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 ^_^