months - it feels like we have a baby boom going on :)

all-in-all, it was a good day.

mr smear had a mostly-good first day on the fight camp, although the last few minutes didn't go so well (he apparently got kicked a few times after pairing up with someone he'd been advised not to). while that did suck, he handled his emotions much better than we would have expected and the rest of the day went smoother than either of us would have anticipated. in addition to that, it provided an opening for a really good bedtime conversation. at some point i described to him what i went through after being fired from my first job in montréal, and how mma helped me get through a very difficult period of my life, and he very sincerely wished that i hadn't gone to canada and experienced all those things. to which i replied: "but then i wouldn't have met your mother, and you wouldn't exist. and if i had to go through all that in order to get you, i'd do it again in a heartbeat."

...

i can't post it (i don't have permission), but gd sent me a picture that he drew called "israel killing hamas", in among us style and it's excellent ^_^

looming threats

 well, we've been on alert since yesterday, worrying about whether iran's going to attack us outright. tomorrow's the first day of the passover school holidays, and we were all excited about mr smear going to his first week-long mma camp but the first two days have now been pushed to next week and we're hoping that things will go back to "normal" by tuesday...

... gd's been freaking out about the potential escalation, it's been a really hard six months for her.

thanks, nystire, for sending me the fallout intros earlier. at least it has great memories attached :P

...

yesterday:

mr smear did indeed finish his homework before school! i dropped him off, came back home and tried to work. it was a very, very frustrating couple of hours i put in during the day, very unproductive, and i'll be complaining to my teammates tomorrow and try to figure out a way to make our testing make a little more sense.

otherwise, i did very little productive yesterday. i was exhausted. my chest was still full of green gunk.

aside from picking up mr smear from school and doing a very quick shopping, and then another one later, and a lot of dishes... we watched groundhog day, and a bit of testament: the story of moses, and mr smear and i played rubber bandits together which was a lot of fun.

i was particularly proud of mr smear joining in (to a degree) when i made kiddush ^_^

today:

concerned about potential rocket attacks, we spent most of the beautiful day indoors. i rested some more - unintentionally passing out while watching more testament, and the first episode of star trek: the next generation, but the biggest thing today was purchasing valheim for mr smear and encouraging/helping him whenever he got stuck. it's early access, and it's not easy to get into, but he's having an absolute blast and i'm so pleased to see him demonstrating grit and accepting the idea that each play isn't to win, but to learn how to win.

i managed to get him to come out for a walk in the afternoon - gd wasn't feeling safe, physically or emotionally, and we stopped for an excellent ice-cream and had really interesting conversations along the way.

i'm particularly proud of myself for leveraging the new-game enthusiasm to get him to shower before dinner :)

i'm still reading the prisoner of azkaban at bedtime, and we discussed why the book has so much more in it than the movie. i told him about american splendor, but then realized that using h.p. lovecraft's writing as an example would be even better. he's very familiar with c is for cthulu, after all, it's still one of our favourite books. i explained how just seeing cthulu would drive a person mad, and the impossible dimensionality of r'lyeh, and he went to bed very excited about his plans to draw funny cthulu images in the morning.

i'm so proud.

now that we know he'll be home for the next two days, i've set up the windows machine so he can play valheim without me (i'm very relieved that i was able to get into his steam account, it had steam guard configured on an old phone), and gd and i are about to take a look at the fallout series on amazon prime.

please don't suck.

post-proc

tues:

most of tuesday is too far away to remember.

mr smear and i having a reasonably good time accompanying gd to the hospital for her nerve block, and doing our usual laffa dinner.

gd's nerve block going well, but her being kicked out to the waiting room by an ignorant nurse

high-stress on arrival, trying to keep gd from interfering with her own recovery and mr smear going from uncooperative to downright nasty

a really shitty bedtime followed by a really shitty evening - otherwise pleasant, but ended with a literal poke in the eye when things were finally feeling calmer

yesterday:

interesting spring rain start to the day, gd feeling surprisingly good

a very intense day, our first release of the tool i've been working on

picking mr smear up from school and taking him to the therapist

afternoon tummy troubles, suspecting the barrista oat milk

dropping mr smear off at home, returning to the office for an hour or two

arriving home just in time for dinner after bumping into an old teammate

another rough bedtime and bad feelings

falling asleep on the couch

today:

moving to the bed at 3.30am

a better morning, "hot mama takes smooshy poo to school", gd starting to hurt again

fetching half the pharmacy

pod coffee

trying to help move stuck military equipment

losing an hour to forgetting to connect through my phone

the excitment of mr smear passing his first jiujitsu grading and being given a grey belt

finding and reporting an abandoned kitten, mr smear running off to sob while i tried to help

scrapper surprise, with a challenging conversation

putting mr smear to bed after a pretty good day

exhausted. brushing teeth and showering cost me, but i really needed to get this all down. i need to help mr smear finish his homework tomorrow morning, and i need to make up some work hours once he's in school. i'm stressing about a million things that need doing and i'm trying and failing to avoid thinking about the geopolitical situation.

gods help us all.

opposite of blues / pre-procedure

i managed to sleep on my mattress topper the whole night last night. mr smear was pretty cool this morning. we left on time to get him to the school's annual race in memory of the kid who was run over and killed four and a half years ago on yom kippur.

on the way there, we hopped on a bus that was absolutely packed, and after getting to the middle and finding a place to stand i realized that i needed to go back to the driver to scan mr smear's card. i squeezed all the way there, and as i raised my hand to scan the card i bumped against a railing and the card flew out of my hands, seemingly in slow motion, right across the driver and into the space between his console and the windscreen.

good lord.

he stopped at the next stop, and made an incredible effort to retrieve the card... and he did, and it still seems miraculous. very grateful and embarrassed, i took the card and tried to swipe it. that was the point at which he informed me that the machine was broken.

...

i got him to his class just on time, put sunscreen on him for the first time in forever, and then walked around, feeling offended that there wasn't any coffee for the parents. but then i realized that there weren't a lot of other parents hanging around, so i found his homeroom teacher and she informed me that not only was i free to go, but encouraged to do so too, and that the kids would be bussed back to the school after the race.

win!!!

i was so busy saying goodbye to mr smear while returning his bus card to its right place, that by the time i was too far away to turn back i realized that i had no idea what i'd done with it (i just checked now, it's where it should be).

i came home, and struggled a bit to get into my work (i had a number of tasks on my plate and plenty of opportunities for distraction). i started to find my feet a little while before heading out to pick up mr smear and take him to his hebrew tutor, and we had time for a good chat on the way. and i filed a report to the municipality concerning the infestation of mosquitoes that were feasting on us.

i found a nice little bakery/coffee shop close by, and enjoyed an excitingly productive cup of coffee. then i picked him up, receiving a good report on his progress, and we picked up a couple of groceries on the way home, including a special pesach treat.

"dad? can we have that when we get home? you know, to celebrate buying it?"

genius.

so we did, although i'm the only one who ended up really enjoying it :P (it was far too sweet for gd, and mr smear decided he wasn't into them after his third one)

the remainder of the afternoon can be summarized as a series of successes, with lots of intensity in between. by the time i signed off, i had just enough time to play a game of bloons adventure time, do the dishes, and play some lego harry potter with mr smear before dinner. i honestly don't even know which year we're playing right now :P

we've just had a brief but intense electric storm, which i wasn't expecting. last night there was a crazy storm in cape town, my mom showed us the back gate of her building falling off :S

mr smear went to bed much later than he should have, and the same for me. i barely had it in me to brush my teeth and shower, and now i'm sitting with a cup of cinnamon tea, which i may or may not finish before going to bed.

...

tomorrow gd's undergoing another nerve block. not a moment too soon, as she's been really struggling since yesterday. this next week's going to be... i hope it's going to be okay.

who knows?

 a not-unpleasant start to the week. aside from waking up in pain halfway through the night and having to sleep on the couch again, and mr smear's ridiculous relating of rinsing toothpaste to post-nasal drip on the way to school, i had a pleasant morning, got a few things done, and left for work.

my fellow montreal coworker's wife gave birth this morning ^_^

the network issues i was dreading were resolved - for me at least - though one of my coworkers is still stuck with them. my morning was spent in mechanical turkish fashion, make a change, stare for five minutes, make a change, stare for five minutes, but eventually it seemed good enough to push. i had a good lunch with the team, but it was interrupted by a call from gd informing me that she's hurt and couldn't take mr smear to his first mma class in months...

so i had a coffee, then scrambled to pick up mr smear, take him to his class, and work from there. on the way, i saw a picture from kc's husband showing him in the hospital with their newborn third daughter! her sister just gave birth a few months ago, so these are positively exciting times for the family.

i had just enough time to get a big, urgent thing done, and it helped that i had the presence of mind to put in earphones the moment the other parents began trooping in.

mr smear was not impressed by his training partner, because he apparently hadn't been taking it seriously. i re-explained to him why he's there and that we trust his trainers, and i was inspired to take a gamble and use that conversation to lead into informing him that he's going to the pesach vacation training camp whether he likes it or not.

having buttered him up with a big bag of chips along the way, of course ;)

he took it well, which was a huge relief. we had an enjoyable ride home, and then i got some more work done until i just couldn't concentrate any more.

mr smear did his homework (?!?), and then we had some time before dinner so we got into doors: paradox that i'd picked up on epic free games (when it was free). what a great game!

we resumed watching minions: the rise of gru, then it was brush-teeth-and-bedtime. i was going to continue reading the prisoner of azkaban, but we somehow got into a riveting conversation about different cultures and ideologies and i blew his mind describing certain japanese characteristics (he was upset by their idea of obligation, which was great because i could explain to him that they'd be upset by his).

...

i'm disturbed by the new prison-tech scam. but i was already disturbed by america's modern slavery program anyway. it's really sad and disappointing.

...

the news about us (mostly) pulling out of gaza - which i heard of because my brother updated me - is probably going to garner a lot of dissenting opinions. from what i can tell so far, we're not done, just changing tactics, and it's anyone's guess what implications this is going to have regionally and globally.

pool day

 it was a regular saturday morning, we played games and i stop-started doing something in preparation for a project (i created a facebook group), and then nystire got in touch and invited us to join them at the beach.

we were planning on taking the bike out anyway, so why not combine the two?

the bike ride to the beach began with the discovery that the back tire has a puncture. i'm really glad we figured that out before we left the building. very soon, mr smear decided he didn't want to ride, and started walking his bike instead.

it took forever to get to a kiosk, where i bribed him to get back on the bike with an ice lollie. but he had to finish the ice lollie first. omg.

the rest of the way to the beach was pretty good - just a lot of little stops along the way - but by the time we arrived nystire and co had just left.

it was a beautiful day, so i suggested we go to the beach anyway, but he wasn't interested. he was, however, interested in getting chips. we went to mike's place, the first time i've been there since just before my 31st birthday.

the vegan burger was good, the bucket of chips was satisfactory and they were kind enough to provide a serving of vinegar, and we enjoyed the meal together. the best part of the visit, though, was him showing an interest in the pool table!

today i taught my son to play pool, and he enjoyed himself and started to get the hang of it by the end. he actually decided that he was happier getting to clear the table after losing than he would have been winning >D

i made a big mistake on the way home by putting my rollerblades back on, because he walked almost the entire distance. and then, in addition to the puncture, the chain came off when we got to dizengoff circle. twice. i treated myself to a coffee after getting most of the grease off my hands, and then we continued the excruciatingly long not-ride home.

i showered immediately, synced with my mom, and then we tried to watch the original mary poppins movie (i'd read an interesting analysis of it in the morning, and i was kinda enjoying it by the time my family decided to nix it and move on). we watched a breakdown of virtual insanity, and then we all laughed hysterically at james acaster not lying. and then we gave the amazing digital circus a try.

it's pretty good.

i was inspired to play portal, and made some good progress before beginning to wonder if i was going to get motion sickness in spite of wearing my glasses to play. which i did because i'm wondering if it helps, if perhaps a part of the motion sickness isn't to do with my eyes operating at completely different distances.

dinner, gd getting mr smear showered and toothbrushed, and now i'm going to say goodnight.

definitely could have gone worse

 we just got home after a lovely evening. mr smear insisted on telling everyone who would listen that he was there against his will, and he refused to eat. eventually, though, he got bored enough to play a bit and be a lot more social than we were anticipating.

as for the adults, we met a very interesting couple and it feels like we're all friends now.

friday

 i slept alright, until mr smear woke me up because he'd lost his duvet. it was a pretty good start to the day. i dropped mr smear off at school, where he was really proud of himself for crossing the road safely when the crossing guards weren't at their posts.

gd and i had a pretty good morning, and i had a good chat with my mother about her aliyah expo experience. then we left for the mall, then returned to give our neighbor his drill back, then turned around again. we had a nice breakfast together, then rushed to the pharmacy and do the grocery shopping (while i chatted with swordschool), bailing when we realized that we were properly late to pick up mr smear. i dropped the groceries at our building entrance then literally ran all the way to the school the pick him up.

after cooling down, i had a long chat with sailor, did the dishes, then resumed my chat with swordschool while capturing the martian throne in bloons adventure time. then i showered, cut a toenail too short with a new nailclipper, rested a bit, and now we're off to friends for dinner.

looming

yesterday:

i slept pretty well. there was some unpleasantness in the morning, though we got over it. i'm very happy that i was in good enough shape to rollerblade to work, but i'm a bit concerned about one of the clips on my new blades.

the work day was full of mixed feelings: a lot of stress due to a new release with some issues, but a lot of satisfaction completing two big tasks and learning a lot of small but important things along the way.

twin peaks is interesting and entertaining, but it's also a phenomenally effective sedative.

today:

i slept pretty well again. otherwise, i should mention that today began with a lot of stress, and a lot of the day could be described by the phrase "everything is broken".

i was responsible for waking up mr smear this morning, and it went better than yesterday. he didn't move particularly quickly, but quickly enough that i had time to help him revise for his geometry test. which he aced, so we're all feeling good about it.

i rushed off to work early this morning in order to be able to accompany gd to a social security appointment regarding upskilling assistance, it was an interesting meeting and i'm very curious to hear what the "vocational doctor" has to say.

on the way there, everyone in tel aviv's GPS went haywire, so that was messy. and iran's threatening to attack us, so that's... fun.

some of the work day was good, but some of it was very frustrating. the happy-hour vegan "crêpes" wasn't good, but the whiskey made up for it. i got a good amount of grocery shopping done on the way home, which will make tomorrow's pre-shabbat run much easier.

now to play some more bloons adventure time on my way to bed.

who's the motherflippin'?

monday:

another night waking up in pain in the middle to move to the couch.

well, i'm pleased to report that mr smear did, in fact, complete his homework - both for sunday and monday - but it wasn't without some extra-added encouragement. i worked from home, and i'm still amused that my ex-montreal coworker had to answer the door in the middle of a video call and decided that *that* was the appropriate time to put pants on 🤣

aside from a visit to the hospital and clinic to sort out authorization for gd's nerve block next week, i didn't get out the house. i was surprised when my coworker signed off at 7.30, because i had no idea it was so late...

funny moments: mr smear bashing his foot on the couch leg (not funny), then yelling "i need a break!" in exactly gd's usual tone. also, mr smear becoming very frustrated with a boss in the prodigy math game, arguing with me when i suggested that he might want to change tactics, finally winning and - in joyful celebration - repeatedly yelling "I'M THE MOTHERFLIPPING!" 🤣

(technically) yesterday:

another night waking up in pain in the middle to move to the couch.

today was a difficult wakeup (again), but once mr smear got going it was fine. gd and i enjoyed a peaceful start to the day, and at the office i managed to solve two big problems (both with github actions) before home-time in spite of a lengthy work meeting as well as a parent-guidance session in the middle.

it felt really nice to leave the office before dark, and in really pleasant weather.

mr smear was good for homework again (yay!), and so the evening was mostly relaxing (and watching is it cak3? over dinner). i read a bit more of the prisoner of azkaban to mr smear at bedtime,  then put on my new blades and headed out to join the group for the first time in at least half a year (between winter and the war...)

it was a relaxed route, and really nice (aside from a few points where we went through construction or the nasty bricks we call ackershtein), but it was hard on my body and i went from parched and dehydrated by the time we finally got a break directly to having had too much fruit juice and sugar from the ice-lollie.

anyway, i had a great time and i'm really happy i went. i've been home for an hour now, i'm good-sore, i'm showered, and i'm ready for bed.

now to see what the damned mosquito that's been bothering gd all night is up to.

sat/sun

yesterday:

a quiet day, and i was still really tired. i managed to get a fair amount of work done on a new podcast episode, including at our local vegan cafe while mr smear dived into his new book. we watched inu-oh from start to finish and it was both disappointing and inappropriate for mr smear. the artwork was magnificent, the story itself was interesting, the music... the music was difficult to listen to, but the idea was good... but there was something fundamentally lacking.

we also started watching legend of the drunken master, which was apparently less inappropriate. but the movie starts with a bunch of disturbing stuff we didn't remember.

godsdammit.

i wanted to take mr smear cycling, but he was having none of it. he negotiated cycling next week - we recorded him agreeing - and instead walking to the climbing wall. it was a mostly good walk, although there was minor unpleasantness along the way and we arrived just as the wall was been closed due to an unexpected personal issue :(

today:

it was a pretty good start to the week, i got a bunch of paperwork filed even if i do have more to go, and i rollerbladed to the office, discovering a neat bike path that goes through midtown. it was a pretty good work day, even though i needed to snack a lot and there wasn't anything available, and i'm happy with how the first iteration of the tool i've been working on is shaping up.

getting my rollerblades on outside the building was unpleasant, but getting home was pleasant.

my only disappointment today is with mr smear not doing his homework again, which means it's going to start piling on... ugh.

test nerves

yesterday was a pretty relaxed day. i continued working really hard on the tool, i'm almost done and it's looking good.

halfway through the day i got a phone call: mr smear had a bit of an anxiety attack when the test was put in front of him :(

but i also got a really nice message from his teacher informing me that he was generally behaving well and cooperating :)

falafel for lunch with the team and one of my coworkers' very pregnant wife, i brought the vinegar but the chips were for the table (i should have ordered my own).

happy hour shenanigans: the boss ordered a vegan ice cream for me, but it was only a thin layer over non-vegan ice cream. he was pissed off, but i just had great whiskey instead.

...

i actually slept alright on the mattress topper last night, but we were all particularly tired this morning as we'd lost an hour due to the time change. i dropped mr smear off at school, picked up the last of the post-hospitalization laundry and a disappointing bagel, then headed out to nes tziona on a mission for new rollerblades.

firstly, i really appreciated the owner letting me ride around to get a feel for the different models. i ended up taking the first offered, the very pricey ones, but only because both of the cheaper models i tried hurt me in different ways. i think these ones are good - the tempish wenox top 100. and the sale experience was worth travelling two or three hours by bus.

while i was there, my mom called me in hysterics because our xth-cousin yth-removed (we say sixth, but i've no idea how we're related) got the job she was praying for by eating pasta every day >D

i've spent most of the afternoon napping or snacking, although i did have a good chat with horseman. mr smear's friend just left after an intense gaming session, and i'm now drinking a green tea and hoping that tonight will be a good (internal) clock reset.

i don't know if gd's overly sensitive, or sufficiently sensitive, but this is the fourth bag of flour she's thrown out and i can't smell anything wrong with it. anyway, happy wife happy life...

mr smear hadn't done any of his homework yesterday, so he's completing it right now - rushing to get it done before sunset so that he doesn't lose shabbat privileges :P

topper of the morning

tuesday:

mr smear not wanting to get out of bed, massive drama getting him out of bed but then gd figuring out why - he was upset by some girls who'd pointed and laughed at his eye on his last day at school.

a good start to the work on the really interesting tool i've been tasked with building. a building "whiskey tasting" event followed by an all-hands with better whiskey.

excitedly picking up the mattress topper on the way home.

the fight over fighting and spillover/leftovers from february's events, with me taking a walk and us eventually "agreeing to disagree".

watching the first half of the first episode of twin peaks. terrible acting, but very interesting nonetheless.

sleeping on the mattress topper: not bad, not as comfortable as the couch, but i did sleep.

yesterday:

a good start to the day, and a very focused day working on the tool. finishing the day constructing a monitor arm, trying to pick up laundry on the way home but getting there too late, and successfully getting mr smear through math test prep.

a pleasant evening, finishing the first episode of twin peaks, crashing.

waking up in pain in the middle of the night to move to the couch :(

the break

 i dont think i had enough coffee today, because i suddenly crashed a little while ago and needed another cup. i'm used to two strong coffees at the office (after my initial morning coffee), and today i had a black tea and an instant coffee instead. so i'm now making up the deficit with another instant and hoping it tides me over until i get home tonight.

i say "i", because i had to cancel the babysitter and i'm going to nystire's alone... gd did me a favor and picked up a bottle of wine when she was out, but miscalculated how far the liquor store was and ended up hurthing herself in her rush to pick mr smear up (late).

  .-'---`-.
,'          `.
|             \
|              \
\           _  \
,\  _    ,'-,/-)\
( * \ \,' ,' ,'-)
 `._,)     -',-')
   \/         ''/
    )        / /
   /       ,'-'

workwise was weird. after a 45 minute meeting arguing over YAML vs JSON, i began building a test app in the language i thought i was supposed to be evaluating. then, an hour before i was supposed to sync with my boss, he asked how it compares to the other language... godsdammit. anyway, the rest of the afternoon has been startlingly unproductive and i'm feeling a bit shit.

i should have gone to pick up the mattress topper earlier.

...

last minute pre-publish edit: my coworker got back to me, and i'm now glad i didn't waste time on the other language because it wouldn't have made any sense.

it's raining tacos

 well, our sunday is monday, but still. i had a good workday yesterday, and the only issue with mr smear is him not doing is homework (and fighting about brushing his teeth in the morning, gods help us).

we got a surprise invitation to nystire's wife's birthday party tonight, and we miraculously managed to secure a babysitter. if we both manage to get there, i think it's going to be the most spontaneous thing we've done in about ten years :P

mr smear was singing it's raining tacos over the weekend, and it's got stuck in my head. i prefer it the way he sings it, though.

the weekend was mostly good, though i took mr smear out for a walk that was also mostly good, but had some rough parts. and then we were "urgently recalled" because he needed to take his meds on schedule and we were far from home with no public transport :/

yesterday was a good work day. i got a whole lot done that i'm happy with. i'm a bit anxious about potential on-call duties, though i'm sure it'll be better than my previous experiences.

i completed the video for signs in the dead of night yesterday, i'm very happy with it.

after a long chat with vfmp last night, i didn't get much sleep but it was at least good sleep. our mattress topper is ready, now i just need to pick it up.

...

this article on the origins of the bible is really intriguing.

a good friday

 firstly, starting off the day seeing a video about elements of purim having pagan origins, and then looking it up and finding all sorts of weird stuff (eg. this). so that got stuck in my head today.

i spent some time updating drivers on my windows machine while waiting for my family to be ready, which took a long time. we eventually set out to the furniture store, where i explained the problem and fully expected to be dragging us through a huge ordeal involving selling our current bed and buying two new ones, but i was stopped short.

"do you know what a mattress topper is?"

no, no i did not. and now i do. and i've tested one out, and i've ordered it, and i was so relieved to be presented with such a great (and inexpensive) solution that i was on the verge of tears.

so that was a good start to the day.

we then walked up and down the street until we found the place we bought our couch, and ordered two additional cushions for it.

then we bussed to dizengoff center and picked up mr smear's new prescription, as well as really good food for breakfast (and later lunch) - i had really good vegan cholent, it was glorious.

we missed the bus home, so we strolled up dizengoff and picked up coffees and had a variety of tel aviv / purim experiences before getting to the dominator store - mr smear has been asking to go there for months - and then we hopped on a bus back home.

i've played a lot more bloons adventure time than i should have, but i did claim the martian throne when it was already claimed at a stupidly high level. i even napped in the middle.

it's been a quiet afternoon, listening to good music and doing dishes while mr smear plays spider-man, and putting a little bit of effort into sprucing up an old poem of mine inspired by godspeed you! black emperor. now i'm enjoying a glass of whiskey and gathering thoughts.

thursday

 yesterday was pretty intense, but ultimately (including some effort after mr smear had gone to bed) saw me entering the weekend having cleared my desk in preparation for next week's operation. in the late afternoon we had a very serious all-hands where everyone got things off their chests, which ended with a round of rather nice desserts.

which reminds me, the fries i ordered as an excuse for salt and vinegar were rather disappointing. 

mr smear had had a good day, but it didn't end very well. last night was hard.

i watched the season finale of unchained. i say "i" because gd was next to me, but passed out for half of it. it's an excellent season, from start to finish.

...

i slept on the couch again last night. consistently much better. now we're off to re-negotiate with the furniture store...

i unfriended/blocked vfmp's brother this morning over his continued anti-israel posts.

"It isn't even Friday."

canada's seeming like a lost cause these days, i don't believe they realize just what they're signing up for.

almost-weekend stress

 it's going to be an intense day today. on my way out my boss and i synced on how out-of-sync we were, so today i'm going to do what i can to achieve all the stretch goals before the weekend so that i can start something new on sunday and help him feel ready for his parental leave.

my scalp's already feeling much better after three days of shampooing, but i'm going to pick up the treatment on my way to work today anyway.

mr smear's definitely on the mend. hopefully he'll be back at school soon.

i slept on the couch last night. i slept well. i'm now confident that most of my sleep disruptions over the past years have been due to sleeping on the wrong beds. like, i'm actually feeling functional today.

holy shit: yesterday i suggested to a coworker that maybe one day someone will figure out how to remove herpes using CRISPR. this morning i opened my browser to look for something and this article on removing HIV with CRISPR popped up out of nowhere.

(my) back

the dryness in the hospital split the skin on my thumb again. it really hurts.

the full-day-of-youtube hospital experience wasn't good for anyone, but we did have some good moments and on monday evening mr smear did some great drawings and we read a bit more diary of a wimpy kid in hebrew. it's blowing my mind how mr smear can't remember simple things we tell him or whether or not he's brushed his teeth, but he remembers most of the books he's read verbatim and consistently helps me with or corrects my translations.

monday was hard. working on a chair in a hospital with a single screen was hard, dealing with mr smear dealing with youtube / other people like doctors and nurses / well-meaning purim revellers etc. was hard. not being able to go anywhere because he was in quarantine and attached to a drip was hard.

monday night was pretty much a repeat of sunday night. lots of sleep interruptions, but the actual sleep on their fold-out bed was pretty good.

yesterday morning was okay, a lot of the same from monday but mr smear's eye was looking much better. while gd got settled in and the doctors determined whether or not he was ready to go home, i went to the office.

the first hour or two in the office were considerably more constructive. lunch (a hummus run with my boss and a mostly full house at the table) was good. what followed was a mix of going to a three-minute dermatologist consultation - he doesn't think i have psoriasis, and believes everyone in israel should be shampooing daily - speed-walking back to the hospital ward to grab the toothbrushes gd forgot when they vacated, crashing in front of my desk while trying to avoid having more coffee, and a late evening struggling to debug something but finally walking out with a sense of accomplishment.

dinner in front of gravity falls last night - the last of the "special" days before getting back into a routine - and then a really hard night realizing that the last three sleepless months are at least partially, if not mostly, due to me being uncomfortable on our new mattress. i shifted to the couch in the middle of the night and slept much better.

now it's cleanup time, including dishes and grocery shopping online and taking laundry to the laundromat, before heading to work.

hospitalization

 an hour or two being bounced between offices until we gave up and went to the clinic, where they took pity on a miserable-looking mr smear and sent us up to the nurse who gave us the referral.

we did the ER thing from about 11am until around 9pm, it took half the day to get the PCR results from thursday and for a professor of infectious diseases to come and take a look at him: the diagnoses did end up being herpes, and he hadn't been responding well to the meds we were giving him, so we took him through for another eye examination before he was hospitalized for a couple of days' infusion.

i was already very sore and tired by then. around noon i'd had to rush home and back for medication, in the evening i rushed home and back for a t-shirt and underwear for mr smear and to pick up dinner for all of us, which gd really didn't enjoy, and for most of the day we were either walking around or sitting on uncomfortable chairs.

once we got him settled, i went home to shower and brush my teeth and pick up a couple more things and returned to relieve gd and let her go home.

it's been seven years since our last hospitalization, and it's much easier this time around. if it wasn't for a night full of alarms for IV occlusions waking me up during REM sleep it might've been the most comfortable night's sleep i've had in years.

i was a wreck after being woken up this morning, but i'm feeling okay now. and mr smear is happy because he's hooked into a bed with a screen that lets him watch youtube...

... gd just arrived, it's coffee and breakfast time.

continuation

 how does a saturday spent playing video games, watching movies and reading comics end with us feeling more exhausted than when it began?

while a lot of the day was nice (reading american splendor: our movie year, being mr smear's wingman in word factori, watching half of inu-oh, urchin's visit), it was constantly punctured by his suffering and it was capped off with him fighting with us about brushing his teeth.

*sigh*

gd and i managed to watch two more episodes of unchained before crashing, it's really, really good.

i'm the only one who got up "on time" this morning, i took out the trash and picked up some coffee and sat down to try and figure out how to get mr smear's PCR results, take care of a few little items, and watch some of the war on children. i've only managed to get through about twenty minutes of it, but so far it's all worrying stuff we're already aware of.

mr smear got up with an eye much more swollen, so we're now trying to get a referral to return the ER and it's proving really hard.

...

oh, and with everything else going on i just realized that neither of the recommended babysitters i reached out to responded to me, so between that and the eye situation we're going to have to cancel our tickets to watch my friend's documentary the shoshani riddle on tuesday :(

outbreak

 thursday:

i don't remember if it was wednesday or thursday, but there were hours of work spent hunting down bugs that were introduced by copilot. copilot certainly helped me get the code written faster, but that's the first time i've had to deal with a real bug hunt for a mistake i would never have made had i written it all myself...

early in the afternoon, gd took mr smear to the clinic to get his eye checked out - he'd been suffering from an outbreak for a day or two, we initially thought it was just a scratch and by wednesday evening it was starting to look worrying. the doctor wasn't sure, but she thought it might be herpes and i immediately became anxious - i've been nervous about herpes keratitis since my officer's course teammate developed it.

i sent off some photos for an online consultation with a dermatologist, and in retrospect it's pretty amazing how quickly one got back to me. by 4.30 i was on my way to meeting gd and mr smear at the hospital with a referral for the children's ER in hand.

it took about an hour before we got to see the triage nurse. after another hour in the waiting area with the kid with a scary cough who refused to wear his mask and a row of vending machines with exactly zero products appropriate for children, i approached the receptionist and asked how long the average wait was post-triage - one hour? two hours? she was immediately offended that i would ask such a vulgar question, and of course it would be less than an hour...

... mr smear's number finally got called another hour after that. the doctor examined him, and then sent us to an opthalmologist in a different building, where we waited again, but fortunately not for too long.

after the opthalmologist, we returned to the ER as instructed. after another half an hour of waiting, i approached the counter and asked if we'd been forgotten: "no, we're still waiting for the opthalmologist to enter the summary". holy shit, we could have waited until the next morning for that, and gd was starting to freak out because she wanted to get out of there in time to pick up whatever medication would be prescribed.

so they contacted the opthalmologist, who eventually did what he had to do, while i sat entertaining mr smear with random jokes from the internet and gd paced up and down. then we went around in circles between the doctors and nurses while they tried to figure out what to do about the four or five different possible diagnoses they'd come up with, and took a couple of samples.

it was just about 11pm when we finally left, all three of us completely exhausted.

yesterday:

we all needed to sleep in a little bit yesterday. mr smear woke up complaining that it was getting worse, and we were all in a shitty mood and totally over the day before it began. we (slowly) got moving and went to the clinic, where we were fortunate to find his paediatrician in her rooms. once we'd all figured out how we were proceeding, gd went to the pharmacy and mr smear and i went to get breakfast bagels.

i'd been talking to the guy at the counter for a minute when i turned around to find mr smear furiously rubbing his eye with the edge of his glasses, and while i want to say "it took everything i could not to freak out", the truth is i absolutely freaked out.

holy @#!$.

i rushed him off to gd, who thankfully had something to wipe his glasses and his face with, but it's been twenty four hours and i'm still not really over the horror.

i returned alone to apologize and pick up the bagels, then met up with them to eat breakfast. then pick up a treat for mr smear - the 14th diary of a wimpy kid book, the 13th wasn't available [though i just picked it up on kindle for him] - and then come home to try and get some rest.

by sundown i managed to put out the article i'd been fiddling with over the course of the week, so that was a relief.

today:

we're still trying to get some rest. we're just breathing into the day one moment at a time.

mr cat sent me the first draft of the dedication for the comics, and it's looking great, so today i'm going to try to get him the margin notes i promised i'd send "in a bit" yesterday :P

located

 my mother did manage to find the song! i'm not just impressed by her getting her hands on the books, and relieved that one of the books was the right one, but i'm also proud of her for reading through both of them well enough to find what i was looking for ^_^

it's called "אני מחכה לאחי החייל" and i've no idea who wrote it, but i definitely got the first verse right. i also didn't expect it to hit me right in the feels, i tried reading it to gd this morning, but at some point just couldn't speak through the sobs.

אני מחכה לאחי החייל

יש לי אח גדול,

בן עשרים אולי,

הוא יכול לעשות הכל,

וקוראים לו שי.

אחי שי הוא חייל,

הנה הוא פה בתמונה.

שי הוא חייל גיבור

ושומר על המדינה.

אם שי הולך למלחמה -

אמא נורא דואגת;

אבא שומע רדיו כל שעה

וכולם יושבים בשקט.

והנה בא מכתב

משי שלנו - הטוב;

"אני בריא וחזק

להתראות בקרוב-בקרוב".

אלוהים, לך אני מתפלל -

לגמור את המלחמה ודי.

תן שלום לישראל.

שיבוא מהר הבייתה שי.

...

tuesday:

i'm struggling to recall tuesday. i vaguely remember that there were at least a couple of points of interest, but i'm at a loss right now.

one thing i do remember, though, is that at bathtime i explained to mr smear how our ears downsample and we only hear about a third of what's said to us, and that we complete what we hear with context and expectations. with the implication being that we literally can't hear what other people are saying when we're upset.

yesterday:

yesterday started off scary: i woke up fine at 5am to go to the toilet, but on my way back to bed my back began to spasm. with some help from gd i miraculously managed to stave off the full spasm and by the time i got to the office i was more or less okay. i'm still nervous about it, though.

also, it looks like i might well have psoriasis.

it was a busy morning. gd and mr smear were both upset because gd, tired and in pain, spends forty five minutes every morning preparing breakfast and lunch and mr smear doesn't want to eat what she puts in front of him. the conversation that we'd had the night before came in handy: i asked mr smear if he could make himself calm enough to hear what we were saying, and he said "no". so i stopped trying, and on the way to school we managed to talk everything out.

this morning went much better.

i spoke to my mom, who informed me that uncle hate has shuffled off his mortal coil and that she was asked not to fly to montreal right now, which i guess is a bit of a relief. i sent my aunt and her kids condolences, glad that gd's supportive of me playing nice in spite of how they treated us.

i managed to get an authorization sorted out at the clinic, then picked up my favorite onion bagel, then went through to one of the clinics at the hospital to find out if and when gd had an appointment, and went on a side-quest to explain to management that their signage is insufficient. they were shocked, disbelieving, and i'm not 100% convinced they're going to do anything about it.

the work day went well, it was long but had some good moments.

the south african foreign ministry appears to be serious in threatening south africans who've served in the idf. assholes.

in the evening i watched another episode of unchained with gd, then tried to write an article i'm been stewing over for days, then crashing.

today:

mr smear was good today, breakfast went well. gd's on a mission to gather her thoughts about our cape town community, i'm going to help her put out an article (on whatever medium) in her own voice because she's really upset about how woke jews around the world are behaving when they have no clue what's going on over here.

a better day

 the bug from the sunday continued to drive me crazy until the early afternoon, when my boss told me to just do what the AWS representative advised. i didn't think it was the right thing to do, and i expressed my opinions, but i began implementing it as instructed.

just one last test.

fortunately, my tests were pretty solid and i finally had some real data to work with - and i discovered that the "fix" suggested by the professional would have opened a massive security hole! while i struggled to wrap my head around what was actually happening, i managed to find a solution that appears to be not only viable, but correct, and i'm now waiting to see the proof in the puddingproduction environment.

i was more shocked by how backwards the AWS implementation is than relieved that i've found a solution...

...

on sunday night, i scratched my head a bit, and a bit of my head came off. last night a dermatologist called me back and advised that i go see someone in person. gd (and dr google) think i may have developed psoriasis. i hope it's not psoriasis :(

mr smear had a much better day yesterday. the day started off awkwardly because we were both invited to talk with the school councillor; mr smear was in trouble for skipping classes on sunday (when we were having a tough morning), and i was in trouble for not warning his teacher that he was having a tough morning. gd managed to get him to his hebrew tutor and through his homework.

so: winning.

on sunday morning, i managed to install the ceiling attachment points for the shower curtain rail, but i accidentally pushed one of the screws through the ceiling and needed to wait 24 hours for the "putty" i used to fix it to dry. yesterday, when it was ready, i finally set about putting up the curtain rail... only to discover that in the month or two since i bought the damned thing and haven't been able to put it up, some of the parts went missing.

#$@!.

so now we have to wait for a handyman to swing by and see if he can help us out.

gd's really having a hard time psychologically, primarily with the war and the international response to it, on top of her daily struggle with pain which seems to have gotten worse since she's been coughing so much in the weeks we've been dealing with covid.

my mom managed to track down a couple of copies of the hebrew workbooks we had when i was a kid! it's been so long that apparently on one or two teachers even remembered the name (מדרגות or madregot), and i'm hoping that the song i still have stuck in my head is in one of them.

יש לי אח גדול

בן עשרים אולי

הוא יכול לעשות הכל

וקוראים לו שי

שי חייל והוא גיבור

אמא נורא דואגת

right, it's time to get moving.

not really

 i didn't sleep well. again. i'm tired. apparently i need to learn to sleep on my back.

and then mr smear woke up inexplicably in fight mode. things got bad, and he crossed a few red lines. so we all had a shitty start to our day.

in the evening, i came home to find him still in fight mode, but less, and over dinner i think i managed to get through to him a little. the rest of the evening was mostly positive. he was very excited to be introduced to the idea of eating with chopsticks.

the morning's work was a bit stressful, but with a bit of help i got the job done. then three of us went off to the schnitzel place, where to accompany my usual falafel and chips i picked up a bottle of vinegar. i regret nothing.

in the afternoon i started working on a bizarre bug that seems impossible to reproduce and that doesn't make any sense. i left the office a bit late, irritated by the potential problem and hoping that somehow i'll wake up with some kind of direction...

quiet

 it was a peaceful shabbat. after so many hours invested in bloons adventure time, i decided to pick up the three characters that unlock all the levels and i regret nothing. while mr smear playing human fall flat, gd and i started watching unchained last night, and we watched another episode today, and it's really good so far.

my favorite parts of the day were

1. getting sandwiches at our local vegan cafe with mr smear reading a book at a different table while we just enjoyed being there and doing nothing

2. mr smear and me putting together the free warhammer figure that he received yesterday

3. getting the original dedication pages to the illustrator and putting out the latest pages, only a month and a half after receiving them

4. mr smear and me playing rain world, first taking turns and then vs in the arena mode

i've spent most of the last few hours watching random youtube videos, overall not the greatest use of my time. now i'm regretting starting a macos update on my work computer because it's taking much longer to get to some kind of checkpoint than i was expecting...

...

my back's been hurting me a lot the past few days. i hope i manage to sleep better tonight.

define success?

 today's tom nash report is both encouraging and discouraging. it seems militarily sound, but what about the hostages? we leave them there for another month? that's just insane. though no less insane that any of the events that have brought us to this point.

i'm very glad i'm not in a position where i need to make these kinds of decisions.

...

as evidence by my last post, i didn't sleep very well last night. getting up this morning was hard. i'm grateful that mr smear eventually got himself sorted out because i had zero energy available to deal with the usual morning stuff.

gd and i began the day watching the secrets, which i just realized i've seen twice before. i recalled the scene that i'd been uncomfortable seeing while sitting in a movie theatre with my mother (not as bad as i remembered), and i recalled the ending, but everything else was like a nice surprise seeing old friends :)

during a break (one of the main reasons i like seeing movies at home... i know, imma gettin' old and cranky) i managed to bend the shower curtain rails and it looks like i did a good job. i'd planned on putting them up, too, but i was too tired by the time we eventually got back from our errands so i'll try again on sunday.

we picked up mr smear, dropped his school bag off at home, then jumped on a bus to dizengoff center. we got most of the new lens prescription story taken care of (we just have to go back early next week), we managed to pick up an inoffensive purim costume he's excited about (a non-threatening knight's helm and a sword and shield), i got some cool anime stickers for my work computer, and we had a really good lunch from our favorite vegan food stall.

i napped on contact with our couch, then later got mr smear through a page of hebrew reading, spent a good chunk of the afternoon / evening doing not much (doomscrolling, watching random things on youtube, and purchasing a volume of american splendor), and now i've done all the dishes and posted this and we're about to say kiddush.

thursday

 the day started pretty well. on the way to dropping mr smear off at school i recounted a story about a bunch of my officer's course platoon laughing in the bathroom, and i'm praying that i wrote down what initially triggered that laughter and that i'm able to find it. [was it this? that can't have been it, surely?]

the work day was very relaxed, my boss and coworker returned from their trip and had lots of stories to share. my yemenite coworker unwittingly putting loads of carolina reaper hot sauce on his food right after i started calming down from my own intense experience with it.

a video chat with our community rep and gd, and offering to meet with the rest of the leadership and the offending parties. just offering set off my anxiety, and i'm now writing this after getting up in the middle of the night - an hour or more ago - and tossing and turning while imagining addressing them.

the CEO forgetting me when ordering sweets for our "happy hour" and feeling really bad about it.

my nostrils hurting - both of them - because i can't clean them properly while working on repairing the tear. my stomach doing a number on me all day.

dropping my gear off at home after work and walking to mr smear's best friend's for a sushi night, which was both social and delicious. eventually getting home with a very full belly and getting mr smear into bed around 10.30pm...

upgrade

 the looney tunes show episode 25, muh-muh-muh-murder, is literally jaw-droppingly shocking. and not even slightly funny. holy fuck, i was horrified, and not in the least because everything about it was completely inappropriate for an eight year old.

wtaf.

mr smear and i both simultaneously agreed that we're done with that series.

...

yesterday:

another work from home day, gd was (and still is) feeling terrible and needed me to handle some things. also, i started off the day (again) at the clinic, this time to see a doctor about the tear inside my nostril. the doctor wasn't particularly phased about it, though, and i've been using a cream which seems to be helping.

gd finished watching walk on water, and although i wasn't really paying attention i did see the ending; i totally didn't expect it to trigger a catch in my throat.

the work day wasn't hard, but it was a struggle nonetheless as i really didn't know what i was doing, nor supposed to be doing. having said that, i did learn quite a bit and established a good starting point for today's labor.

today:

another difficult night. they've been difficult for a long time.

today i returned to the office for the first time in two weeks. we got to put the protocol i established to the test, and so far it's looking pretty solid. i got really good support from my coworkers in that and the confusing task from yesterday, and i'm pretty sure i've plugged an important potential security hole.

my nose is still hurting, but less.

we have new office chairs! and they're good chairs. even though i've been at home for two weeks, sitting down on my new chair was a physical relief.

it was a pretty good day, but i (we) got hit with a shitty feeling just before dinner when i checked my messages and learned that our community in cape town is under attack from within, jews who are very angry with the leadership for not taking an anti-israel stance.

i can't not think of the jews during the holocaust who voluntarily collaborated with the nazis.

...

mr smear and i have been having some really good conversations the past couple of days. however things play out, i'm a lot more optimistic about how he's coping.

dethpicable / the hole

yesterday:

morning compassion for gd after hearing a comparison between daffy duck and her brother, then an afternoon go-fuck-yourself over homework, leaving us with a pretty deep sense of betrayal. the evening was kind of okay, though.

gd finishing mivtza savta, i'm very glad she enjoyed it!

a long workday being walked through a complicated process and formalizing a protocol to upgrade a blockchain node, seemingly successful.

a fun game night with vfmp, we discovered sudoku moyo on yucata while trying to install magic the gathering arena (i didn't know it was on mobile!)

today:

gd's alarm pulling me out of a nightmare in which i'd rescued some girl from a couple of guys who'd used some kind of drug that had made them zombie-like, and they chased me up a flight of stairs. when the alarm went off i'd just realized that my attempts to kick them down the stairs were utterly futile and i woke up with a deep sense of despair.

this morning we authorized mr smear's evaluation for attention issues.

this morning i gave our landlady a stern talking to when i realized she'd managed to misinterpret the plumber's very specific and clear explanation of the work he did last week and the need to do the bigger work. smh

it was a good morning until i discovered that the upgrade yesterday had broken something in monitoring, and it was really hard figuring out what because i've been spoiled by good observability tools from my previous employer.

gd watched zero motivation this morning, and i'm very pleased to report that she enjoyed that too :)

gd's still really struggling to breathe, and so i picked up mr smear, had a good chat with him, dropped him off at his tutor and went to the coffee shop to work over a cup of coffee for half an hour.

the only coughing fit i had today was at the coffee shop, surrounded by other people.

i picked mr smear up - he received good praise from his tutor - rushed him home, and eventually managed to figure out what the problem was. overall, it was a successful day, and mr smear was happy to do his math (prodigy) homework after learning that he didn't have to do additional hebrew after his lesson :P

discovering the hole in my nostril wall before bathtime. like, a proper hole. i need to go to the clinic tomorrow :(

gd upset about me "over-sharing". even if i disagree with her i get where she's coming from.

mr smear's in bed, and i've written this, and we're about to settle in and start watching walk on water.

clearer

 a bit clearer, at least, but still suffering coughing fits and frequently blocked sinuses.

this morning had some rough edges, but it was okay, and we discovered professor kliq (there are two accounts [1] and [2]).

around noon we took the bike and my blades and rode to the pump track, meeting cm and his kids there (i kept my distance). it was a loooong slog to get there, as mr smear was struggling more than usual, and about halfway back i realized that mr smear's bike was stuck in a high gear. brought it down from sixth to third, absolute gamechanger, but he was already exhausted.

we both enjoyed a really nice rest stop, sitting on the grass at park hayarkon listening to a busker playing along to relaxing songs.

we stopped off for ice lollies on the way home, then jumped in the bath when we arrived, then chilled for a while, then wrestled a bit of a dent in one of the couch cushions, then investigated dnd character creation, and then watched the the float episode of the looney tunes show.

holy crap, that was an amazing episode! mr smear was so cut up about daffy duck being so utterly repulsive and detestibly mean to porky pig, that it served as a perfect platform to tie in with all the lessons we've been trying to teach him over the course of the past week. that being good parents is making sure that he doesn't end up a daffy duck, and that we'll know we're doing well if he's got a good heart, and is capable of following his dreams and dealing with whatever life throws at him.

it was truly a huge relief being able to have a calm, comforting conversation like that. now for the bedtime battle.

off

 i took yesterday off. i wasn't planning on it, but i needed it. i'm still not used to taking sick days, even if i now officially have covid. having said that, gd and i both did RATs yesterday and hers came out negative.

*shrug*

yesterday:

the wake up was not good. mr smear messed around until i carried him out his room, then insisted on claiming that he didn't know how he got from his bed to the corridor, and neither of us believed him. maybe he was telling the truth. either way, not a good vibe to start the day.

at some point on wednesday one of our main water pipes developed a tiny hole, and we began our day with unexplained flooding around the washing machine. we assumed it was the washing machine, and resolved to take care of it as soon as we returned from dropping off mr smear and taking care of some stuff at the clinic. on the way out of the building there was a distinctly unpleasant smell in the stairwell.

about an hour later, as we arrived at the entrance to our building, we noticed the source of the bad smell - our building's sewerage tank had clogged up and was leaking. i then wondered if the cause of our flooding wasn't the washing machine per se, but rather that the pipes were backed up all the way down.

then gd opened the (literal) water closet for the first time since we moved in, and we found ourselves looking into an absolutely revolting portrait of landlords' neglect. panicking, i tried to put insulation tape over the hole using chopsticks so as not to scratch myself on the mildewed rust, but the pipe was completely inaccessible.

it would take another three hours for the plumber to arrive, and the hunt to figure out how to turn the water off at the mains was more complicated than it should have been.

i interpreted each and every syllable out of the plumber's mouth from the moment he set eyes on the closet as "ka-ching!". he needed an assistant to patch the hole for the weekend, and he was nervous about it. we were (and are) exceedingly grateful that he'd arrived in time for us not to be stuck without water for a whole weekend.

i was feeling much better physically than i had in a week, but i was still struggling very much with the runny nose and coughing.

as the plumber left, i rushed out to pick mr smear up from school. i happened to see our neighbors - the ones with the neurotic dogs who left our building a couple of months ago - wheeling a stroller ahead, and i didn't want to get close but was happy to be able to send them our congratulations :)

mr smear came running to me when i arrived, and unfortunately our joyful reunion was marred by the fact that his teeth accidentally met my shoulder and it really hurt him. otherwise, we had a pleasant walk home.

the afternoon, just like every afternoon this week, involved long, drawn-out discussions and arguments about mr smear's homework. once he gets himself over the "i don't wanna", he does just fine, but getting him over the "i don't wanna" is really hard.

today:

woke up still not good in the nose and throat and chest departments. mr smear's wakeup went much better. after dropping him off at school, i came back for gd and we headed to the clinic to see if there was a nurse on duty who could help her out - we were worried she'd developed bronchitis again.

the clinic took a long time, but it looks like gd's (relatively) okay and we hopped over to the pharmacy to pick up meds. that took a long time too.

we picked up a breakfast bagel and a sandwich along the way, then came home and settled in to watch some of mivtza savta, which i'm very glad that gd is enjoying so far. then we went to pick up mr smear, and came home for a very relaxed day. at least until homework time, where we repeated the now-daily dance, but there wasn't a lot to do and he eventually did it well.

the sun has set, and i'm about to do the dishes. i really hope that i'll be clearer tomorrow.

...

today i completed all the free-to-play levels in bloons adventure time. i took the opportunity to sync my phone with my copy on steam, and ended up writing a review. that led to me looking up how many hours i've played, and it turns out that after an entire month averaging 2.5 hours a day, i'm on about 75 hours. and this is my second time playing, because i got pretty far in 2018/2019 when i first discovered the game.

huh.

worse, or better?

 omg, i feel awful, but slightly less awful than when i passed out a few hours ago. and slightly less awful than the first half hour / hour after i woke up again. my sinuses, my nose, my throat and my chest are really messed up.

it's probably covid. i should go get a RAT tomorrow.

getting mr smear up and at 'em this morning was work, but slightly less than for school. gd and i continued our "homework" listening to wired for love, and she had a revelation similar to mine regarding its application to one's relationship with one's children. honestly, if ever there was going to be an official guide to parenting, i'd recommend this book being the one.

we all went to the hospital for mr smear's allergy test this morning, but i soon sent gd home because she was coughing incessently and uncontrollably. i was snotty, but not coughing, except for two occasions: the first coughing fit was exactly as the skin prick test started, and the second was while waiting in line for food.

so that was embarrassing.

we were there for almost three hours, and we were bored out of our minds. well over an hour waiting for our 9.40 appointment that we'd arrived on time for, the a five minute chat with the allergist, then a wait for the test, then the test itself plus fifteen minutes plus review, and then at least another hour waiting for one mom to finis her conversation with the doctor so we could get our two minute send-off.

and - and i cannot stress this enough - i was feeling like absolute dogshit.

on the way out mr smear decides he wants a laffa, so we head into the food court. as we're walking in, a mother is wheeling her clearly very sick kid out in a wheelchair, mr smear looks at him and gags loudly in an exaggerated way and at the top of his lungs goes "that kid! that kid!". i wanted to die. i rushed him inside to explain that that was really cruel, but it's still blowing my mind that i needed to explain that 🤯

i tried to go to the clinic on the way home to get authorization for - oh, yeah! so from the results it looks like mr smear might not be allergic to dairy any more! or dogs, or cats. having said that, gd made a good point that it was less than a year ago when he last had a reaction. i think i may have forgotten to mention that to the allergist...

... shit.

anyway, we tried to go to the clinic but the queue was ridiculous, and i was falling apart.

finally, we arrived home, and i declared that i was going to lie down for a bit, before taking mr smear to his therapy session. we had yet another argument about him doing his homework and chores, but it included a very constructive moment of us talking about and forgiving each other for the saturday/sunday blowouts and our responses to them.

things were fine when we left the apartment, but something triggered him into being angry again and i'm still not sure how things calmed down by the time we got on the bus.

i dropped him off, feeling a complete mess, then sat outside with a decaf coffee and updated my mom / listened to an interesting article about dune and seven pillars of wisdom.

i picked up mr smear, who'd drawn an intriguing picture of slenderman that looked like it might well be a portrayal of me during the tantrums.

we returned home, where what *should* have happened was me continuing to feel like shit while mr smear took care of his homework.

ha, ha, ha.

it was another difficult evening, though we did (thanks to gd's input, though she doesn't remember doing anything) finally manage to get through some things. and then it was dinner time, bath time, bed time, and i have to say that as the days go by i'm becoming more and more convinced that he does have some kind of attention issue, or perhaps is on the spectrum as a really high-functioning autistic.

...

the nose / chest thing is coming in waves. i'm so fucking tired.