personal wars trump big wars

yesterday:

rollercoaster continued. mr smear stayed home because of his cough again, and a ridiculous amount of the day was dedicated to gd's private response to the rabbi she'd yelled at the evening before.

it's amazing how much more anxiety we've been experiencing from the open letter i wrote and its fallout, than that for the new round of iranian threats.

by the time she finally sent it, it was pretty powerful. the response she got back did an excellent job of not addressing it and playing off our feelings as "an ideological disagreement", but the important thing (in my opinion, at any rate) is that she said what needed to be said.

aside from that, i don't recall much. we took mr smear to the doctor and got him some extra medication, and in the evening i accompanied them to the eye doctor, which ultimately i didn't need to. he's got a new prescription, and apparently it makes quite the difference.

oh! i actually managed to get to the minimum requirements on the ticket i was working on, which considering everything else, and the fact that it wasn't trivial stuff at all, feels quite miraculous.

someone from gd's conversion class got whatsapp hacked, and their hacker tried to take me too. what a freaking nightmare! she was so grateful that we called to check on her, i hope she's got her account back by now.

today(-ish):

i took mr smear to school, and while he wasn't happy about something (i "distracted" him while he was trying to count) and he really didn't feel that he needed to go, by the time we arrived he was in better spirits and we were cool.

i continued on the post office, arriving just in time to pick up gd's heavy shoes in addition to the 3D glasses i ordered.

the work day started off alright, but then i received a call from gd and learned she'd just cracked a tooth (in a particularly nasty way) that her dentist had warned her about, but that we couldn't afford to do anything about.

well, i guess we're going to have to find a way to afford it now.

she went off to first aid, and i was very excited to hear afterwards that she'd managed to get sorted with an actual appointment with a receptionist who couldn't speak a word of english! that's pretty big, so we were both rather proud of her ^_^

...

during the morning i received a disheartening message from mr smear's teacher that he'd been completely uncooperative the entire morning.

after a big lunch, i walked to the school (i don't know why i didn't take a bus), picked up mr smear and walked through to the dental clinic. on the way, i told him about the art school that we want to register him for, and explained to him that if he doesn't "turn the ship around" and be on his best behavior for the next two months, then his current school's report may well prevent us from being able to move him to the next school.

i'm pretty sure that it's true, and i'm also pretty confident that if anything's going to motivate him, this will do it.

so that's the carrot. the stick is no screen time until i get a good report from his teacher.

...

we waited for gd for a while, and it turned out to be a really good thing that i'd taken my boss's advice and joined her - she needed imaging done, pronto. so we all caught a bus to ichilov, picked a floor (there're three imaging centers in the building), and were surprised by how quick and painless it was.

someone i was on the community council with reached out to me to thank me for the open letter, which she said cited the exact reasons she gave up on them. the responses have all been very validating, and i haven't got the expression "shul capture" out of my head since i heard it on sunday.

we walked home, picking up a couple of onion bagels along the way, and mr smear dived in to his homework (including hebrew reading, which we were informed today can't be comics) while i did a little more work.

mr smear and i put his duvet in the duvet cover this evening. after wishing him a good night, i spent some time doing nothing until i was ready to pass out early.

...

and then woke up a couple of hours ago, restless and with a sore neck and shoulder, and i eventually got up to write this and try to entertain myself until i'm sleepy again. i've been watching a lot of youtube videos - we're praying that trump takes the US election, and we're waiting for iran's "imminent" attack - but i haven't been able to get into any games lately (although i did play through act's ii and iii of inscryption again last week). and i guess my reading streak is broken. maybe i'll try to get that going again.