end of school year

seven more sleeps until my mom arrives!

friday:

we had a busy but productive friday morning. we picked up small lamps for mr smear's bike, two minecraft comics in hebrews (without nikud, and he's reading them!), and we picked up a scale (not amazing, but does the job), i got some vests, gd got new shoes (which don't fit), and i had one of the most amazing sandwiches ever.

we had a quiet friday afternoon, although as usual getting mr smear to do homework was a bit of a struggle...

yesterday:

yesterday was mostly a quiet saturday spent indoors, lots of inscryption (i'm apparently really bad at kaycee's mod), a fair amount of resting and wondering about how one would make inscryption work in real life, watching home alone 2 together, and finally: taking mr smear for a ride to get ice cream. the ride there was great, and the ice cream was great, but then...

... on the way out, mr smear decided that we weren't heading in the right direction. after trying and failing to convince him, with him becoming angrier and angrier, i suggested that he lead. we went about four more blocks before he realized that he didn't know where he was. then, on the way back, he decided that he couldn't trust my navigation skills and that the only way to find out how to get home was to use the phone.

which i refused, because godsdammit i *knew* where the fuck we were. so we argued on and off until he got smart and agreed that we just shouldn't talk for a while, and when we finally arrived at a place he was familiar with he admitted that i knew what i was doing and that he should have listened to me.

so yesterday, mr smear learned the word "putz" :P

the rest of the evening was nice, and we watched what is now his new favorite show, run for the money.

today so far:

i got mr smear to his last day of school with a good vibe, and then went past the clinic to make sure gd has what she needs for her upcoming allergy challenge. also, my hand's been really hurting for the last few days, i've just made an appointment for next week in case it doesn't get better...

now i've enjoyed a chilled morning, and it's time to head out to work.

...

after a week feeling pretty shit, i rested well on the weekend. i didn't get anything productive done except recover, and i'm okay with that.

light-headed

 this has been a *really* hard week. i've been feeling shit, and i've been getting really nervous about my mom arriving soon, because after the last two visits i *really* don't want any of us to be sick.

now it's thursday night, mr smear is in bed, and i'm trying to remember what happened.

i also should point out that i've been having trouble with keeping up with the world politically, and i've been kind of taking a mental health break. not properly, and not enough, but kind of.

diet-wise, i've been all over the place this week. but i have been rollerblading a lot, and the days i've failed i've made up for it, i think.

i've really been having trouble sleeping.

monday:

for months i've been unable to work from home with my home network, and it's been very frustrating. after a few hours on calls with tech support - especially the shift manager - along with a helpful hint from my boss, we finally figured out the source of the problem and i can work from my home network!

(it turned out my router had "dns rebind protection" enabled my default)

the climbing wall session in the evening was pretty good. as much as he's getting stronger and better, he's also beginning to get it through his head that "this is happening". 

tuesday:

i had an early breakfast, and arrived at work early to donate blood. they weren't set up yet, so the morning was weirdly shifted. and the nurse who took my blood was fascinated by my being vegan, so i ended up giving advice on both veganism and her son's career progress :P

one isn't supposed to exert oneself physically after donating blood, but our sprint meetings ran a bit late and i had to run to catch the train (i barely made it before the doors closed). i found ze germans without too much trouble, and we had a great lunch while talking about some of my ideas. they seem pretty enthusiastic. i have homework to do.

in the afternoon i had a long, difficult conversation with mr smear's teacher. it wasn't all bad, and it felt constructive, but i'm left praying that she's his teacher next year as well...

wednesday:

resolving an issue with stripe payments, that turned out to not be a real issue but just a UX fail. i'm super impressed by their tech support, both in how professional and helpful, and in little things like enabling me to verify that their call wasn't a scam, and the agent agreeing to forward the recording of our conversation to their product team.

we've had a contractor working with us for the past month, and yesterday was his last day in the office. he's very sweet, and it was an emotional sendoff. with whiskey, after the wework "crème brûlée" happy hour.

today:

today started off alright. i woke up from a bizarre dream where i was in a meeting with elon musk and suggested using the "right hand rule" to employ magnetic force to help launch rockets. mr smear went to school with a pretty good vibe and gd went to her sewing class. i did dishes and listened to podcasts and youtube videos until about 10am, then took the bus to work.

first order of business: a bit of a fight with my coworkers. by the end of it, none of us were sure who was in the right or who was in the wrong but we were clearly all uncomfortable with ourselves and our behavior. the rest of the day was quite positive. and we went out for lunch together and it was really good (i remembered to take my vinegar bottle).

by the afternoon we'd all agreed on what i was doing and that i was going about it in the right way, but there was a significant amount of bashing my head into walls until i achieved a minor success and launched myself home.

i picked up mr smear, put on my blades, and we went to the climbing wall. it was a pretty good experience overall.

bedtime, not so much - mr smear needs to see a doctor for the hole he's managed to scratch in his leg. he's lost all privileges until it heals because he hasn't been able to get over his compulsive scratching, and he's properly damaging himself.

...

i'm VERY happy we're entering the weekend right now.

wtf sunday

 yesterday was off to a pretty good start, right until arriving at the school, at which point we had a classically bad moment that left me feeling really shit.

i rollerbladed to work, which turned into a pretty good day. my biggest investment was templating and scripting something that until now has just been a massive wall of JSON, and my boss was really excited by the results until we realized that the error it had caught was, in fact, introduced by me in the first place :P

i'm still embarassed by what transpired in the afternoon: we've been told for a while about a "happening" at the school, but we didn't know there was an end-of-year "show" for and by the class so gd and mr smear didn't go. i got a phone call at work asking where mr smear was, because they were waiting for him. because he was supposed to be singing and dancing.

he didn't tell us about it, because he's not a big fan of the singing and the dancing (well, not a big fan of *their* idea of singing and dancing). to cap off the embarassment, the classroom assistant that's been accompanying him the past couple of years decided that a call out of nowhere was a good time for an end-of-year "your son hasn't been very cooperative" speech.

*sigh*

the evening was pretty cool, but i passed out on the couch right after putting mr smear to bed. a bit later i moved to the bed. then i tossed and turned until a couple of hours ago, and i've been playing bloons: adventure time and kaycee's mod in inscryption. i'm not sure i'm ready to sleep yet, but i'm pretty sure i'm going to be in trouble if i don't...

not as planned

 today was... a bit shit, really. 'cause it started off with a fight that made no sense, and it was only an hour or so ago that that got resolved. in between, a lot of not much. although gd did make really good shepherd's pie (effectively from scratch, including the creamed corn because you can't buy that here).

i didn't really get anything constructive done today, but i did (finally!) complete inscryption. and it is... it is... glorious. what an incredible achievement in game design! and it's still not over, which is awesome.

otherwise, all three of us went out to shoot some hoops for a while, and we had a bit of a breakthrough moment with mr smear about playing games with others. so that was good.

...

oh, and i discovered butterflies.ai today. i thought i'd give it a try, to see what it is. it's disturbing, that's what it is. let's... let's call it art? yeah. art.

i'm not at all concerned that something like this could be used to amplify politically dangerous content.

big days

yesterday:

after dropping mr smear at school, i went home to send my wife off to her first sewing lesson in israel and then went to misrad hapnim to see if i could find a human being to talk to. i was duly informed at their information booth that there are no human beings to talk to, although i suspect that it wouldn't be in a lawyer's best interests to encourage doing things without them.

it's a lucrative business, immigration lawyering... anyway, i got some helpful information from her, and from the woman that i'd contacted on wednesday, and those two sets of information gave my mother some direction, and relieved a lot of pressure. so that's good.

the work day was mixed, but ended on a really high note - and by high, i mean manic. after hours of bashing my head against a wall, i finally found the missing piece of the puzzle (thanks to a coworker stumbling across a chatgpt answer that was completely wrong, but unwittingly included a hint that i could  make use of) and got everything working smoothly.

then i rushed home, picked up mr smear and my rollerblades, and we headed to the climbing wall. the rides were good, there was minimal resistance from mr smear, and all-in-all we had a really good time.

gd's sewing lesson went really well, and she's extremely excited. which is very exciting for me, as well.

today:

dropping mr smear off at school, then wasting an aggravating hour trying to get technical support from our internet provider. then gd joined me to afeka to pick up the puzzle book that finally arrived: aleksandra artymowska's around the world in 80 puzzles. and buy some nice stuff from the store the post office uses as a front.

then we bussed to the mall, did some grocery shopping while i became progressively hangrier and less patient for all the friday morning mall people, then walked home in the oppressive heat to eat breakfast, then picked up mr smear from school and walked up to do a quick pharmacy / hardware store mission before finally coming home, doing lots of dishes, and then relaxing.

i mean, doing a little work, then watching random stuff and playing a bit of inscryption. act iii is hard.

ending the day riding to meet the mongoose and his daughter and go with them to the beach, mr smear not only riding well in both directions - and appreciating how quickly we got there and back - but also really enjoying a beautiful afternoon / evening chilling in the water.

a big dinner, and delicious dessert (the chocolate halva from the grocery store is amazing), and now we're full and sore and tired and ready for bed.

at least the bass goes boom

tuesday:

my new headphones are AMAZING. i had to reign myself in to not literally start dancing on the bus on the way to work, and on the way home i walked all the way to have a few more minutes of good bass inside my head. unfortunately, the microphones weren't good enough to handle a conversation with sailor while at the grocery store, but overall they're an enormous improvement over what i've been using for the past year or so.

there was a bit of financial stress over the course of the day, even if we have had a couple of better months. it would be nice to not have to be quite so careful.

i had a hard time focusing on my primary task at work, but i did get a pleasant surprise in the morning that led to a quick experiment that led to a new and improved feature that i've been wanting to implement for months, so that felt good.

i wasn't up for joining the rollerblading group. there's always something, and lately it's been a general health and well-being thing.

yesterday:

in the morning, a journalist reached out to a facebook group asking for aliyah stories, and for her sins i gave her one. hopefully this project of hers will go somewhere.

i rollerbladed to work in a neon orange vest, and forgot to change into a "work shirt" before our first meeting - that was embarrassing :/

it was a few hours into the work day before i remembered that i was on-call, and it only a short while before leaving the office that i realized that there'd been a couple of slow fires burning all day. fortunately nothing serious, but that's not the point :(

i got precious little of my actual work done, but i did make progress. i also intervened by bringing in the boss when one of my coworkers continued to run interference on his own task, and judging by the ensuing constructive conversation i overheard i feel like it was the right thing to do.

out of the blue, i received a message from the team lead i interviewed with before bombing (i'm pretty confident it was the HR interview that did it) - he's left firefighter's company, and it was really nice that he thought of me even if i'm very happy with where i am right now.

during the day, i had a revelation: that i need to go to misrad hapnim in person and see if i can speak to a human being about my mother's situation. that led to me waking up about an hour and a half ago with my brain on fire, fantasizing about letting sausage fingers know that she's a mentally handicapped witch who's bringing nothing but evil into the world.

it felt good to be able to print and give gd her new cannabis license.

it felt good to help mr smear finish his end-of-year card for his teacher, and that this year there were no issues with sending positive blessings.

i spent a good chunk of the evening playing catch up on a wide range of political posts, and a lot of it was just too much to handle. i eventually made a conscious decision to shut down, and finished reading the first lightfall book and read a few more panels of the hobbit graphic novel before passing out.

alright, dawn is breaking. i'm going to try to get in another sleep cycle now.

metal meital and the shitty flute horror

yesterday:

it was father's day! and i got a really nice card from my family, and my wife made a delicious curry for dinner ^_^

the work day started off well enough, but the release went south and there was a lot of bashing heads against walls. additionally, i was exhausted - i thought my three-month-old sinus thing had slowed down on saturday, but it was back pretty hard (but only during some parts of the day?) - and at some point i was falling asleep at my desk and my coworkers expressed concern...

...

oh, and yesterday was the very worst kind of cheat day. i ate a big lunch, half of gd's leftover challah, more snacks than i should have, two bowls of curry and rice, a really nice salad, a beer, and then ended up snacking around midnight with chocolate/halva and dried fruit.

today was much better, but nowhere near making up for all that :P

...

after an early dinner, i bussed over to tahoma's for a really nice salad (they've been heavily influenced by their time in japan, both in culinary arts and in that tahoma's learning to read japanese books) before the two of us headed out to the tmuna theatre. it was my first time there in almost 13 years, and absolutely nothing has changed. we went to see meitav sherman, who has an amazing voice and - so far - generally good music, but as impressive as she may have been* it was the band playing with her that really blew me away. and between all of them, it was really cool seeing a new generation of talented musicians on stage with a sizeable crowd.

* she's very young and obviously new at this kind of performance, but it was a fun show and she said some unsayable things that were quite entertaining

today:

the shitty flute recital really wasn't as bad as we anticipated (us parents, gd had to be at the dentist), but mr smear stole the show, and not in a good way. he was supposed to be pretending to play along with everyone else, but he was so bored he spent most of it just sitting (quite noticable when everyone else is standing) and doing something really gross that i don't even want to write about. this from a kid who won't eat his lunch if he sees another kid do anything unseemly, like eat with their mouth open or not blow their nose enough.

it was painfully embarrassing to watch live, but even worse when one of the parents posted a video in the parents group where it's practically impossible to look at anyone else :$

...

work-wise, it was a long, really hard day and it was full of distractions. we eventually figured out what we'd been doing wrong for half a day, and finalized yesterday's release, but there wasn't really much sense of satisfaction. when i finally got to the work i'm supposed to be focused on, i was - just like yesterday, *strangely* - so unreasonably tired that i had to take a nap.

to be fair, i haven't slept much in a couple of days and i've been eating badly and drinking either too much coffee or not enough.

...

on the way into the school in the morning, i got into it with the security guard and the caretaker who both insisted that we've always needed a teacher's note to take mr smear out early. i was halfway home from the recital when i realized that i'd sent a message to his teacher requesting a note, but that his teacher was on vacation. so i walked back and found the woman who was looking after them, and one of the class assistants. they assured me that mr smear would have his note by the time i arrived to pick him up.

by the time i arrived to pick him up, mr smear did not, in fact, have a note. and the security guards and i had words. very intense words. i was furious with him, because he's a complete moron. he doesn't like me much, either.

so i whispered to mr smear to go to the other gate, walked all the way around, trying the whole way to get hold of the secretariat (they don't answer their phones or emails), and took him out from there via the human being security guard with whom we've never had an issue.

...

mr smear and i talked about what had happened in the morning, and i showed him the video. i hope that his contrition and embarrassment sticks, and that he really doesn't do something like that again. after dropping him off at his hebrew tutor, i went to have coffee but the usual place was full, so i went to the other usual place and found a seat. i was supposed to be working, but i needed to have a discussion with my mother about her aliyah process. hopefully she'll get useful answers to the questions we're now asking.

the way home was *hot*. like, oppressively, painfully hot. and we were almost home when i saw a message from his tutor informing us that he'd left a notebook behind. so back we went, and then back we came again. it was *hard* out there today.

...

at least by the evening the weather had calmed down a bit, but i couldn't take mr smear to the climbing wall because we needed to get him new shoes. we walked to the usual shoe store, and they had nothing for us, so we walked to azrieli. long story short, we got him a new pair of shoes that we're only somewhat confident are actually good for him, we replaced the screen protector on the old huawei he's using, i bought a decent pair of headphones (jabra elite 4), we picked up a stack of printer paper (for drawing, it's the best value for money), and we got mr smear a good falafel for dinner.

aside from getting through lots of daily quests in adventure time: bloons, and posting this, i have dishes to do before i go to bed. and i'm not sure i have the energy to do them.

...

very exciting news from this morning: i spoke to gco, and pitched an idea i had yesterday. he was excited that i *get* what he and his partner have been trying to achieve, and i hope that this morning's chat sets the ball in motion for something big.

worst dad ever

 my son was very upset with me today, because i "ruined" his "holiday" by making him go outside and spend time with me.when he wasn't railing against his awful, abusive father, he was enjoying a great ride - it was his decision to head to the pump track, and to give the actual pump track a try.

he changed his mind once he got to the top of the ramp, but i told him it was fine if he tried it another day.

when we got home, i had a talk with him (and gd chimed in) about what being a good or bad parent means to me, and why i'll always do what i believe is right and in his best interests, whether he likes it or not. interestingly, and encouragingly, he seemed to hear where i was coming from and the rest of the evening went really smoothly.

...

otherwise, it was *really* hot and humid today, and there were very few people about.

it was a pleasant saturday, mostly spent indoors. i'm almost done with the hebrew translation of the first lightfall book, gd and i played a few fun games of rat-a-tat cat, i made good progress in inscryption, and when i wasn't having fun i was arguing with ignorant strangers on the internet.

gd's making progress through the first harry potter audiobook and is really enjoying it, and mr smear and i are about halfway through prisoner of azkaban. it's been so long since i've read it (as opposed to watching the movie), and it's amazing.

it feels like the same (rounds)

 it's 26° 91% humidity and i'm sweating, but as much from the temperature as from the anxiety of having just posted some thoughts into a whatsapp group of "movers and shakers" that an old friend snuck me into that now includes a real celebrity hero of mine 🤘

yesterday was a mixed bag. mr smear's been on-and-off with his behavior, but on the whole he's recovering from bad vibes faster and more gracefully. while he was at school, we went to the hardware store and i finally upgraded the lock on the bathroom door. in retrospect, the original mechanism was fine, and a better fit, than the replacement - i might have to switch it back. but the inside of the door is rotting away in a manner i've never seen before.

i'm becoming increasingly confident that our landlords did, in fact, live here for a very long time before we moved in, and that they never cleaned / fixed / maintained anything and only left because it was clear that their home was falling apart around them.

i worked pretty hard yesterday - a little on-call, but mostly finishing up the pre-release work - and i got most of it done. i'm refusing to do anything that isn't on-call on shabbat, but there's an issue somewhere and i'm going to have to decided whether to look at it tonight or wait until tomorrow morning...

...

how the diet's going: i'm used to enthusiastically picking up a good bread at the supermarket and eating it on the way home (assuming it makes it all the way to the checkout). i picked one up yesterday, ignoring gd warning me that it wasn't a good idea.

firstly, i took a bite outside and immediately spat it into a bin. i don't know if it was stale, or if the baker's intended for it to taste horrible, but it was simply inedible. the woman at the manager's desk was kind enough to let me swap it for a different bread entirely, one that called itself a "baguette" but was more like a cousin of a baguette, that was a vast improvement but still wasn't a great experience.

and i ate the whole thing. and then thoroughly regretted having eaten so much that i didn't even enjoy.

...

the fight about homework notwithstanding, yesterday afternoon was okay. i read some more of the hebrew translation of lightfall: the girl & the galdurian, which i started on wednesday, and i'm enjoying it immensely. having said that, while the artwork is phenomenal and the story is solid, there's something about it that interferes with its readability as a graphic novel. i don't know if it's the panel layout, or the visual transitions, but i feel like there're little details i'm missing out on here and there.

...

i wasn't expecting my replay of inscryption to go so quickly. in what feels like three or four sessions, i've already reached the phase where i got stuck on my initial play-through. i think there're a lot of details that i didn't appreciate fully the first time because there were so many hours of play to make connections over!

...

mr smear definitely wasn't ready for hacknet, but he was very grateful that i decided that he's ready for inscryption.

round twos

 well, last night was rough, after posting i suddenly discovered that my lower back was sore (sciatica, possibly), and i struggled with it until late morning. it's still flashing occasionally, but it seems better. i'm pretty sure i encouraged it by playing basketball in sandals yesterday.

the morning was okay, but i wasn't in a good place. gd and i had a moment triggered by an issue with the new school security guard, but fortunately it was only a moment. then i went to work, and the first part of the day went well.

the second half, not so much. i ended up hitting two brick walls simultaneously, and one of my coworkers came to assist but even he had no idea what was going on. i ended up leaving the office almost half an hour late to pick up mr smear and take him to the climbing wall, so that felt shit.

getting to the climbing wall, and the first half of our time there, was pretty good. i wasn't in great spirits, but we were having a pleasant enough time that my mood was beginning to recover. and then, pretty suddenly, we went from good vibes to shit vibes. mr smear wasn't succeeding on one of the walls, and he decided he wanted to go home.

i eventually got him to move to a different wall and complete that instead, but although he seemed to be in a better mood on the way home i most certainly wasn't. while i showered, he tried to convince gd that he shouldn't go climbing again, and she told him the same thing i did: climbing, or mma.

he chooses climbing.

anyway, after getting him into bed i jumped back into work, fortunately uncovering the source of the problem and being able to move forward. it was a slog, but i eventually got part one of the weekend work done.

why am i working on my weekend? right, because we want to release on sunday and i've been taking much too long on my tickets. even if it had been my fault... good grief. but fine, at least i'm finally feeling like i'm getting a solid handle on the deeper parts of our machine.

i spent the past couple of hours half-heartedly verifying my changes, and playing more inscryption. i've just managed to defeat the boss, and i'm feeling pretty damned pleased with myself! i kinda feel like doing this again has enriched the experience somewhat. it's a gorgeous game.

calm

 evening is approaching, on what has been a very good shavuot. i got to bed late, after getting stuck into a complete restart of inscryption (my saved progress is on my other computer), but after a good night's sleep we spent the morning taking things easy. lots of reading, gaming, and being amazed by some game dev insanity with spu7nix on how he made "what" in geometry dash (mr smear actually finished the level after a whole lot of attempts, i'm quite impressed by his grit).

i was also inspired to design a word creation game that might not suck, so i'm now trying to wrap my head around its fundamentals.

gd made a huge, delicious brunch, and my afternoon was a mix of learning, doing the dishes and going out to shoot some hoops again. mr smear put up less of a fight than yesterday, and we had a good time again.

i must admit it's nice to play a physical ball game with my son for once.

yestersay i signed up (again!) for an audible trial because i wanted gd to try out the harry potter series (narrated by stephen fry), but those audiobooks aren't available in our region. pooh.

so i managed to acquire them from a different source, and she's been getting into the first book - for the very first time! - and she's beginning to understand just how much she's been missing all these years :)

playing ball

yesterday wasn't better than sunday. it was worse, in fact. it began with a pretty shit moment that just expanded until it consumed the morning, and the rest of the day didn't improve significantly. i spent all day wrangling a variety of unwieldy pieces of code, and generally wallowing. gd's mission to the dentist turned out to be for nought, although the taxi ride was apparently therapeutic (she always has interesting conversations with the drivers), and though not without navigation drama, she took mr smear to his hebrew tutor.

in the evening, i took mr smear out to the climbing wall. not only did the day ending and being outside with my boy improve my mood, but he had a particularly successful climbing session so we were both quite pleased by the time we came home.

today:

i passed out on the couch last night, and wasn't able to get up and get to bed until the morning, by which point i was pretty much done sleeping anyway. the second-biggest event this morning was us going shopping for groceries and to replace the pencil case mr smear lost, during which we bought a couple of books and subsequently fought over them (mr smear says "no" to everything automatically), but at some point i managed to pull a good lever (threatening to delete a minecraft save) and the rest of the day he's been fine.

i mean, aside from fighting about going out to shoot hoops with the new basketball, but about halfway through our session he confessed - entirely on his own initiative - that he was having fun and regretted saying "no" before.

the biggest event of the day was my mom calling to discuss which date was best for her to fly, and learning she'll be here for mr smear's birthday ^_^

(now to figure out what to do about his birthday... speaking of which, he started the day by sending a text to a friend without consulting us; fortunately, he got a positive response, but it's really hard for us to make sure he doesn't damage relationships because he hasn't figured out asynchronous communication and tone yet)

the contractor we've hired also called me this morning, he was inspired by the tale of mr smear getting into gamemaker with me last weekend and wanted to ask what i thought could help him with his own kid (who's a little older than mr smear, but doesn't english too well). i'd love to collaborate with him on a fun game that could teach english and hebrew in an engaging way.

it's been a good day, and now we're heading into shavuot so... chag sameach!

downer

 today wasn't a great day. yesterday continued according to plan, i got some productive time in after putting mr smear to bed, but i didn't get as much sleep as i should have and what i got done wasn't quite satisfying.

today began alright, i guess, and the weather was less intensely hot than anticipated. i rotated my wheels, rollerbladed comfortably to work, and dived in.

i think the work is what brought me down. by the end of the day i'd finally got a solid handle on what i was doing and why, but not without a lot of mental gymnastics and an uncomfortable moment with my boss, for which i ended up apologizing to him for because i made him think i was angry with him.

by the end of the day i was completely done. the ride home was fine, and the evening was fine, but i've been grumpy and grumpily doomscrolling. i guess a large part of my feelings have to do with the demoralizing lies propagating rapidly through the ether and feeling overwhelmed. what's going on out there is all wrong, and it can't be stopped fast enough.

maybe tomorrow will be better.

months later

four hostages have just been rescued! it's an enormous relief, even while there are still so many left...

...

this story still isn't over, apparently. i had sinus pain on thursday, and yesterday, and while it seems to have calmed down a bit my nose is still pretty stuffy. is it allergies? is it the same covid? is it covid again?

...

yesterday was pretty productive. i got mr smear to school, and gd joined me on a mission to exchange the shitty rollerblade pads and buy a wallet. none of their pads were any good, so i exchanged for a basic basketball instead.

the bus ride there was bad, because there was something particularly wrong with the buses suspension and we had to get off early and walk off the motion sickness. the bus ride back was awful, because there was an old easily-misgenderable person with a small dog who was clearly abused and their treatment of the dog was rough, but ambiguously so. gd and i were both upset by the experience.

mr smear called us from school trying to get us to bring him home early, because he urgently needed to poop and is disgusted by the state of the school toilets. i tried and failed to get him to go there, and fortunately (for him) he managed to hold it in until he got home, after which i gave him a simulation in using filthy public toilets. i hope he gets over this and doesn't a) get sick or b) have an accident at school :/

we had a bit of homework drama, but things calmed down and he got everything done. his hebrew's improving at a steady pace, but i'm impressed by how well the prodigy math game is serving him.

in the evening before kiddush / dinner time, i played some more portal, and mr smear "gave me a hand" and became *really* excited about it ^_^

today:

mr smear got up really early and brushed his teeth without instruction, because he really wanted to play portal again. i obliged, and that's how we started our day - he began from the beginning, and got further than i had. there was a level (android hell) where i had to step in, but by and large i was impressed by how well he did on his own! at some point i had to walk away, though, because although i can play by myself without motion sickness, there's something about how mr smear manipulates the mouse that makes me very queasy.

otherwise, i had an interesting chat with horseman, read some more of the hobbit graphic novel, and i've been really tired and taking quick naps every now and again. right now i'm busy setting up keybase after having had to reset my account, although i'm not sure it has much value, and i'm simultaneously doing the production deployment of my side project before settling down to watch spirited away again.

that's the plan, at any rate.

weekend unlocked

 the morning started well enough. i got mr smear to school with a good vibe, i withdrew cash so that we could pay the cleaner, and i finally got my personal project's backend upgrade almost-complete.

then i rollerbladed to work, and it was absolutely fine.

...

oh, right - there's a background to this whole week that i've barely mentioned: i'm finally, after years of not taking it seriously, decided to take being overweight seriously. i'm sticking to my fasting hours a lot more consistently, and i'm mostly avoiding my usual non-stop snacking or replacing the snacks with healthier options. i know it's going to take a while to see results, but i can no longer ignore what i've been ignoring for most of the past decade.

...

i barely worked on my ticket today. instead, my boss dropped a surprise thursday release on my lap (thursday is israel's friday). the initial production deployment went smoothly, but i happened to uncover a bug in production so it was followed by a hotfix. and then another one, during which i made a mistake that led to some drama.

we managed to sort it all out before our "happy hour", with no production downtime, and as soon as i was done shoveling a vegan knafeh down my throat i headed home to pick up mr smear and take him to the climbing wall.

...

i was feeling bloated and uncomfortable all afternoon, and so it wasn't the most comfortable experience. i introduced mr smear to the rollerskating rink next to the climb wall, and he enjoyed riding around in circles. he proceeded, begrudgingly, to have a pretty acceptable climbing session, although he wasn't pleased about the lack of treats at the end.

there was a little girl on the climbing wall who has a stump in place of her right hand. watching her trying to get up the wall was nothing short of inspirational.

it was also a good lesson for mr smear. he was initially very unsettled, and needed to take a break to get over himself, but we had an easy conversation about it and there was no stress, and a few minutes later he was back on the wall and quite focused.

he's riding his bike really confidently, it's simultaneously a source of pride and a huge relief.

...

the evening's been mostly good. getting mr smear to bed wasn't easy, but it was easier than last night, and i'm finally finished with the backend upgrade. now i'm going to either enjoy the rest of the evening, or fall asleep, or both.

slow, steady, small victories

 it's midnight, i'm starting to fall apart. another long day, but better. i continued last night's cdk struggle into the morning, eventually succeeding in spite of having been led astray by a well-intended but misguided comment on a forum post.

it was too hot to rollerblade to work - well, to put the rollerblades on and take them off, and to carry extra shoes. i'm beginning to consider getting a bike.

mr smear's previous homeroom teacher is really dumb. there was an "incident" this morning because she wouldn't let mr smear go and get his meds from gd who was waiting at the gate. FFS.

the work day was extra long, but it had a redeeming feature; my boss, who's been visibly stressed about how long my latest tickets have been taking me, jumped in to the rescue after my coworker - who'd written the original code - and i had been sitting, stumped by what was happening vs what should have been happening. not only did he end up just as confused as we were - and upset about it - but there was a wonderful opportunity to cut the tension (he was upset about a line of code, having forgotten that he'd just written it) and i jumped on it :D

i think we're good now.

i came home with barely enough time to help mr smear with some of his geometry homework, and then it was time for the weekly "webinar". some of the talks were riveting, but i was distracted a lot so i'm going to have to watch the recording. it also went on way later than anticipated, and mr smear didn't have a smooth bedtime.

*sigh*

i'm off to bed now. we'll see what tomorrow brings.

less mobile

 it's half past midnight, and it's been an odd sort of day. i'm currently deploying what i hope is the mostly-complete first part of the dramatic upgrade i've been working on the past few days, and avoiding the past few months, and then i'm hoping to get a decent night's rest.

i didn't go rollerblading tonight. i'm not confident that was wise, but instead i helped my mom regain access to her google accounts (they were blocking her because she accidentally overshot her data storage limit), and put a lot of work into the aforementioned upgrade.

this morning went pretty well, and i dropped mr smear off at school after a nice chat with a good vibe, even though it was precisely the same topic that caused a scene the day before. then i came home, got a bunch of stuff done, and still managed to enjoy a bit of a nice morning with gd. and still managed to get to work on time.

but that's where the day kinda went rubbish. i did make progress, but i found most of the shit i had to deal with had nothing to do with the code and was quite demoralizing. lunchtime was interesting, as we all "talked shop" about playing and potentially making games, but the afternoon was tedious and i was unfocused and i struggled with a lack of snacks.

so i left early, negotiated being able to exchange the shitty pads i bought (i'll do that on friday), picked up healthy snacks, and came home to help mr smear with his math homework.

there was an unpleasant moment at the beginning, but he cooled down quickly and did really well. i daresay he even seemed to enjoy it a bit. while helping him, i ate too much dried fruit and didn't feel too good afterwards. i struggled for a while to be functional*, but managed to pull myself together for a few minutes of focus time before dinner.

* during this time, i read an article about how working from home can impact one's relationships with one's kids, and mr smear and i had a chat about it. he didn't seem to think it was a big deal, so... cool.

13K+ steps

today started off a bit shit. the morning was going okay until mr smear and i left the apartment, and then mr smear got angry with me for trying to talk to him about something he didn't want to talk about and the rest of the walk there was... shit. it could have been a lot worse. we've had worse. i'm not ungrateful that it wasn't worse.

then i went to the pharmacy to pick something up for gd that she'd forgotten to get when she was there yesterday. that wouldn't have been so bad, except that i ended up waiting about 45 minutes as my number kept getting pushed back for priority cases.

then i came home and faced off with a mysterious bug that took me a loooong while to figure out. interrupted by having to return to the school to give mr smear his meds because gd had just done a treatment on her foot. at least mr smear had cooled off by then, so that was a small improvement to the day.

then i came home, worked some more, then had to return again and take him to his hebrew tutor. i sat down (as usual) with a coffee and my laptop, made a little progress, then picked him up and came home. all-in-all, not unpleasant at all.

although it was hot. summer's finally here.

i finally completed and merged last week's task, which was a relief. i then spent the next few hours wrestling with something broken, something that i really don't understand yet, along with a whole bunch of annoying docker issues that effectively burned whatever focus time i might have had. all while trying to get mr smear to do his homework.

mr smear did, eventually, get the homework done, and fortunately in time for us to stick to our new commitment of wall climbing twice a week as a compromise for him quitting mma. added to that, getting there and back on wheels to get him used to the notion of using it for transportation as opposed to "going for a ride".

both the ride there and back, and the wall climbing, were a remarkable success. we had a good time. we got exercise. mr smear got the satisfaction of getting back to the top of the wall.

my only disappointment was discovering that the new pads i waited for are completely useless, so i had to use the ones that got damaged along with my knee. i'll be trying to take those back for a refund tomorrow.

the evening was good, and mr smear and i had a really good conversation at bedtime about what happened during the day and how he could have handled things better. he was also a bit disturbed by the ending of invader zim's bestest friend - which he thought was hilarious aside from the eyeball thing - and i managed to tie in the day's lesson to dealing with that and he went to bed without further incident. so i think we're doing okay.

...

the war + the global success of the BRICS propaganda + the durban jew attacking a muslim family = sheer emotional and psychological exhaustion. now we're even more scared for jewish south africans.

sadness cloud

 i got to bed really late last night, so i'm making a point of posting this and trying to catch up tonight.

i've spent more time on my community manager project, and i'm feeling like i'm achieving something.

we had a pretty good start to the day today, and my conversation with mr smear on the way to school about programming was really fun. i think he might be ready for hacknet :)

gd was in a worse state this morning than last night, she could barely talk. we all left the apartment together, she on her way to the clinic, and i returned home to pick up some stuff and wash an oven tray before heading out to join her. then we went to the pain clinic, but had a long time to wait.

i wrote something this morning that i've been dwelling on all day:

we are slowly starting to put together a picture of the scale of the manipulation that we are undergoing in the western world for not just eight months, or twenty years, but almost a hundred years that have passed us by with our eyes closed.

and I'm afraid.

for several months now, I have been seeing protests almost every day pagainst the government regarding the release of the kidnapped, and i ask myself every time: who are they protesting against? who has the power to make a decision, to negotiate, when there is no one to talk to on the other side?

now i think i have begun to understand the cruelty of the situation. the more we fight over how to return the abductees, the more hamas will back away from an agreement to release them. because that's what they want, in the end. to break us, to take advantage of the cracks in our nation and break us.

i don't know yet what can be gleaned from these thoughts, because it is about our abductees, real people in a real nightmare - assuming they are still alive at all - and it is about their families, real people in a real nightmare, and it is about an entire nation that's suffering together with them.

All that is clear these days is that the world has turned upside down from every notion of normal we base our lives on.

the pain clinic appointment went well. then i walked to work and dived in to the stuff i started on thursday, and once i figured out what's being demanded of me i at least know where to begin. i worked on that most of the day, then got stuck into fixing another surprise bug (a breaking change in an upstream dependency that we hadn't version locked), and then into feedback for a code review on the stuff i finished last week.

i ended up leaving the office an hour later than intended. straight into another protest. i got home just in time for dinner, it was a pleasant evening overall, and i almost fell asleep reading to mr smear. then i woke myself up by showering, and having made some more progress on the personal project i think i'm ready to call it a day.

a nice pause

mr smear was afraid last night, because of whatever the fuck creepy monster his little "friend" told him to look for images for, but for the first time i managed to get him to try a breathing / happy place exercise. he fell asleep before i was done reading, and tonight he was cool.

for a lot of reasons, i really feel like he's maturing fast lately.

we didn't go outside today. i spent most of the day doing not much, although a good chunk of it was spent going through a gamemaker tutotial with mr smear after giving up on unity tutorials (what an utterly shit experience). we had fun, and he stayed with me, and he's definitely getting the hang of this stuff ^_^

also, gd gave mr smear a haircut and we recorded it. apparently the recording needs some editing, but she actually Did The Thing and a lot of it was absolutely hilarious.

on the flip side, she seems to have come down with some kind of infection today, and she's really struggling. she can't even eat, and we've got a visit to the pain clinic tomorrow and she (is / was) supposed to return to the dental first aid on monday.

good grief.

and mr smear's got to stay the course with an antiviral, but we're no longer sure he needed it in the first place. who knows? maybe we just caught the damn thing in time.

*sigh*

between yesterday and today i managed to get some work done on a few of my personal projects for the first time in many weeks, and that's quite satisfying.

...

since posting what i posted yesterday, i've seen some similar things popping up in my feed. elica le bon states the case incredibly eloquently, and here's a clip of an activist clearly expressing their intentions. it feels like this information is suddenly spreading into the zeitgeist, and that gives us a fighting chance.