day of atonement

friday:

aside from grocery shopping in the morning, we were pretty much at home all day. the biggest achievement of the day was finally (finally!) setting up the psvr system, only 2.5 years after the mongoose loaned it to us. the pad at the back of the headset is falling apart, but otherwise it's in good nick. unfortunately, the paddles won't hold a charge so we're limiting to games that work with the regular gamepad.

either way, mr smear is over the moon and we both thoroughly enjoyed the experience, and the biggest challenge is going to be finding good games that don't cost an arm and a leg and being solid about limiting time with the headset on.

...

gd prepared a feast pre-fast, and after dinner we put together a very basic 200 piece puzzle, and mr smear actually participated fully for the first time. afterwards, i managed to convince him to come out on his bike. we met up with his re-friend / her dad and brother for a little, but all the kids were being whiny, so we went off in different directions. mr smear decided he was done earlier than i'd hoped - but apparently that's because he needed the toilet and didn't want to go outside - but overall he got the yom kippur "vibe" and we had a pretty good experience.

yesterday:

i slept really, really badly. i barely slept - although i did sleep a little, because i remember having some weird dreams - but i got up in the morning almost as tired as when i'd gone to bed.

firstly, we're really impressed that yesterday went as smoothly as it did. not only did we not have issues with a day without screentime, but we had constructive conversations about what we were doing and why we were doing it.

secondly, i spent most of the day resting, or following the morning prayer service with gd, or reading. i was tired, and a bit dehydrated, but i didn't have the usual caffeine-withdrawal headache and i wasn't feeling hungry.

in the afternoon we went to a park to meet up with a new friend of his, by which stage i wasn't feeling too fresh. the kids were getting along great, which was a relief to witness, although at some point mr smear wanted to leave because he was being harrassed by mosquitoes. he ended up staying in spite of that, though, because he was having fun... right until he wasn't. his new friend's little brother accidentally bumped him off an installation, and he was hurt and angry.

the resulting outburst was thoroughly embarrassing. i made my apologies as i followed him out of the park, and about halfway home managed to get him to listen to reason (i'm sad that i needed to threaten privileges for that, but it is what it is). things escalated when we got home and i explained what had happened to gd, but refreshingly quickly he managed to figure out what we were trying to get him to figure out and the tone of everything changed.

i sent off messages to his friend's mom and hopefully there'll be more playdates...

we logged in to the prayer service for the ending of the fast + blowing of the shofar + havdala + singing of hatikva, then dug in to a big meal. mr smear decided that he'd rather vr than fantastic four, so we tried out some of the other demos and we both had a *really* good time. then it was bedtime, and bedtime went smoothly.

gd and i tried to watch deadpool & wolverine, but as much as i was enjoying it i started passing out quite early on.

...

so far, the day's begun well. i slept alright, woke up and did a lot of stretching (my hips and lower back are still really sore), and we've had a long a constructive conversation with mr smear that covered the plans for the holidays, and a big discussion about gambling and other addictions that ended up with all of us agreeing that if we had the money, we'd establish and run a doggy hotel.

now it's time for me to go to work. *i* still have a couple of schooldays to go before my vacation begins :P