not as planned

yesterday evening:

we took a cab to tahoma's, and were absolutely blown away by the quality and attention to detail of their halloween decorations. they turned their little apartment into a legitimate haunted house, and it was so effective that mr smear - who's obsessed with making creepy and gory things and tries really hard to be scary himself - refused to even look at the rooms because they scared the shit out of him.

smh.

some of the evening before the party actually got started was awkward, but mostly it was cool and we met some really nice people. one guy convinced me to explain the word "trolling" to him, and by the second sentence i began to suspect he was trolling me but he was so convincing i just carried right on, and i was quite impressed with myself for describing it as clearly as i did :P

there was a hilarious moment when a guy was translating mr smear's english for his five year-old, and asked mr smear what he was dressed as. "a killer clown!", mr smear said with pride. "a scary clown," the man translated for his child. mr smear was shocked. 

"i said a KILLER clown!"

"i know what you said."

"a KILLER clown!"

"i KNOW what you said!"

at that point we were all in hysterics, and i took mr smear aside to explain what was happening 🤣

as more grownups arrived, we caught a ride home, made kiddush and ate insanely delicious challah and broccoli schitznel sandwiches. by the time mr smear climbed into bed it was probably around 11.30pm.

today:

i think i slept pretty well, but i woke up very early with enough anxiety to realize that i needed to get up and start writing an open letter. i wrote and i wrote until my family got up - not too late, either - and after running through it a couple of times with gd, i pulled the trigger and posted it publicly on facebook with my email address attached. in it, i called out the pro-palestinian rabbi and his wife by name, and after a lot of introduction that includes both a summarized history of the conflict and a brief history of our experiences with the congregation, i made the following statements:

• Stop listening to people who rely on your political ignorance to propagate malicious disinformation that is designed to harm you.
• Stop listening to anyone who tells you that you don’t have the right to live in the only land you’ve ever been indigenous to, the land in which you have historically been its indigenous people for thousands of years.
• Stop listening to anyone who tells you that there’s an occupation, or that there are “disputed territories”.
• Stop listening to anyone who tells you about the plight of the Palestinians in a way that suggests it’s anyone’s fault but the league of Arab nations and the UN.
• Stop listening to anyone who tells you that violence against Israel, or Jews in general, is justifiable.
• Stop listening to anyone who tells you that this is Netanyahu’s war.
• Stop listening to anyone who tells you that believing that Jews should live in the only land they’ve ever called home, the only land that promises them protection, the only land they’re free to be Jewish, is wrong.

my anxiety immediately switched from that of feeling frustrated and ashamed for not having said anything, to that of having said something so undiplomatic and confrontational that there's absolutely no going back. it was validating to receive messages of appreciation from members of the community, including gd's fellow graduates, and also from old schoolmates who've been involved in the battle but unable to affect change.

i don't know what's going to happen next - although i was disappointed that the executive blocked me on facebook and messaged me to make it clear that we could no longer talk - but i feel like i've discharged my duty, and if i have to have uncomfortable conversations i will do so. as much as we owe to the executive and the rabbis, and as grateful as we will always be for them helping gd with her conversion and us come home, our loyalties are first and foremost to the community as a whole.

we've put our own oxygen masks on, and played nice and diplomatic until they were secure. now it's time to help others.

...

while scrolling down my whatsapp messages i realized that swordschool had sent me an important message some time in june, and i hadn't responded 😱

so i called him up, and we synced for at least an hour. it's very comforting having someone like that in my corner. in addition to discussing his new dice mechanics and desolation jones, amongst a thousand other things, i was shocked and saddened to learn that before the tragic incidents he'd been through just prior to us reconnecting a few years back, he'd been through an even more tragic family disaster... i feel awful for him, and also exceedingly grateful for what i have.

...

in the afternoon i met up with sailor and we did a couple of rounds of coffees (well, first macha tea and then coffee) and a lunch (he ate, between my nerves and the confusing menu i was fine). he accompanied me home, and remained with gd while i took mr smear out for a walk. it was fine, at first, but he was in such a good mood that he vigorously skipped for a couple of blocks - with me skipping along right behind him - and ended up having a full-blown coughing fit / asthma attack. so i gave him his pump, and we slowly walked home around the circle.

aside from my reacting to a barista milk alternative (that i was told wasn't barista, but then later informed was) and the occasional open letter-related intrusion, we had a pretty good evening.

after all the anxiety and everything, i'm exhausted, and i feel like i skipped a day of weekend. i did a whole bunch of dishes, wrote all this, and now... i think i'm going to drink this new cup of tea and hit the hay.

...

oh! on-call. i forgot i was on-call today. and then i realized that the reason i was getting confusing alerts that made me forget what day it was is that with all the scheduling changes for the holidays, i've ended up with four days of on-call in a row :/