performance

yesterday:

the big deal in the morning was getting gd to her follow-up therapy session (i mean, it's been more than a year since the war broke out and this was her third actual meeting). while i waited for her, i worked a bit from the hospital food court. she arrived afterwards feeling rather proud of herself - with good reason - because as part of unpacking All The Things for a new person she realized that she's been through a lot of crazy stuff and she's still trucking.

...

the work day was pretty "standard", although it was interrupted by a message from mr smear's teacher informing me that he and his bully had had to be separated physically. i called him and asked him what had happened, and he told me his version, and i sent an angry message back to his teacher.

only to discover that his version of the story had been missing some important details.

it turned out that he'd done the instigating, and "happened" to wander to his bully's side of the class, allegedly not realizing that he was really close to his desk. so the bully got upset and yelled at him to go away, at which point he decided that he should stand his ground because - as he put it - "technically, he doesn't own the whole class".

🤦

parenting is hard.

i made it very clear that he was in the wrong and that he's supposed to be helping me get moved to a different class, not tricking me into making a fool of myself to his teacher.

but, in the evening, i couldn't help myself: "did [your bully] really cry?"

"yeah, he always does when he doesn't get his way"

i feel like there's a grey area in there where i'm allowed to enjoy this mean-spirited moment with my boy.

...

we had vegan shuwarma for dinner, but gd apparently overcooked it because it was a bit too tough and chewy for both me and mr smear.

mr smear was feverish last night at bedtime. gd medicated him as much as she could.

today:

4.30am rocket attack, i slipped and skidded on my way to make sure mr smear was up and on his way to the bomb shelter and hurt my lower back a bit. it's manageable, but uncomfortable.

i neither know or care who these godforsaken "houthis" are, but they're making me genocidal. after the last jew in yemen passed away recently, after yemen successfully and completely ethnically cleansed us, i honestly don't understand why we shouldn't simply erase it from the map. i keep imagining god's hand wielding a giant hand-saw and just sawing that hellhole off the rest of the mainland.

...

we all struggled in the morning, and it was a rush to get mr smear out the door and to the school on time to prepare for the ceremony. i returned home, finished my coffee, and then gd and i went to the school to bear witness.

i made sure to get a (relatively) good spot to record mr smear, but i had no intention of taking any other photos or videos. unfortunately, it looks like the other parents saw me getting ready and assumed that i was doing the class photographer thing, and therefore didn't feel the need to take photos themselves, so i think i might have pissed a bunch of them off :P

anyway, mr smear was GREAT. i was so proud i was shaking, and he was cool as a cucumber! that was awesome.

the next forty minutes was a full-on show by their class, and i have to admit it was pretty impressive for a bunch of fourth graders. one little boy was hilariously flamboyant, and i *knew* (subsequently confirmed) that it's the same kid who sings (in mr smear's terms) "cringey" songs all the time :P

that kid definitely stole the show. otherwise, mr smear did all the things he was supposed to and everything went smoothly.

afterwards he convinced gd that he was too sick to stay at school, but i strongly suspect we got played because he literally skipped and ran all the way home.

i headed out to the office, and spent the rest of the morning fighting with aws credential caching. after a big leftover lunch (the vegan shuwarma tasted much better, somehow), we figured out a workaround for the credentials and i started making some actual progress.

then, half an hour before i was supposed to meet with the VP R&D of a company i've applied for, everyone sat down for a status meeting. i couldn't have been more obviously in a rush to leave if i'd tried, but fortunately i only ended up a few minutes late...

as soon as the meeting was over, i surreptitiously sneaked into the stairwell and let the guy know where i would be, and he met me a few minutes later. i was a bit nervous because it wasn't *impossible* to see us from my office floor, and when a guy walked into the area we were sitting in wearing a similar shirt to my boss he laughed at how terrified i looked :P

anyway, it was a really exciting meeting. i love what they're doing - my current employer could make good use of their services - and it sounds like they're looking for people like me. we agreed broadly on a way to make a technical challenge meaningful for both of us, and i left with a solid sense of alignment. 

let's see how this goes.

the rest of the afternoon was successful, the bones of the project i'm working on are complete and i've got a day spare to make it meatier.

...

oh! at some point during the day i realized why the crypto money hadn't hit our bank account! it's because i'm an idiot, and i withdrew it to my old bank account that i closed down. after a proper bit of panic, i spoke to my bank (who were surprisingly responsive for christmas day) who assured me they'd return the money to the sender. i then tried to get the sender on the line - luno - whose support chat is entirely "AI" automated, and figuring out how to submit a claim was hard. i eventually managed to get it done, though, and hopefully i'll get the rather sizeable sum of money back within the next week or two.

...

i headed home just after dark, picked up a couple of things on the way, and came home in time to make my son finish his math homework (which he continues to claim he already did, but the dashboard says otherwise), take turns showering and still have time to play his first "chanukah gift" - pikuniku - together.

it's a lot of fun!

i was really pleased that mr smear now knows some of the chanukah songs and joyfully sang them along with me ^_^

i read a little bit of the magic pudding to him at bedtime, after we'd spend about half an hour being amazed together by chino moreno and maynard james keenan's screaming abilities, and hopefully tonight won't be disrupted.