spicy

i type this post with burning fingers. i used gloves on the carolina reaper, so i'm pretty confident that it's the jalapeño i prepared before...

yesterday:

i woke up from a disturbing dream yesterday morning: my mom and i on a pier in a massive storm, me in the car and her standing about 20ft away. i yell "look at the horses!" and then realize we have a massive tsunami incoming, i yell at her to get in the car and she makes it just as the wave hits. and then the car is pushed right over the edge of the pier and i wake up as we're falling, trying to recall how to not get trapped in an underwater vehicle

i began the day publishing the article on git worktrees and devcontainers, then mr smear and i accompanied gd to the neurosurgeon to look at her shoulder. we had about an hour and a half to wait, which i used to finally start preparing for my client meeting.

the doctor was pleasant, and he tried to be helpful, but gd left very discouraged and feeling like he didn't hear her (although, in my opinion, he did). i hope we get to the bottom of whatever's giving her trouble sooner rather than later, but it's already becoming a process...

after that we came home, and i spent the hour i had until my meeting preparing some more.

the meeting itself seems to have gone well, and i was glad to get good feedback from my lead. having said that, i was a little surprised to learn that i'm going to have to go through a proper technical interview with them on monday - i'm a little bummed out, too, because i didn't realize i'd need to spend another couple of my "unemployment" days doing work.

at least my employer's agreed to pay me for my preparation hours, but i was kinda hoping to have a few weeks off :/

after the meeting, i ate some food in preparation for the next big item on my agenda: the eating of my first carolina reaper.

OMFG. i just asked mr smear to record a reaction video to me eating a carolina reaper, i thought it would be a fun father/son activity. i survived - i only took a couple of nibbles, that was enough pain to convince me that eating the whole thing may have incapacitated me - and now that my system's calmed down (and i can breathe not-fire again) i just learned that he somehow lost the more than five minutes recording of me struggling 🤦😭

so... that happened.

it took an hour or so for my mouth and stomach to calm down after that, and between the meeting (and its prep) and the previous days' not sleeping enough and the reaper, i was completely exhausted. all i remember from the rest of the day was passing out watching an episode of jujutsu kaisen with mr smear, and gd deciding she doesn't like dinosaurs after we watched episode 7 ("family challenge"), and going to bed right after reading some more of the ocean at the end of the lane to mr smear.

today:

lots of weird dreams. it feels like it's been a while.

after a long chat with horseman - we talked about AI and game dev, but more about internet psychosis - we all went to the mall to pick up some groceries, and then the corner market, and then mr smear played among us online with his friend while i watched educational content (ha ha - most of the stuff i watched today was trash), and then i did the dishes so that gd and i could make the challot together; we have our first challah-lina reaper incoming :D

i was reading a bit more of the department of truth when i got the sudden urge to write this, so here we are.

i'm tiiiired. and we're going out to our friends tonight. i should nap a bit.

yak shavers R us

 omg i've just realized it's 2.30am and i've spent the past almost three hours figuring out an annoying problem with git worktrees and devcontainers, and then figuring out problems with writing up my solution for stack overflow (a moderator deleted my answer because i didn't attribute the AI generated stuff properly) and problems with converting my solution to medium formatting (which involved a side quest to fix a bug in an html app that's supposed to do that).

and i still haven't pushed the publish button on my article, but i guess that's a mission for tomorrow.

...

in the meanwhile, i'm pleased (?) to report that that's two nights in a row that mr smear fell asleep while i read to him, not for any other reason than it meant that we all had an easier night.

constructive behavior and eating out

on monday night, i balatro'd for more than a bit. i went to bed late, but having understood just why it's such a big deal - it's as intricate and unhinged as inscryption, only without the story.

i mean, i love the story of inscryption as much as i love the card game(s), but they're both really intriguing once you get deep enough.

...

yesterday:

mr smear didn't have an easier night, but we realized in the morning that his workshop wasn't yesterday after all, it was today. so that was a relief.

the first thing that happened was a conversation about the previous evening's drama, and for the most part it was pleasant and constructive.

the main part of my day was preparing for a work meeting, and then the work meeting itself. and in the evening, another conversation with my lead/mentor about a different contract, where he made it clear to me that it's entirely on me to pick contracts that i want.

i still have to wrap my head around this.

in the afternoon, gd and i took mr smear to get his chest x-rayed. the x-ray was quick, but the wait was kinda long and in spite of his not feeling great mr smear and i had fun wrestling a bit :P

on the way home, we stopped at donattelo's for surprisingly good vegan pizza, and a generally good experience during the break in the rain.

we watched most of equilibrium last night, which was really fun. oh! and our taster's box of hot peppers arrived ^_^

i read another chapter of the ocean at the end of the lane to mr smear, putting myself to sleep as much as him. i almost woke up completely between saying goodnight to mr smear and brushing my teeth, but in spite of it being relatively early i did fall asleep after a short while, and i did sleep through most of the night.

today:

i woke up from a long, convoluted dream that ended with me and tahoma chanting enthusiastically at some kind of work event.

i opened the first of my sunglass lens replacements to arrive, the photochromic ones. i'm convinced they're a scam, because they seem to change tiny slightly in the sun but they don't seem to be protecting my eyes from anything.

we weren't quite sure about sending mr smear to the manga workshop until about an hour before, by which stage we'd decided he was fine to go and he still seemed to want to go - which is surprising, considering his track record of nope-ing any activity outside of the house.

while he did that (with one of his friends), i sat upstairs and spent a couple of hours working on helper scripts for one of my projects. one of my now-ex co-workers came over to say hi, which was nice, and i find it interesting that he chooses the library when he needs quiet time during the workday.

mr smear seemed to have had a good time, even if the two of them had found the workshop a bit "childish". it took some effort to drag him out of the comic library (and lose the argument about him reading chainsaw man), and we did some urgent grocery shopping on the way home (most importantly, for gloves to handle the peppers).

and stop for a quick chat with the bakery owner, who's been getting into south african documentaries and was surprised to learn that chris hani's murder was such a big deal for all of us. and to hear confirmation of what he thought were exaggerations of the load-shedding and the crime.

and stop for a quick chat with ze irish german's wife; turns out they're all the same kind of sick as we've been (with the parents seeming to just have colds, and the children being knocked out of commission entirely).

mr smear and i had lunch and watched a king's quest playthrough together, and then a short while later we all headed out again to gd's check-up, from where we walked together to the dentist so i could pick up my new mouth guard (which fits!). we wanted to try a vegan place next door for dinner, but they only had QR code menus and the QR code wasn't readable, so in frustration we gave up and continued to lebowski, where we enjoyed a really nice dining experience.

mr smear got to taste shakshouka (not amazing, but decent), and gd's shuwarma (apparently great), and although my curry wasn't as intense as i would have liked, the experience overall was solid.

we just got home, mr smear's showered and soaked his feet and i've sorted out his toes for the night, and now we're going to light the candles and get ready for bed.

the coughing chorus

 it hasn't stopped. his fever went down a bit, but it's not staying down, and his cough doesn't seem to be getting better. emotionally, he's taking a stimulant that's heightening his emotional intensity, and combined with his usual truculent (my new favorite word) default it's been a really hard day.

this morning i helped ozdoc make her radio interview shareable (thanks, facebook, for making it nigh-impossible to share audio files), and i read a bit more of the fifth percy jackson novel.

at this point, i'm so disappointed by the writing quality nosedive that i'd put the book down if i didn't want to just get through it for closure. riordan thoroughly betrays percy's character in the underworld scenes, and rips the reader out of the world with silly gags, and it's now very clear to me why percy jackson never achieved harry potter-like status in the zeitgeist.

...

i don't know what it was specifically, but something triggered me this morning regarding the ai is slowly destroying your brain video; that "folie à deux" isn't just confined to AI and to individuals, but it's the exact same mechanism that's causing mass psychosis on a global scale: it started with search filter bubbles more than two decades ago, then evolved to ad-tech driven social media driving engagement by sowing division.

this explains why flat earthers are a thing, and antivaxxers are a thing, and how the political spectrum ceased to be a spectrum and everyone decided that anyone with opposing views is extreme, insane, and evil.

...

i packed my laptop into my bag, dressed for rain, and headed out to find a quiet corner to write in. i managed to get in more than two hours of focus time, churned out an article i'm proud of, and generated a video for it using notebooklm that i'm really happy with.

on my way home - in the pouring rain - i picked up a globe for mr smear. he seems happy with it, in spite of all the country names being in hebrew...

once home, i had a quick late-lunch and then hopped on a call with my lead, who's setting me up for a meeting with a potential client. so i've got some homework to do.

the rest of the evening was a mixed bag of chilling with mr smear (watching jujutsu kaisen) and enjoying dinner, and fighting over ridiculous shit. after he went to bed gd and i had it out, and we're both feeling pretty sensitive to the fact that we're now acutely retroactively aware of all of our missteps that brought us to mr smear's more toxic behavior.

it feels pretty awful.

anyway, i've spent the past couple of hours playing around with AI and watching things while mindlessly minesweeper-ing, and i'm about to balatro for a bit before bed and hope that by some miracle mr smear's cough settles and he gets some sleep.

not least because he's supposed to go to a manga-drawing workshop tomorrow which he was really excited about...

bondi

 it's the first night of the festival of lights, but we're all heartbroken by the terror attacks on brown university yesterday and bondi beach today.

the intifada has been globalized, for anyone who might have been chanting that slogan...

...

i honestly don't recall if this was this morning's, or yesterday morning's, just-before-waking dream (i *think* it was this morning's):

vacationing up north with my wife, son and mom, fighting roddy piper in an octogon, beating him with his own hammer, in a complicated plan to stay a little longer splitting up from my mom to take a bus home, informing piper's brothers that i'd killed him and them giving me the fight money in small gold coins which kept getting lost all over the place, missing the bus but then remembering that we'd had the car ready to go

i don't know what any of that means. also, i don't think i've heard or thought of the name roddy piper in decades.

mr smear had another rough night last night, which means so did gd. but she seems to be doing a little better today, at least, whereas he's still feverish and coughing a nasty cough.

his teacher sent him get well soon wishes "and a hug", and he informed us, very seriously, that he only hugs family, and maybe a girlfriend *if* he gets a girlfriend 🤣

against my will, i headed out to two pharmacies this morning to pick up gd's forgotten meds and cough drops for mr smear, but that put me in the right place at the right time to deal with a weird message i'd gotten about mr smear's allergist appointment. and it was a good morning for a walk.

the main part of the day was spent keeping up with the bondi attack and messaging our aussie family and friends, but also reading, watching a bit of jujutsu kaisen with mr smear (until we had a blowout over his response to me offering him a banana), and putting a little bit of effort into that algorithm write-up. in the afternoon, i decided to walk to our favorite coffee shop with my kindle, and enjoyed an hour's reading with my family's coughing and hacking replaced by people and traffic noises.

it was nice.

i'm concerned that our treatment of mr smear's ingrown toenails isn't doing much good.

dinner was simple (gd wrapped onigiri leftovers in rice paper for me).

bedtime was smooth, i read some more of the ocean at the end of the lane to mr smear, and realized as i finished the chapter that he'd fallen asleep...

since then the night's been a mash-up of digital housekeeping, the news cycle, balatro... and trying to convince gd (once again) to record her thoughts.

i think i'm going to be going to bed soon.

a quiet winter's day

balatro until late again. and a fair amount of it today.

i started the day slowly, finishing the fourth percy jackson novel and leaving the following review:

a bittersweet experience, a great story but clearly rushed.

the first three books of the series set a really high bar, and i wondered how it could be that the percy jackson franchise hasn't gained as much traction as the harry potter one.

but then i read #4.

while the story itself is great, with lots of exciting and clever elements, riordan and his editors seem to have started taking their readers for granted, and a whole lot of things just seem lazy. and i find myself offended by every single incorrect usage of the word "shined" as opposed to "shone"; if those editors got paid, the publisher should demand its money back. 

**SPOILERS** 

two scenes in particular of the glaringly obvious cardinal sin of breaking the fourth wall to tell, rather than show. one of them is kelli the monologuing empousa:

“a vampire, you say?” kelli laughed. “that silly legend was based on us, you fool. we are empousai, servants of hecate.” “mmmm.” tammi edged closer to me. “dark magic formed us from animal, bronze, and ghost! we exist to feed on the blood of young men. now come, give me that kiss!”

seriously.

and then there's the telekhines receiving on-the-job sex-ed in the forges.

“now, younglings,” the instructor said, “what is the proper name of our kind?” “sea demons!” one of them barked. “no. anyone else?” “telekhines!” another monster growled.

i'm still feeling a bit gross and weak, but i'm definitely doing better. mr smear's still pretty sick, though, very feverish. it's been a rough day for him. but in spite of that, he's always ready to jump up and down in front of the screen playing minecraft...

i thought we'd watch the fellowship of the ring together (the extended edition), but after i woke up from passing out i realized that so had mr smear, and then he decided he wasn't interested in continuing :(

i spent some time finishing the draft of that algorithm i mentioned a few weeks ago, and i'm about to get up for my third round of dish duty, which is honestly the only thing that's gotten me out of my chair / off the couch today.

down/screen time

 we all slept pretty late this morning, but then gd dragged me out of bed to take mr smear to the doctor; neither of them got much sleep last night, mr smear was feverish and pukey.

the doctor's appointment was pretty straightforward - the most important part of it was her convincing gd to not try to treat problems we don't know he has, because for some reason she'd convinced herself that he had c. diff again - and the two of them went home while i walked to the pharmacy for child-friendly anti-nausea meds, then did a little shopping that included "treating myself" to a bunch of fancy teas (pukka) with my birthday discount at the nature store.

we watched tron: ares together, which was generally fun, but really suffered from some seriously lazy writing. mr smear spent most of the rest of the day resting and nursing his fever, we were a little worried earlier but he woke up ready to play a little before dinner and he seems alright now.

otherwise, i had an interesting chat with SxS earlier, and i've agreed to give him a hand with a project of his. and i've played a fair amount of balatro. oh! and i read a chapter of the department of truth today, it's pretty cool.

the challah-peño tonight came out extra spicy ^_^

now i'm holding off eating panda chocolate for dessert because mr smear can't have any. he managed most of an onigiri at dinner, and we don't want to risk any interesting stuff tonight.

half-and-half

the runny nose seems to be calming down, but i'm still battling with the cough. i was dead tired when i woke up this morning. most of it went great - mr smear got ready and ate his breakfast without a fuss, and he and i had a talk about poor writing (telling instead of showing, creating completely impossible situations) vs good writing (using the example of hawthorne's intro to the scarlet letter) - but it went awry at the very last minute when he refused to rejoin our family whatsapp group, presumably because we revoked his admin privileges after he abused them by deleting a message from gd that he didn't like :/

i don't recall too much from the early morning, but at around 10am i was just getting into doing something constructive when i got a call from mr smear to say he wasn't feeling well. so i dressed up for the rain and caught the bus, on the way arranging for his teacher to give him permission to leave. i instructed him to pick it up from the secretariat, and waited outside the school gates.

fifteen minutes went by before i lost patience and called him, and discovered that he'd (allegedly) misunderstood the instruction and had instead sat down to read on his phone while i stood in the rain.

the return home was frustratingly long. he was being very dramatic, i wasn't quite sure if he was really ill, and i was feeling a bit resentful wondering if there's some other parallel universe in which i get to use a bit of this "unpaid leave" i had plans for for myself.

to be fair, he's pretty damned sick, high fever and everything.

i spent an hour or two working on one of my side projects (in preparation for another one), and then hopped on to a couple of video calls to meet my new "lead" and our "sales" guy. those quotes are because our company works very differently from anything i'm used to, and the more i understand the better the whole deal seems ^_^

i asked if it didn't make sense to bring my start date forward, and i was told that if any of my preparation for my first day takes significant time, to bill them for my hours once i'm on board.

i'm impressed.

afterwards, i sat with mr smear and gd and we watched some youtube videos, then decided to watch the dark night. 

👌

i rushed to do as much of the dishes as possible, then headed out (in the rain) to the comics library for a very interesting evening; it's kind of like a book club, but without the usual book club nonsense. and i ended up walking out with kitaro for mr smear (recommended after i told them about our difficulty determining age-appropriate stuff for him) and the department of truth, which sounds insane.

i've just got out of the shower after spending some time discovering interesting synergies in balatro, and i'll probably be going to bed soon. for all my griping this morning, i ended up having a pretty good day.

...

i've just learned from someone who's seen south africa's list of veterans, that i'm not on it.

surprisingly, that's quite a relief.

full-time unemployment

 i want to thank balatro, and the fourth percy jackson*, and a combination of slipknot and synthknot, for helping me maintain some semblance of sanity today. i may be unemployed, but wow yesterday evening and today have been taxing.

* i think rick riordan's editor must have taken a break after the third book, and maybe they were under heavy time pressure from the publisher, because the quality of the writing definitely drops. but overall, the story itself makes it worth pushing through.

we were told to come at 6pm, but to be prepared to wait. what we didn't anticipate from that instruction was that "be prepared to wait" meant that we weren't officially booked for 6pm, and that other families would be given preference. and that's after we waited more than an hour because the teacher was running hella late.

at least gd and mr smear were in mostly good spirits, and it was pleasant watching him playing around with a bunch of other kids (including a - ewwww - *girl*). he was very proud of himself for figuring out how to make himself squint, and entertained everyone with his newfound party trick :P

the meeting itself was a mixed bag, and a bit heavy. in some ways he's really improved, but he's still got a long way to go. and we discovered that the reason he got sent to the principal's office a few weeks ago wasn't because of the face painting, but because his teacher told him to go wash it off and he left the class and immediately returned without having done so 🤦

it was quite late, and a bit wet, when we finally left. we ordered rainbow burgers, got mr smear ready for bed, ate dinner, and were done for the day..

we had quite the thunderstorm last night.

today:

i managed to sleep better last night, though still not easy. i woke up into drama, because gd had forgotten that she was supposed to be fasting for her g-scope this morning :/

mr smear bussed to school by himself in the pouring rain, which is impressive.

...

on monday i posted my child safety opinion in the group, and the unhinged responded as follows:

<totalwaste> - i'm quoting you -

"and even adults can't understand where the boundaries should be and how to set them."

i think that maybe the root of the problem in our class.

i am an adult, and contrary to what you wrote, i know very well where the boundaries are and how to apply them.

perhaps parents who have difficulty with this should seek the help of the school counselor to get tools.

i didn't respond. obviously her response bothered me, but eventually i remembered that the only appropriate thing that can be said in a situation like this: "i envy your confidence"(the quiet part: and general lack of awareness). and i'm grateful that it's clear enough to the rest of the class what we're all dealing with.

last night we learned that the principal's father has passed away. this morning the unhinged mother responded with a comment that it's not sad, because what's sad is that the principal didn't support her daughter sufficiently when she needed help.

later, that wtf made a little more sense - though it's still absurd and gross - because we understood that the unhinged was referring to her daughter's father dying. which i guess explains her overcompensation and need to be the perfect mom.

i mean, she's still an intolerably toxic PoS, but at least it's a little more understandable.

...

gd and i took a long walk, stopping at the comics library, and the pharmacy, and the stationary store, and doing a little grocery shopping, and even managing to make an appointment for mr smear's next follow-up allergy appointment along the way.

not without a battle, of course; when i asked if we could schedule it for the new year, the receptionist told me i'd have to call back in february because their calendar isn't open yet. there was an awkward back-and-forth of confused questions until i asked her if their hospital wing was closed until then, at which point we finally came to understand that while i'd meant to book for the beginning of the year, she'd thought i meant the end of the year... good grief.

anyway, it was a long walk and the bags were heavy and gd and i were still sinus-heavy and coughing, and the next couple of hours were spent reading and napping.

interrupted only by a message from mr smear's teacher... the kids had to do an assignment on the computer today, and while all the other kids worked well mr smear took the opportunity to play games instead. to make it worse, he insisted on lying about it to the teachers when confronted, even though they'd checked the browser history and knew exactly what he'd been up to.

we had a long conversation about that when he got home. gd and i are extremely disappointed, and frustrated. mr smear seemed legitimately contrite, but we honestly don't know if that means anything.

the next couple of hours were homework. the same homework he struggled with yesterday, he struggled with just as much today, and it took a loooong time and some fighting to get him to do what i've been telling him to do for a much looooooonger time, which is to write down all the goddamned steps.

eventually, around the time we usually finish dinner, he finally got through it.

oh! i didn't mention that gd had a particularly difficult day health-wise, between her stomach ulcer and her shoulder injury and her neck and her cold, so with all that other stuff going on i had to participate more than usual in the dinner prep and serving...

dinner was alright, but it was late already and we still had to get him ready for bed and do the ingrown-toenail treatment (which i have no idea if it's helping or not), and it was pretty late by the time he went to sleep.

...

i'm feeling pretty emotionally drained right now. i'm going to try and relax, and then hope for a relatively restful night 🤞

blocked

yesterday:

i was mostly pretty useless for the remainder of yesterday, although i did get one or two hours of work in on one of my side projects. mr smear did alright with his homework. i almost went to the comics library, but it was threatening to rain so i turned back.

we ate latkes last night. mr smear ate too many. it rained pretty hard last night.

i played a lot more balatro.

today:

i struggled a bit less with the blocked nose and sore throat last night, but i still struggled. it's been a little easier today, but still not easy.

i spent most of two hours working on the side project, and the frontend is mostly ready. for the current mocked-backend phase, i'm quite pleased with how it's going.

i joined a company lecture on integrating AI into R&D organizations, and found it interesting. i have a meeting with them in a couple of days, and i'm already planning on asking them why we can't bring my start date forward.

i still don't have the documents i need to claim unemployment for the month, but at least i've been paid by my previous employer...

mr smear's been home and doing homework for a while now, mostly with a good attitude but we've had some friction. and in forty five minutes we have to go to the school for the parent-teacher meeting we missed last week...

child safety

 well, the "family meeting" yesterday seemed to go alright, but we've no way of knowing how much landed. at the very least, between yesterday evening and this morning, things are feeling much better between us.

in spite of mr smear dragging out his homework for hours (even with using google's translate to help him) when it could literally have taken him a few minutes. he spent orders of magnitude more time trying to get out of writing a couple of sentences and losing more screen-time privileges.

we've reversed ourselves on the "earning" screen-time thing. if we do that, we're left with precisely nothing in terms of leverage.

...

after much drama and finally getting him into bed last night, i drowned in a flood of angry messages from the class parents - they're starting to notice the kids engaging in inappropriately sexual banter, and apparently one of the boys showed somewhat pornographic images to one of the girls.

i quietly lurked until this morning, until i'd had a chance to discuss the situation with mr smear, and then posted the following opinion:

> but neither the teacher, nor the administration, nor the parents know how to handle them

100%. And in my opinion, that's the main thing - the whole world is going crazy, the children are absorbing terrible things from all directions, and even adults can't understand where the boundaries should be and how to set them.

but first of all, we need to be aware that we don't understand exactly what's going on, and exactly where it's coming from, and that this is less relevant than cooperation in trying to protect and vaccinate our children as much as possible.

i tried to understand from my son this morning what happened, but he didn't see/perceive events as documented above. on the other hand, he came home last week and repeated phrases he heard from other children (not necessarily children from the class) and really didn't understand their meanings, and i had to have an unpleasant conversation so that he would understand why it's wrong without conveying age-inappropriate things to him

i think we should have a conversation, maybe in person, and set norms between us and try to find a way to manage the identification and treatment of events when they arise.

let's see if anyone actually wants to do anything about this.

...

right after posting, gd and i watched "get your kids off roblox" - why is the world's largest children's game banning vigilantes? and i immediately felt even better about our decision to ban roblox a few months ago, and set about generating a hebrew video presentation with notebooklm: רובלוקס: שאלה של בטיחות

i hope that lands.

(if you also didn't know about 764? you're welcome)

game theory

yup, it's a definite nose & throat thing, i'm not feeling *sick* sick (yet?), but i am feeling a bit rough...

after posting yesterday morning, we went to the 24/7 to do a little shopping and then our friends came over for the afternoon.

the good: a fantastic game of goodcritters, with us two dads teaching the three kids game theory experientally, and we opened both the math fluxx and mystery fluxx decks which are a lot of fun.

the bad: mr smear and the little brother griefing the sister, resulting in tears, and a no-good lousy shit-attitude afternoon and evening for mr smear. which then led to a pretty shit morning experience as well.

so this morning gd and i had a long discussion about what our options are, and we're now waiting for mr smear to come home so we can sit down for a "family meeting"... probably the first of many more on the topic of our familial relationships and roles...

gd and i finally sat down to watch 10 things i hate about you, which is one of my favorite shakespeare adaptations and has aged phenomenally well. i then pulled out my copy of the illstrated stratford shakespeare and read/paraphrased the induction scene to the taming of the shrew, which i *wish* had been included somehow in the movie.

and then i (finally) purchased balatro, and sunk about three hours into it. i don't understand if this is the whole game or not, but it's addictive already...

inappropriate

yesterday:

a lot of yesterday was me unconscious on the couch. i tried to be productive in the morning, but all i managed to do was note down some design points for one of my projects.

...

the biggest mission was picking up mr smear from school, taking a bus to katalina, and successfully getting mr smear to try on his new rain boots. so that's good. what wasn't good, however, was him slowly but surely whittling down my good mood and patience with an incessant series of minor uncooperative behaviors, so by the time we left the store i was starting to get angry.

we found a place for him to sit and eat (after refusing to sit on benches that had any signs of bird droppings on them), and as soon as he opened his lunchbox a creepy old man appeared and sat down next to him with a weird expression on his face. and then, when he finished the leftover pancakes and pulled out the tupperware filled with melon chunks, we discovered that gd had forgotten to include cutlery...

when we finally finished up there, and had washed some of the melon off his hands, we began to move on to our next waypoint, the comics library. but as soon as we crossed the road the alarm for his antibiotic went off, so we found a place to stop and take care of that... only gd had forgotten to pack it, meaning we had to return home immediately.

fortunately, a bus home just happened to pull up as we learned that, so we scrambled to get aboard in time.

on the bus, mr smear was entertaining me by putting on accents, and while we were laughing about south african accents i noticed a guy standing by the bus doors starting at us and smiling. i assumed he was entertained by our conversation, but the staring was starting to bother me... and then he pulled out his phone and began having a very loud, rather inappropriate conversation in a heavy saffer accent himself.

i couldn't get off the bus fast enough...

just before we got off the bus, mr smear made references to "p diddy", "baby lotion" and "dropping the soap" and aside from urgently trying to get him to stop talking, that led to me having to explain some things to him once we were on the sidewalk.

jesus. h. christ.

not only is it hard to discuss these things without going into too much detail, but it's also hard to know if he understands me when i tell him that he can't go explaining this stuff to his friends because it might cause issues with their parents - and they're the kids who are talking about these things with mr smear in the first place.

as soon as he'd taken his antibiotic, we headed out again. we separated at the mall, where i discovered that i was too late for the last-minute emergency groceries gd needed, and then i rejoined him at the library, where we discovered that on fridays it closes at the same time as school comes out.

mr smear walked home, i walked in the other direction to find a grocery store, and eventually decided to hop on a bus and try our local 24/7. the bus was full of kids, and one old man singing awfully at the top of his lungs.

i bribed mr smear with treats to meet me at the 24/7 to help me with the groceries, and the treat ended up being a bag of cream-cheese lays which i'd never realized were vegan. and he yelled with joy in the 24/7 when he saw frozen vegan dumplings, so we picked those up as well.

...

i had a long chat with SxS last night for the first time in forever, he's just unemployed himself because the company he's been operating for the past decade and a half (that i contracted to from 2016 through 2018) is in the process of imploding. at least he's not walking away entirely empty-handed, but the other founders are screwing up royally and we have a lot of shared opinions about how to - and how to not - run a company.

...

gd's dinner plans went a bit awry last night. the vegan "fish cakes" came out as latkes (they tasted pretty good, though), the dumplings were really complicated to heat up / cook and i had to get pretty seriously involved. and then we discovered, when it came time to eat them, that gd hadn't realized they were sweet potato dumplings and she doesn't like those...

highlight of the evening: mr smear and i growling along to the original slipknot songs from the synthknot compilation.

today so far:

i slept alright last night, but woke up with what feels like a throat infection. and, now that i think about it, my tiredness the past day or two might well be me being a bit ill...

so far the day's been me reading percy jackson (there's a scene in the titan's curse which totally blew me away, it really adds so much depth to the old stories), doing dishes, and watching youtube videos (like this one) making it clear that we need to stop putting AI in robots :/

schmooze

i was really tired before i left for the house party, and anticipating awkwardness and feeling very out of place. but while there were a couple of awkward moments, i met some incredible people and had some very interesting conversations.

i'm really glad i went.

...

on my way to the bus stop i ran into one of my now-ex co-workers. it was good to see him, but when i asked how he's doing his face fell. they really messed up when they fired us, they broke everyone's spirit. if you want to follow netflix's model (which you shouldn't), you don't onboard people without telling them what to expect, you give regular feedback, you don't surprise-fire, and you compensate (with extended severance) accordingly.

otherwise you're just being a shit employer building a toxic workplace that nobody wants to work in.

upgrades

 after teaching mr smear how to open hard plastic packaging and reset a modern combination lock, he left for school with the lock still on the table. i automatically ate the leftover half of his pancakes, apparently my body's still trying to make up for all the burned calories yesterday... i'm back up to 80kg again :/

i invested a bit of time tidying up my desktop and fleshing out a design for one of my side projects, and discuss (in broad terms) building a tarot deck with gd, and then headed out to draw cash, get an update about gd's scope appointment, pick up a coffee and order a tasting kit of carolina reapers (amongst other hardcore peppers), replace mr smear's watch battery, and then return home past the hardware store to pick up anti-mold stuff and usb-c chargers (now that i know).

i spent some time setting those up (rearranging things in general), then sat down to split up AI covers to add to my playlists (i've been obsessed with synthknot the past couple of days).

my new employer contacted me to set up work accounts, along with meetings to prepare for my onboarding. i mean, they could have just employed me a month earlier...

i passed out while finishing the incal, but i did finish it.

the unhinged ravings of a perverse amateur author with one of the most unlikeable protagonists i've ever encountered and a literal deus ex machina at every turn. BUT. fantastic artwork, incredibly psychedelic delirium at cosmic scale. as much as i might have been turned off by the writing, the overall experience was so good that i'm glad i didn't put it down.

i blocked youtube on the ubuntu macbook, but later caught mr smear using chatgpt thinking we wouldn't catch him...

lifting mr smear's toenails is traumatizing for the lot of us.

we've just finished eating an early dinner, i'm about to supervise mr smear's reading homework, and then i'm off to a "house party" that gco's organized...

steps

 surprisingly, i went to bed pretty soon after posting and i slept relatively well. and we all survived getting up before dawn, and mr smear and i caught the bus on time.

bussing through bnei brak in the early morning was an anthropological experience full of teachable moments.

the surgeon inspected mr smear's toes, and made it abundantly clear what terrible parents we are for making him responsible for his own toenails. it was a relief to hear her say that they weren't bad enough (yet) to justify surgery, and that she wouldn't want to perform the surgery even if they were because that would require putting him under general anaesthetic.  she gave us a prescription, along with a list of instructions, and hopefully in the coming weeks we'll see some improvement 🤞

we walked to the light rail and i took him to school, then returned home for breakfast (and lots of responding to emails and messages) before leaving with gd on a shopping mission.

first stop: printing out her cannabis license and picking up acrylic markers for mr smear.

second stop: the shoe hunt. we went through a bunch of stores, on the way purchasing waterproof timberland shoes for myself*, and eventually ordered boots from katalina.

* expensive, but it's a much more professional-looking option than my humongous wellies, which i'll save for the more dramatic days

having (effectively) completed our mission, we walked to one of our favorite hummusiot and enjoyed a really nice lunch. and then - because for once gd was feeling up for it - we walked home, past a stationary store where we picking up a new school sketchbook for mr smear (he's filled the last one already).

i rested and read a little, and then took off again to go to the dentist, missing the bus and needing to hail a taxi. i arrived on time, but the dentist was super late... and then he had trouble with the scanning machine...

but the great news is that i didn't need to do an imprint! instead, there's a new optical scanning device. it's a lot less intrusive than an imprint, and when he eventually (half an hour later) managed to log into it i was blown away by how cleverly it's designed.

i came home, already having exceeded 20000 steps for the day. mr smear was very excitedly drawing deadpool with his new markers. the evening went smoothly (although gd's struggling with stomach issues due to some medication she's on), in spite of the fact that gd made me responsible for the post-soak toe treatment which freaked us all out.

i read the final chapter of the neverending story to mr smear. the entire chapter, so he ended up going to sleep really late, but it was totally worth it. what an insanely intellectual and entertaining story!

i didn't cry.

(i almost cried. i choked up a bit. but i didn't cry)

...

today was a good day. gd and i essentially got to go on a "date" this morning, i got a fair amount of stuff done and mr smear had a good day. additionally, i treated myself to a copy of blue prince, and i'm going to give that a go now before i go to bed.

meeting

 this morning started off a bit rocky, as i explained to mr smear the "new rules" which he immediately declared unfair and "evil". by the time he got to brushing his teeth, we were deep into synthknot territory* which is an excellent mood-transformer, and by breakfast he was ready to talk. he left the apartment in relatively good spirits.

* mr smear and i have both had psychovirtual stuck in our heads all day

i spent most of my morning updating people post-contract signing, i did a little bit of post-interview digging to understand where i went wrong (i failed yesterday's phone screen because i struggled with the details of a threading issue, which sucks, but whatever), and 

[omg we just received gd's renewed cannabis license! what an enormous relief!]

then i hopped on a bus to a part of ramat aviv i never remember exists to meet one of the guys i got fired with. i had a good vegan burger experience, and we talked shop, and it was very interesting hearing the story of his career and potentially connecting on a variety of side-projects.

he gave me a ride home, where i almost immediately crashed on the couch and remained out for quite a while. then i grudgingly got up (in stages), and got in touch with swordschool to discuss our december project. so far, i don't really understand the business side of things but it's very exciting stuff.

afterwards, we all went to the school for the parent-teacher evening. i just realized that we never spoke to his homeroom teacher, which is a bit embarrassing...

on our way in, we noticed a couple of the art pieces on the walls that were definitely creepy / horror themed, so not only is mr smear not the only kid so inclined, but the art teachers are clearly not that concerned by it. the two art teachers we met with both made it very clear that mr smear's talent is rare, and that his behavior is generally okay and improving. we informed them of his backstory and the things we're concerned with, which tied in with their experiences of him, and we left with a really nice feeling that he's in good hands.

the other parents were mad because the second teacher spent half an hour with us while there was a queue forming (the meetings were supposed to be ten minutes each, and it was getting late). when one of them came in to complain, the teacher calmly told her: "you will wait, this is important". while she showed us mr smear's work compared to some of the other students', and suggested that she's going to start challenging him with some more advanced stuff.

we caught the bus home, but it was late so i took mr smear to get a laffa. we had some difficult conversations along the way, but almost all in good spirits. i almost got into a fight with a big guy who refused to move his car off the sidewalk.

i didn't get anything for myself, but i did take a couple of bites and it was excellent.

we got home, mr smear got through the bedtime sequence in reasonable time, gd went to bed early, and i'm probably going to go to bed soon because we have to be up at 5.30am, even though i'm not sure it's going to help me get much sleep...

signed

i'm typing this while lying on the couch because my legs are giving me too much trouble sitting :/

so, first things first: i've just signed a contract with the contracting agency.

there are two reasons i'm not jumping for joy right now: the first, because i simply haven't internalized the fact that i've just accepted the offer i was praying for. the second, because prior to reviewing and signing the contract, we had an incredibly unpleasant end-of-day with mr smear.

...

the day started alright, and when i arrived at the school to pick up mr smear for his doctor's appointment i ran into his teacher, so i got some information about his behavior and she helped me get him out of there fast.

mr smear got into trouble yesterday because he was drawing "yo momma" jokes, which the other kids thought were funny but which his teacher did not. and in a different "didn't think they were funny" to how i didn't think they were funny when he repeated a couple of them to me. i mean, they had potential, but they just fell kinda flat :P

we picked up a coffee and an onion bagel to share (the bagel, not the coffee) on the way, and i told mr smear about an idea i had about fifteen years ago for QR codes. then gd joined us and we headed in to his appointment, and now he's on antibiotics for a staph infection and we have an appointment with a surgeon early wednesday morning.

i took him back to the school, and arrived home just in time to head out again to get headshots done by ze irish german. in addition to the headshots, we talked a lot and amidst everything else i was intrigued to learn that i'm not the only person who gets bad side-effects from cbd oil. i also thought of a way to bring him in to the QR code thing and he seemed receptive.

i returned home a bit before mr smear arrived, and i didn't a little prep for my 5pm interview. which didn't go as well as i'd like - it seemed to be going fine, until i got caught out on a thread behavior question that i just couldn't quite wrap my head around :(

then i got a call from the agency, and there was a bit of a negotiation, and then we had dinner and i received the contract and then bedtime was horrible and then i reviewed and signed and now i'm (intellectually, at least) being immensely relieved and grateful that my prayers were answered. and i've got until mid-january before i start so that's time to really unwind, because the last few weeks have *not* been a vacation.

sabotage and self-sabotage

 i had trouble focusing today, so i took a cup of coffee and walked to a local park, there was noisy construction going on there, so i walked further to the next park, which also had noisy construction going on, but it was less intrusive.

i would have enjoyed the experience of sitting on the bench, reading percy jackson and drinking my coffee, a lot more if i hadn't been harassed by mosquitoes. i'm pretty sure i got bitten.

the afternoon was pretty calm. when mr smear came home he did his homework quite well, and i read a bit more, and then there was drama with gd's daal recipe, and we ordered dinner, and then dinner was interrupted by a call from my aunt in los angeles, and then we spoke to my mom and sister, and then we watched an episode of dinosaurs, and then...

bedtime did not go well. mainly because we discovered that mr smear - who has been ignoring us and defiantly cutting his toenails insanely short - is now sporting two ingrown toenails and a really ugly infection 💔

i made some more progress with the assessment, at this point i'm approaching twenty hours and i think that's way more than is reasonable for a job application. having said that, i'm getting some experience with a whole new system and practice with golang after more than half a year of almost exclusively writing bash scripts 🤷

...

it wasn't all bad today, but it definitely wasn't a good day. in spite of lots of birthday messages and calls, which were really nice, this might be one of my least favorite birthdays in 45 years.

a new anxiety

 it's my birthday! it started off stressful, with mr smear and i needing to take a detour on the way to school to pick up antihistamines, and the pharmacy computers took a while to come online, and then when we finally got to the light rail we hopped on in the wrong direction...

and then i had a job interview that seemed to be going alright, when all of a sudden the interviewer rudely interrupted me to say "i'm out of time, goodbye" which made for a really shit feeling...

and then, because two of my possible references simply aren't responding, i gave my now-ex-boss who just fired me as a reference, and i'm now deeply anxious that this is going to fuck up my chances to get an offer.

so... happy birthday me :/

go, me.

 omg it's way past my bedtime 🤮

after getting mr smear to sleep, i sat down and started working on the assessment. on the one hand, i'm totally confident that i've understood temporal workflows (infinitely better than gemini 3 pro) and that i'm just about done with the most important parts... but i'm stuck in the last mile bullshit of something that really shouldn't be such a big deal :(

anyway, i guess i'm technically 45 years old now. i know i'm getting older because my greatest wish for the next year is for things to be more peaceful and boring than the last :P

shhhhhhhhhh 🤫

 i'm sitting here quietly in my bedroom because my family forgot my birthday's tomorrow and they're "secretly" making me card 🤣

today was pretty cool. this morning we watched batman begins, which of course we all enjoyed, and in the early afternoon mr smear and i rode / bladed to his school to test out the route together, most of which was fun.

one thing in particular got under my skin, though:

a ten year old just told me led zeppelin's whole lotta love is elevator music and now i need to figure out if that's an offense worthy of disowning him for 😒

the evening was chill, i've suddenly found myself on a drum & bass kick for the first time ever. and over delicious ramen* dinner we finished watching young guns, which was awesome.

* we're actively praying for positive news from the consulting agency soon 🤞

and now, getting ready for mr smear's bedtime and then probably putting some effort into the assessment.

half-and-half

so i did take thursday night "off", but i don't recall whether i went to bed early or not.

[oh! i went to bed pretty late, i just remembered witnessing some kids crashing into a parked car in the middle of the night and being grateful that a bunch of other neighbors ran downstairs to handle it]

i think i slept well, though.

yesterday:

after mr smear left for school, i settled down and got in a good couple of hours work on the assessment. relatively fun stuff, and now that it's functional and feeling good (i invested most of yesterday's time in UX) i've got the toughest but most interesting part of the challenge left, figuring out the right way to organize the temporal workflows.

we waited for mr smear to get home, then left to pick up gd's replacement vape cap* which precipitated a pharmacy visit, a stop to pick up onigiri, and a visit to our favorite nature store. we barely managed to get back to our neighborhood in time to do a last round of pre-shabbat groceries, and the rest of the afternoon was downtime.

* oh! on thursday we finally received what is hopefully the last document required for gd's cannabis license, so hopefully that'll be sorted out soon. so far the experience with the new provider has been infinitely better.

i spent most of my downtime rotting my brain (although mr smear and i did watch a couple of educational youtube videos together). mr smear spent a lot of his on a video call with a friend, trying to play games online together and failing. partially because i refuse to let him play roblox any more...

yesterday's challah-peño came out brilliantly (we used significantly more jalapeño than usual), and over dinner we watched the first half of young guns. as always, mr smear's initial response on hearing just the name of the movie was "noooo!", but once it was on he was immediately into it :)

after dinner there was a fight, but although it wasn't exactly my fight i ended up getting into it with gd, and after i got mr smear into bed we had an important talk about letting go that seems to have landed...

today so far:

i started reading the third percy jackson book before passing out last night, and woke up to resume it. it's off to a fantastic start! everyone woke up in a better space this morning, hopefully today will stay calm.

hi-caf

with all the cleaning over the past couple of days, my hands are really, really dry and cracking :/

...

i'm surprised that i slept at all last night, because i was still a bit caffeinated when i woke up this morning.

mr smear got himself to school, and i tried what the original airconditioner man suggested and managed to get the flaps flapping again without further cost 😤

i spent most of my morning being productive on the assessment. i also had that introductory chat with the company i was sure i wouldn't be interested in, and after hearing what they had to say i was honestly surprised to find myself liking the idea very much.

so now i'm up to five applications on the go... but i got exciting news in the evening: the consulting agency called to ask me for my references, so 🤞

i joined my previous (previous-previous?) team for lunch, which was great, and then followed a few of them to their offices for a really good cup of coffee before my coffee-date with an ex-coworker (newly ex). i was sure that something was up, but she was just being supportive and we had a really nice conversation.

once mr smear came home, i gave up on being productive and focused on helping him through his homework (and doing dishes). not only did we get through all his homework (and well, too), but i discovered simply sing which seems cool, though i'm not in a position to be putting down another $10 per month right now for the family plan.

we watched the second episode of dinosaurs over dinner, and then got through the bedtime ritual quickly enough that there was reading and talk-to-granny time, and then i finished reading chapter 24 of the neverending story and said a calmer good night, and now... now i'm trying to decide whether i have it in me to do some more of the assignment, or take the night off.

i'm leaning towards the latter.

two hours later...

 alright, so that late coffee *did* actually work. it also helps that i've remembered that i'm expected to be using AI assistance for the assignment, and i got to a point where doing so made sense. now i feel like i deserve some proper downtime before going to bed.

procrastination

 i'm so over today. especially now, because i just had a fight with mr smear over bedtime protocol (an hour after his bedtime, forty minutes after i finished reading to him) that ended with both of us feeling shit.

but it could have been worse, i guess? we'll find out tomorrow.

...

today can be pretty well summed up by a distinct lack of motivation on my part. between yesterday's cleaning situation, and this morning's focus on the take-home assignment (which i've sunk a few hours into already), and then twenty minutes waiting by the school gate after mr smear was supposed to meet me outside, and then having to tail him to the library after he went by himself but decided to leave his phone at home*, and then overseeing his homework while helping gd out with dinner...

* okay, i'm actually really proud of that one. on the one hand, gd and i were freaking out because we didn't know if he'd even gone in the right direction. on the other hand, he felt confident enough to leave his phone behind, has actually decided that that was a good idea (!!!), and by the time i caught up with him he'd already exchanged the books and was on his way out.

[mr smear just came out to get some water, and i decided to let go (read: cave in) and hope for the best.]

at one point this morning, after completing a chunk of the project, i finally procrastination-cleaned the fans (i've been meaning to do that for days now) and then took a walk to sip a coffee and read a chapter of percy jackson. i wandered into the ridiculously overpriced neighborhood across the road, and decided it's a really awkward and unsociable area.

...

i can't decide if i should put everything down for the night, or dive back in.

professionalism

 godsdammit, today's been long. i accompanied mr smear to school because it was threatening to rain and he had to take sports shoes (tied in an inconvenient way) in addition to his rainboots (i'm not entirely sure he actually switched them for phys ed, he says he did) and an umbrella. thank god i was with him, because he started freaking out on the bus about how the shoes were tied, and whether he should be taking shoes at all, and how to validate his bus ticket when he has an umbrella in his hand 🤦

anyway, we survived the ride to school and he seems to have managed fine while there.

...

i got home, and triggered the take-home challenge along with two or three other application processes. then i spent an hour or two doing some studying for the challenge, and then the airconditioner cleaners arrived.

look. they did a great job cleaning, the airconditioners are definitely, thoroughly clean.

unfortunately, half the mold and grime they removed from the airconditioners ended up on the walls, the floor, and anything we'd accidentally left too close to them.

before they left, i showed them that the flaps aren't working properly, to which they responded that "that's just a function of time" even though the flaps were working just fine before they touched them.

and they left us with soooo muuuuuuch cleaning to do. and we found a couple more mold blooms we hadn't seen before. we're still not completely finished. i'm fucking tired. the skin on my hands is all messed up from the cleaning materials and constant hand-washing.

i wanted to go rollerblading tonight, but i haven't even got started with the solution design.

and i'm going to have to figure out how to fix those damned flaps.

...

scr called me up today, and we had a long chat about a potential partnership. it's kinda scary, but if everything falls into place it would be an incredible opportunity...

...

we took a break from cleaning to go to the dentist, where mr smear and i argued over what constitutes an "i'm hungry" snack and worked on his geography homework* while gd finally got her new tooth installed. for real this time!

* he has to learn the countries around the mediterranean, so i had him sketch a map for himself so he can practice offline. an unintended consequence of this is that i told him about italy being a boot, and he saw a boot, only not the boot 😂

after we got home, i got back into cleaning (and reading the incal) while gd made dinner and mr smear did the math homework, dinner was pleasant, and we've changed our sheets (we're using the new comforter), and mr smear is reading deadpool before bed, and i'm about to get ready for bed and then hope i have it in me to spend some time on the design.

or... procrastinate and dive into it in the morning. did i mention i'm a bit tired?

downturn

 well. i went to the offices, and i sat down and talked for half an hour. it was a pleasant conversation, i think, but it ended on a bit of a weird note and i literally couldn't figure out whether he's going to recommend me or not.

i mean, i really hope he does... i even ate additional pasta this evening...

...

during the interview, we talked about mr smear's school, and his comment (based on his son having gone there) was that it's a bit too individualistic. to which i responded that my son was a bit too individualistic before he arrived there. when i left, i spoke to gd and learned that, on track with that assessment, mr smear had got it into his head to use a marker to turn his face into a skeleton's, and was promptly sent off to the principal's office.

[gd and i giggling hysterically for a minute]

i keep imagining the principal keeping a straight face, as she asked him the following questions: in what class did you do it? what would your parents think? [there's a third question, but neither of us can remember it]

so this evening we had to explain to our son that there is a time and a place for everything... and that perhaps he might want to consider switching from film to theatre...

...

pre-dinner was rough. we had some homework tension (confusing questions about magic squares), though he did recover himself eventually and did quite well. but the downer was me receiving a phone call from the company that mr smear was with me for the interview, which i was certain i'd done really well in, to say that they were proceeding with other candidates.

that doesn't feel good at all.

bedtime was mostly good, though it was the second night in a row that mr smear made the final good night unpleasant, and now i'm processing shitty feelings and thinking about tomorrow morning, when i begin an at-home technical challenge that sounds like it might be complicated.

distraction

 yesterday:

yesterday got off to a busy start, mr smear went to school on his own (on his own by bus, which we only learned later) and we headed to bnei brak for an appointment for gd. the doctor could handle speaking in english, but gd did a great job of breaking her teeth and i was barely needed :)

we got off at the hospital stop to pick up some things on the way home, after which i spent some time preparing for an interview. the interview went well.

i chatted with my mom for a bit (mixed feelings: pride in my nephew for telling my niece what's what, sadness that she's been neglecting her older child while planning on bringing a new one into the world).

i dropped a return package off at the post office and then paid a visit to another clinic to confirm that we'd done the right thing when trying to book gd a followup appointment.

i did some post-interview "homework" (playing around with temporal), and then when it started getting dark i headed to the comic library - which i'd never heard of before - where i found mr smear engrossed in tokyo ghoul.

the library has a lot of interesting stuff, and i was pleasantly surprised to learn that residents have an all-access library membership, so we picked up a copy of the incal and two tokyo ghoul volumes and made our way home, with me investing some time in getting mr smear familiar with the landmarks along the way.

i decided to tell mr smear that i'm leaving it up to him to determine whether what he's reading is appropriate or not, and to talk to me if he encounters anything confusing or disturbing.

just before dinner i discovered that the dinosaurs tv series is on apple tv after all! so after mr smear got through his math homework, we sat down to eat and enjoy the first episode :)

it was an easy bedtime, and i fell asleep pretty easily.

today:

i slept quite a lot last night, and had a lot of strangely unremarkable dreams.

everyone's morning was smooth and positive, and i accompanied mr smear to school "just because". i came home for breakfast, and then gd and i walked to get mr smear's school logo printed on his shirts. on the way back we picked up a lentil soup, then i stopped for a coffee while gd visited the pharmacy, and then we stumbled upon a good place to buy a comforter (it's starting to get colder).

since we've been home, we've chilled, had soup for lunch, and i'm now doing a terrible job of focusing and being productive. it doesn't help that gd's watching 28 years later while i try to be functional...

...

and in an hour or so i'm off to a (hopefully) final interview for the consulting agency 🤞

from the AI warning to the sea

 the rest of yesterday was pretty relaxed. gd and i made extra-strength challah-peño, which really just means extra-delicious, and we finished watching eddie murphy's dr dolittle which - in spite of some spectacularly lazy writing - quite entertaining.

last night before going to bed, mr smear let me know that he'd decided that he did want to finish watching the matrix after all.

today:

gd hasn't been sleeping well, and i've been kind on/off the past weeks, with last night being one where i definitely slept some. but i woke up very early, and finished reading the first percy jackson novel.

extremely underrated.

on the one hand, it pains me to think that i only just discovered percy jackson. on the other, i've just had the distinct pleasure of discovering percy jackson! this is top shelf stuff, a brilliant, exciting blend of modern fantasy and ancient tales.

the first highlight of the day was settling in to watch the second half of the matrix. with AI tech being where it is, it's never been more relevant, and seeing my boy's face light up* as he encountered bullet time and neo's superavatar powers was so much fun!

* as well as his body twitch involuntarily, he's wired different

i spent most of the early part of the day alternating between the second percy jackson book, trying to write up manacher's algorithm in a readable way, and napping.

i'd made a pact with mr smear about going to the beach in the afternoon, which he sealed by doing something that lost him privileges (he has a compulsion that causes him to scratch himself until he has holes in his skin, and that's unfortunately the only tool we have to get it to stop) so he didn't have anything better to do...

so that became the second highlight of the day: we walked across to the promenade to meet up with a couple of ze germans, enjoyed a pleasant walk with them, then separated to go into the sea. the weather was absolutely amazing all day (hot, but dry), the sea was calm (except for very small waves crossing each other), and we chilled in the water as the sun sank lower and eventually set.

it was a glorious evening.

there was - as usual - a little unpleasantness getting mr smear out of the water again, and then out of the sand, and then across to and through the showers, but otherwise everything was cool and we enjoyed a pleasant walk-and-talk until we happened to find an open hummusia.

we opened a table and ate too much, and it was excellent.

by the time we got out of there the buses were running.

while waiting for the bus, my son blew my mind with a suggestion to reinvent the question mark.

we arrived home fairly quickly, and showered, and then i passed out on the couch, as much from the post-hummus food coma as from the day in the sun. i got dragged off the couch to say goodnight to mr smear (i'm starting to give up on keeping his door closed when putting him to bed), then tried and failed to get back to sleep even though i was half-asleep the entire time.

and then suddenly i wasn't, so i've written all of this and am now going to try to tire myself out again with youtube and minesweeper...

strange vacation

 yesterday:

i took mr smear to school, then came straight back home so i would be here when the window guys arrived. after i'd waited a while, i received a phone call telling me that the wheels they ordered were available - matching the ones that were currently installed and broken - but that the guy at the store had explained that the reason they'd broken in the first place is because they weren't designed for big windows.

of course.

on the one hand, they might have been "scamming" me for an upsell of 120 shekels. but, more likely, our idiot landlords skimped on the proper wheels because they're precisely the sort of people who would try to save 120 shekels when it would cost a thousand to have to replace them.

anyway, the work was done well, there's no way i would have been able to do any of it myself, and since they've left every opening and closing of the windows has been a pleasantly smooth surprise.

...

after cleaning the floors and rearranging our apartment, i spent the next couple of hours waiting for the air-conditioning guy, who never came. i took a break from waiting in order to go to the shoemaker to pick up my repaired sneakers, developing a craving for a falafel on the way there and grabbing one on the way back.

the weather was hot and dry, and the walk-and-chew was very pleasant. it strangely gave me the distinct sensation of being on holiday.

the only other time i left the apartment was to spy on mr smear, and i was grateful to find him not on his phone, so i didn't have to go through with the punishment. the homework went well.

in the evening, i received a message from the air-conditioner technician, apologizing and asking if we could do sunday instead.

i'll give him one more chance.

...

we started watching eddie murphy's dr dolittle over dinner - much more entertaining than robert downey jr.'s - and then had a long chat with my mom and sister, and then rushed mr smear into bed.

on my way out, i read a whole lot of missed messages in the school chat and learned that the school (and all the schools) are dealing with a really ugly "internet challenge" that is effectively sexual assault (kadisha), and that there was an incident in mr smear's class :/

i hopped on a bus to visit the mongoose. i don't know if i didn't know, or if i'd forgotten, that his partner's pregnant again 😳

we talked until quite late, then i got in a taxi and came home. and got ready for bed, and passed out.

today:

the day began with a very serious discussion about sexual assault, and us telling mr smear that if he witnesses anything like it he's to do everything in his power to stop it immediately - even if it's his friends - and to report it immediately. i think we successfully impressed on him the significance, the important and the potential consequences...

i took mr smear to school (at this point i feel 90% confident in his bus-taking abilities), and when i returned i tried to introduce gd to orgazmo, but she really wasn't interested and i feel like it's aged very, very poorly. like, the concept is funny, and some of the lines are good, but overall it's very flat.

gd and i headed to the nature store, stopping for a jusa nirvana and vegan chocolate alfajores* on the way. then we stopped at a pharmacy, where we bumped into the new captain's first mate and were trapped together in the queue for a while, making small talk and then discussing how things are going in the office, and how the job hunt is going...

* yeah, it hasn't been such a great week for weight-watching

gd and i walked home, picking up coffee at what used to be coffeeholic, and she seemed to manage it well post-nerve-block which is quite something. we did some more shopping at the local store, then mr smear came home, and after some snacking and napping we decided to put the matrix on.

so: the summary of our experience after the first half is that mr smear's mind was blown, but the existential terror proved too much for him and he asked us to stop because he's just not ready for it.

recovery day (1)

 i dreamed a lot last night, so i'm confident i slept. i accompanied mr smear to school (we remembered to take the bus), and then i made my way to the employment agency. "for adults" 🤔

the man who ushered us in spewed a stream of instructions at us, which led to confusion when we got to the ticket machines and they weren't finished booting up yet. then i followed the instructions and waited at the counter indicated on my ticket, but when the clerk showed up she was immediately pissed off with me and sent me to the waiting area. and as soon as i was seated, she called my number.

she didn't speak any english, which wouldn't have been a big deal had i not used an expression i'd translated from english. and she certainly didn't have any detectable sense of humor.

anyway.

after that, i returned home, where i found a delivery notice from the post office indicating that a package had arrived more than two weeks ago, which meant there was a good chance it had been returned to sender. again. i angrily rushed over to the post office, notice in hand, and confronted the manager... who assured me that she's also very frustrated with the delayed notices, and that there's nobody she can talk to about it.

good grief.

the good news is that they hadn't returned it yet, so i finally picked up our math fluxx and mystery fluxx ^_^

(and rain gear for mr smear)

i barely had time to get those back to the apartment before i had to leave again, and with a brief interlude discussing pre-dawn philosophy with horseman i arrived at the coffee shop to meet with the other firees. it was a good couple of hours spent discussing all sorts of things, but mostly supporting each other, and chatting about how to manage (or not manage) a business and what kinds of things we might be interested in building.

at least skippity joined us this time.

i made my way home chatting with swordschool, and we dived into the weeds of a book he wants to publish and i'm trying to help him edit. it's interesting stuff, and it might play into another side project i've been thinking about.

once mr smear got home, it was all about homework until i received a message from the unhinged, once again claiming that her darling innocent angel had been verbally abused by my son.

i immediately took him to task, and put the fear of god in him, and he told us the details and appeared to be suitably contrite regarding his behavior. but i didn't want to respond to the unhinged without some council, so i asked their teacher to call me.

while i waited (and in-between helping gd prepare dinner), i chatted with someone who wanted our windows machine for much less than i'm asking, leading me to re-evaluate my offer and raise the asking price again, but also format the machine.

when the teacher called me, i was pleasantly surprised, both because she's not usually so easy to get hold of and also because she was aware of the incident and supportive. and then, in addition to that, she informed me that mr smear really has been making an effort, that his behavior's no worse than any of the other kids, and that today he entirely voluntarily participated in her science class.

so while he's being punished for handling the unhinged's daughter really badly, we're also very busy praising him for everything else :P

when i finally responded, just as had been recommended, she responded with a flood of her usual disrespectful bile. i took a screenshot and sent it to the teacher so that she knows what's up, and successfully held myself back from responding.

we had a long and entertaining chat with my mom and sister after dinner, then put mr smear to bed (relatively smoothly), and i'm now trying to decide whether to try to be functional or not. i have lots of interesting stuff to read (swordschool homework), but i also have a very busy day tomorrow supporting the window fix and the air-conditioner cleaning, and the floor cleaning in between with gd only able to yell at me for doing a poor job because she's still recovering from yesterday's nerve block...

nerves

i barely slept last night, not sure why.

i was supposed to supervise mr smear on the bus this morning, but we were so wrapped up in our discussion of how to tell jokes across different mediums (and the importance of panel layout, he's got strong opinions on swamp thing) that we auto-piloted to the light rail instead :P

i spent a couple of hours preparing for my phone screen, after which it turned out to be just a non-tech introduction. but it was positive nonetheless, and immediately afterwards i heard back from the outsourcing form, who's skipping a step with me and has invited me to what might be the final round! i'm legitimately excited about this one, i really hope it all comes together.

after that, my eyes were giving me trouble and i was feeling quite antsy, and i decided to take a walk with my kindle. i found a nice spot in a nearby park and read a little, but after a couple of pages i realized i just didn't have the focus. i walked a little further, found a surprisingly nice little fountain hidden away next to the park that i've never noticed in the three and a half years we've lived right next door, and then returned home just in time for a call from swordschool.

jesus, fuck, he's been going through some difficult shit. we talked for quite a while, so long that i almost entirely missed urchin's visit (we literally had a couple of minutes to chat before she left), and we're going to continue the conversation tomorrow. i'm planning on giving him a boost with one of his ideas and hopefully we'll enjoy some quick success 🤞

mr smear arrived around the time urchin left, and we dove straight in to math homework. well, he did - he didn't really need my help, so i got some of the dishes done.

mr smear has been repeating some mightily inappropriate shit recently, directly from his new friends at school. i'm trying to impress upon him, just in case, that friends don't pressure friends into doing anything they're not comfortable with, and that if he does find himself compromised, he needs to tell us so we can help him out of whatever shit he gets into...

a short while later, we all left for the hospital complex, picked up some meds and then accompanied gd to the pain clinic for her nerve block. after getting her ready for the doctor - which took a while, but much less time than usual - mr smear and i went through his hebrew reading homework. he did really well, but there were a couple of moments that reduced my patience, and then his behavior afterwards (he didn't want to do anything that wasn't on his phone, including not doing anything at all) reduced it further.

getting gd home after the procedure was pretty straightforward, and after a brief chat with my mom i took mr smear with me to go pick up dinner. some of the walk was unpleasant - my patience had pretty much bottomed out by that point - but most of it was us talking. a lot of the talk was about heavy stuff (aging, illness and death), which was fine except for the bit where i said something so heavy it upset him and i immediately regretted it...

we picked up... too much food. like, two of the dishes we could've left behind, and it was quite an expensive meal. having said that, the meals were delicious.

there were some negative feelings around bedtime (the usual), but otherwise it's been a smooth evening.

tomorrow morning i've got an appointment with the israeli employment service...

strangeness

 everything feels weird. i feel like i'm in some kind of routine of routine-less restlessness. each day different, but the same, and that's highlighted by the early sunsets and evening homework / dinner / bedtime rituals.

and the constant in-and-out of anxieties, some job-hunting related, some apartment-and-admin related, some apartment-hunting related.

...

the interview went very differently from what i expected, and i hope he follows through (he said he'd push me forward to the next step) because i might have been overly-enthusiastic during the goodbyes. it's an outsourcing firm, and the more he talked the more confident i became that it's a great fit for me. working freelance, essentially, but with a constant salary, and it being in the job description to focus on technical problems, develop domain expertise and not really have to worry about whether the client is actually successful or not.

mercenary, yes, but career mode mercenary.

...

after the air-conditioner cleaning, i informed the landlord who's now claiming that it's a cleaning problem, not a mold problem, which is completely insane. we're running the one in the living room at the moment, and it seems alright, but i'm nervous about mr smear having another breathing issue in the night.

at least i seem to have found a professional to do a proper clean.

...

i hopped on a bus to meet with my ex-boss. on the way, i snapped a photo of mr smear across the road, face buried in his phone screen. he's now been warned that i'm going to be trying to ambush him, and his privileges are on the line...

the meeting with the ex-boss went as well as could be expected, i suppose. he stuck to the lines he fired me with, but he did frame it a bit differently, and we discussed a whole bunch of uncomfortable stuff. at the end of the day there are some things he misunderstood (both in terms of what happened in the office, and in terms of what i actually do for a living), though it's too late for any of that to make much difference. and i do feel like he heard me regarding the impact of their bungling of the firing, and i got some clarification into some of the others' situations (it doesn't make their decisions better, but even if i think they're wrong at least i understand why they thought it made sense), and before we got up he offered himself as a reference.

i walked home, helped mr smear with his math homework (he's finally caught up to where he was originally pretending to have got to), we had a great onigiri / lasagne dinner followed by a chat with my mom, and then it was some more of the neverending story and me sitting down at my computer and having no idea what i want to be doing right now.

i should probably turn it off and read.

contamination

 i went to bed pretty soon after posting last night (i had one more cup of tea and read some more percy jackson).

around 2am, mr smear woke up coughing and choking, and it took a while before he was able to breathe normally and go back to sleep. i suspected it was related to the mold and the dusting we've been doing :/

the morning started off pretty well, and mr smear essentially handled the bus ride by himself. it was particularly nice watching him being responsible and putting his phone away after paying, and actually observing the world around the bus for once.

since i got back home, gd and i have been having a proper go at two of the airconditioners, and what we've cleared out so far is horrific. and never-ending. i hope i didn't get any of the cleaning stuff in my eye (i'm not sure). i hope it's now actually safe enough to run for a while...

i'm not sure whether i'm ready for the technical interview today, but it'll probably be fine. i have one goal for today: to try and find a way to explain manacher’s algorithm in a way that normal people can understand.

leftovers

a lot of today was taking up by multiple rounds of doing the dishes from yesterday (almost done), and eating multiple rounds of lasagne and onigiri leftovers (still plenty remaining).

gd and i cleaned the filters of mr smear's airconditioner, but then discovered too late that it needs an additional mold treatment :/

most of the rest of the day was spent doing interesting python questions. with a break at one point to read some more percy jackson and nap.

i took mr smear to school this morning, and he more-or-less handled the bus ride by himself (he needed a reminder from me not to get distracted by his phone). after school, he hung around with his friend for an hour and a half*, so long that it was dark by the time he got home and i was sent out to the station (*ahem*, the married "we" needed to go meet him). where i ambushed him, as he came out of the station with his eyes glued to his screen 😒

* it's a loophole he's using to get out of homework. but it's not really working.

...

he's in bed now, it's been a day. tomorrow's my interview, followed by a chat with my now-ex boss. i wonder if he'll surprise me with a real reason for stabbing me in the back and cutting me out of what should have been enough options to buy an apartment.

social

a couple of days ago i bought a couple of games that seemed like they would be fun to play with mr smear. unfortunately, mr smear tends to be contrary when it comes to game time - he complains that i don't play enough with him, but he usually only wants to play games with me when he's on downtime. he straight-up refused to give the night of the rabbit a try, and while i didn't want to give him shit for not wanting to play a specific game, i was frustrated with him for approaching it with a negative attitude.

while he played something else, gd walked in and sat down next to me to make a show of taking interest in it. i thought it was a bit too obvious, but as soon as his screen time was over he was hovering over me, getting very involved in the puzzle solving and eventually insisting on taking a turn at the wheel :P

gd invited our friends over for late lunch / dinner, and that entailed a shopping run and a lot of dishes. it also resulted in mr smear getting a lot more screen time than usual... but he did a pretty good job of playing host when they arrived, and after everyone had enjoyed a good onigiri dinner and he'd entertained everyone with goat simulator, he pulled out goodcritters and three of them settled in for a very serious game.

i cannot overstate just how big a deal that is!

the kids played until i was past everyone's bedtime, and they rolled out in a hurry to get home before the skies opened.

unfortunately, the incredible downpour began a minute after they left...

mr smear got ready for bed and went to sleep without further incident, which was pretty impressive all things considered, including the fact that he's still a bit traumatized by a scene from jujutsu kaisen (yuji's fingers being burned).

...

i feel like it's been a good weekend, and i feel relatively rested. regardless of how i feel in the morning, though, i'm going to have to do some serious interview practice tomorrow 'cause i need to impress a professional python expert (as opposed to a regular developer who uses python professionally).

something

 these past few weeks seem like a fever dream, and any moment that i realize that this is all real is jarring and triggers thin tentacles of anxiety creeping through my torso.

i slept alright last night. mr smear woke me up at 6.30am to dutifully inform me that he'd brushed his teeth so that he could get on screens by 7.30am. i wish he was this motivated to get ready for school.

i got up to him playing totally accurate battle simulator, and watched him for a while, developing my usual concern that he won't play the campaign and actually learn anything. eventually *i* took a turn, and went into the campaign, and he cheered me on* while i smashed through what appears to be the tutorial levels.

* by making sure i knew that my strategies were obviously garbage, and then being surprised whenever i won

i watched a bit of why the universe’s expansion doesn’t make sense, it's very calming.

we watched another episode of jujutsu kaisen, and then i piled warm blankets on myself and read a bit of percy jackson until i passed out.

now i'm drinking coffee, listening to SORA 1989, and wondering whether i should be *doing* something or not. i always have a hard time not *doing* anything, but the *do something* mechanism in my brain seems to be offline.

attitude

 the electric storm last night was incredible. i'm surprised i slept as much as i did, especially considering the fact that my lower back / hips are doing their usual horrible (literal) pain-in-the-ass thing...

it was a rainy day, so i accompanied mr smear to school, coats and umbrellas and huge puddles alongside the sidewalks making it quite the mission. i was very tired and slow, and by the time i got home it was all i could do to remove my heavy rain boots and lie down on the couch... only to be immediately caught by the default ten-minute alarm for a group parental guidance session i'd agreed to come to :/

[pauses to put mr smear to bed, and have deep arguments as to why his door has to be closed. and then configures default calendar alarms]

i walked to the gathering, which was at the parents of one of mr smear's new friends. while i deeply regretted signing up for the entire walk there, once the talk got started i was relieved to find it genuinely interesting and helpful.

it was very long, though.

at the end, a couple of other parents mentioned roblox issues, triggering me into explaining how toxic it (and a lot of online games) can be, and generating some interest from a few parents in dealing with parental controls, digital content and peer pressure.

after everyone else had left, i found myself with the parents doing a deep dive into our family's adventures, and then theirs', and it was a fun social experience in spite of the heavy subject matter. while i was there, mr smear called me and asked if he could go home with another friend, which was a huge relief because for some reason i'd thought i would need to pick him up :P

i came home and rested for quite a while (including watching another episode of made in abyss), then realized that it was getting late for a friday afternoon and that i needed to pick mr smear up. i left expecting to be able to take a bus, but i'd just missed the last bus, and decided to book a car instead. i got to the car, did the inspection, connected the bluetooth (always a story), and then found myself trapped in the parking lot because the security gate remote wasn't working 🤦

i then had to return the car, walk to a different lot (it was drizzling), and make the requisite adjustments for the new car before finally heading out. i got to mr smear's friend's apartment in good time, but i'd already lost almost half an hour of the hour booked, and then mr smear took more than ten minutes to come down, and then we hit traffic on the way back; we literally had one minute left on the clock when we finally parked the car.

aside from all that, mr smear had had a great afternoon. we came home, i did a lot of dishes and helped gd with the challot and some of the lasagne preparation, and mr smear and i watched a few episodes of jujutsu kaisen together.

it's been a long day, i'm tired (and my lower back's still hurting), gd's feeling sick (it's been on/off all week), and mr smear's actively not going to sleep. but i still feel like it's been a good day, and overall a surprisingly positive week.