the lesson

 today started off a bit shit, with a half-hour homework battle. on the one hand, it was exhausting. on the other hand, i managed to take it to a good place, and he was happy when he finally understood what to do.

he joined me in picking up a bunch of garfield books we ordered, and then continued on with me to work.

the work day was a bit rough, with the worst of it being the discovery - around 5pm - that the contractor's code i'd accepted in the morning had a pretty serious issue. i had to work on it before and after dinner, and i only got through the shit a short while ago.

otherwise, the tech ops guy invited us to join him on a mission to see the cosplayers at icon, which we all enjoyed, and mr smear and i both thoroughly enjoyed the bagels we picked up on the way back.

...

otherwise, mr smear's eye seems to be responding well to the meds, but gd's really having a hard time with her shoulder :(

chlorine

 godsdammit. we don't have anything conclusive to go by, but it seems like swimming in chlorine may be triggering mr smear's herpes :/

The authors describe the case of a highly stressed 36-year-old man who experienced ten or more painful episodes per year of recurrent oral-lingual herpes simplex virus 1, which were only partially responsive to acyclovir therapy for three years. A three-year diary of activities, personal stresses, concurrent infections, local trauma, and other possible psychogenic, somatogenic, and environmental events was used systematically to attempt to pair the stresses with the recurrent herpes episodes. Chlorinated swimming pool water seems to have been the triggering agent of the recurrent herpes simplex virus 1 episodes due to its temporal correlation and the greater than twenty-four-month asymptomatic period after the patient discontinued swimming in chlorinated water, but continued to swim in fresh and salt water, along with his normal pursuit of all other activities and habits. [source]

i guess we'll be more aware from now on...

...

otherwise, he was freaked out by the second episode of full metal alchemist: brotherhood and doesn't want to see any more. i guess i'm on my own.

two years

 october 7th, two years later. i have nothing to say. that is, i have lots to say, and zero energy to even say it.

...

this morning got off to a pretty good start. reading and napping, including reading a chapter of the neverending story to my wife and child.

on our way out to ride to the swimming pool, i got stuck for almost half an hour trying to arrange tickets for circo circo for us and mr smear's best friend. we eventually got that right, so crossing fingers that friday will be smooth 🤞

the ride there was pretty chill, though i think mr smear was right about it taking much longer than i'd expected. most of our swimming experience was good, in spite of me having woken up with my neck threatening to lock (it's still threatening a bit). the toughest, drainiest part was the forty five minutes spent getting mr smear out of the pool, into the locker room, out of the shower, and out of the locker room.

we were both that special kind of tired after a sunny ride and a long time in the pool.

and that was before we had to ride all the way home...

we made it, eventually*, stopping only for a much-needed ice-cream break.

* about half an hour later

we came home with a plan, and we executed it well. drink water, shower, eat, play, and watch the first two episodes of full metal alchemist: brotherhood.

the rest of the afternoon has been switching between dirty dishes and inktober. now it's almost dinner time.

impatient

yesterday:

we didn't go. by the time dinner was done, i was done. and mr smear still went to bed really late because he was working on his inktober offering.

i spent a lot of the evening - i went to bed late - updating the windows machine's drivers, removing random stuff, and installing windows-only games to play until we can shift it.

today:

i had to do quite a bit of work today, and unfortunately it included the techops manager being a piece of shit for no apparent reason, but thankfully on a public channel ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

...

gd, mr smear and i went to the pharmacy, and the line was long so mr smear and i had a lot of time together. most of it was good, but one incident really messed me up: the only adventurous things he's ever done without being dragged kicking and screaming have been in video games, or trivial combinations of food. the reason it came up was that i want to take my family to the circus during the holidays, and he's decided - without any understanding of what the experience is actually like - that he'd rather just stay at home.

*sigh*

i've been stretched thin for years, but also his nonsense compounds. it's very hard to be a patient parent and not explode regularly. very, very hard.

...

once we got back, i finally (!) posted the windows machine on facebook's marketplace, for a relatively high price (for its age) that i hope will at least set a baseline for negotiating. the more i can get for it, the less the "real" pc will cost. also, someone reminded me recently that a proper gaming pc is upgradeable. that's a big deal.

...

gd's really struggling, as much psychologically as physically. the pain she's dealing with is the stuff of nightmares.

grind break

this morning we completed the pokemon puzzle (including a few frustrating minutes hunting for the final piece that was resting, camouflaged, on top of the puzzle), i helped mr smear through the first page of his holiday homework, i did the dishes, and headed off to the office.

it was a weird work day, lots of syncing and strategizing, and keeping my nose out of the bunch of kids hijacking the office, and by the time i got to the important, urgent work that needed to be done i ran into some big issues that thoroughly blocked me. and then it was time to leave the office in order to be able to take mr smear to the swimming pool.

mr smear and i arrived at the pool in good time, only to learn that it was closed. the nice lady printed me out some sheets that are much easier to parse than their schedule boards, so now we have an idea of when we're welcome there...

the past hour or so has been all about helping gd in the kitchen (and being upset to learn - or relearn - that the hand blender we bought months ago never worked), and struggling to update the dell device drivers (i'm typing this on the same machine while i continue to struggle), and being frustrated because i decided earlier that i didn't want to go swimming any more, but now mr smear's all-in and he's never all-in so now i have to go.

*deep breaths*

rest day

the rest of the day was good. mr smear finished a really good inktober entry, we've pretty much completed the pokemon puzzle, i read quite a bit and napped a bit, and we had a good ride to the park.

also, we're loving futurama together.

waiting quietly

 we did very little yesterday (aside from cleaning the floor). we did the puzzle (we're mostly done at this point), read / napped / played (mr smear was overjoyed to discover that subnautica runs better on my m2 macbook than on our shitty dell xps), we made challah-peño again - which was an amazing success, again - and after kiddush we ate a simple dinner and watched a couple more episodes of futurama (even gd's getting won over).

this morning has been pretty chilled so far, but i just had a realization about mr smear's screentime/downtime protocol: it's been bothering me for ages that he sets an alarm to the end of his downtime, and it bumps him out of whatever he's doing. he was just making fantastic progress on his day 4 inktober entry, and his alarm went off and he just tossed it aside to go look for a screen.

so no more downtime alarms, only screentime alarms.

we learn.

...

in political news, i've read the hamas response to trump's peace proposal and it doesn't seem like they're going to do what's being demanded of them. which isn't surprising. but i'm nervous, because if they return the hostages, we don't know what they'll do to the hostages pre- or during delivery, everything they've done has been calculated to maximize psychological harm to israel. but if all they do is mess around, at least we have clearance to go in and get the job done.

slow and steady

 the fast itself wasn't hard, but on a normal rest day with caffeine i'm tired and need lots of naps, so yesterday i was tired. 

mr smear wasn't feeling well (he still isn't), so instead of taking him to meet his classmates for a bike ride in the evening we all stayed at home and had a very quiet night. in the morning i went to a service close by that i've been meaning to check out for ages, and i arrived just in time to make a minyan for shacharit. it was a pleasant service, with a bit of a wishy-washy sermon, but by the time one of the leaders said "it's not mandatory to leave for yizkor" i - along with half the congregation - got up and left.

my back was sore, my vision was doubling and i was starting to fall asleep.

we spent the afternoon alternating between reading the story of jonah, napping, putting together an awesome pokemon puzzle (we're more than a quarter of the way through the 1000 piece puzzle), and encouraging mr smear for his day 2 inktober entry.

in the evening, i took mr smear to hear the final shofar blow. it took us a bit too long to leave the apartment - we passed the service in the kikar just before they finished, arrived too late for the other service, and then returned past the kikar service after they'd finished too :/

i broke my fast on pancakes and some healthy leftovers, while we watched and enjoyed futurama. then it was a bit of a struggle to get mr smear into bed (no particular reason), and then it was time to pass out myself.

today so far:

my first coffee was accompanied by a long nap. so far today we've started cleaning our talitot, and mr smear's alternating between finishing up yesterday's drawing and helping us with the puzzle.

aside from cleaning the floor (post-cleaning lady) i'm feeling particularly lazy. i keep fantasizing about picking up a new speaker and possibly a gaming computer, but i'm honestly not confident it's the right timing for the latter.

contemplation

yesterday:

mr smear went to school by himself again, which makes us a bit nervous but i guess it's no different from him coming back home by himself... parenting is weird.

i had a chat with urchin, who's just been laid off along with a bunch of her coworkers due to a change in management. amazing timing, right before the holidays. she's apparently interested in some of our open positions, which would be cool.

yesterday was long. lots of context switching, lots of issues that were supposed to be resolved the day before but weren't. lots of planning with my coworkers (mostly productive and positive). one emotional outburst about procedure that got me called in to a room by the rnd manager to tell me i'd made a bad vibe... i just apologize to her and the guy in question, and i've got a lesson to learn.

on my way into our apartment i picked up a second notice* for the two fluxx games i ordered a while back, which was apparently sent three weeks ago. it took so long to be delivered that they've returned the package, which is really unfair :(

* a first notice was never sent, neither were any emails or sms messages...

i came home just in time for dinner, just in time to see gd almost collapse from the sudden onset of something. i rushed myself and mr smear through dinner while she rested, wished them both a good night, and then headed out to the british ze german's shiva house.

it's always weird and sad walking past my mother and my old apartment.

the next couple of hours weren't unpleasant, the story of my friend's sister's passing notwithstanding. ru55 and the irish ze german were there too, and i alternated between conversation flow and just sitting and listening. ru55 gave me a ride home, i brushed my teeth and showered, and then sat down to do some more testing for our contractor.

it didn't take long to get stuck and stop the testing. and then suddenly there were noises coming from mr smear's room, where gd was attending to him and his suddenly sore throat. when i went in to commiserate he sent me away, but a bit later called out to me, really upset that he'd forgotten to call my mom to say good night 🥹

and then, in the middle of the night, gd decided that we urgently needed to do online grocery shopping :/

today:

i slept alright, but i've been feeling a bit on/off today. mr smear's leg seems to have healed, so we left him to his devices (ha ha) and headed to the pharmacy*, did some grocery shopping and picked up a pokémon puzzle for tomorrow.

* we left the first one in a huff because someone was drilling and there was dust everywhere while a bunch of sick and elderly people were waiting

i did some more work with the contractor, and then the new cleaning lady arrived. she insisted on wearing her shoes in the apartment, which gd eventually conceded and which i'm too nervous to discuss with her later when i get home from my voluntary exile at our favorite coffee shop. i somehow got dragged into a political discussion with her, which included a very awkward "we're not going to agree or understand each other" moment, but also her thanking me profusely for oversharing with a stranger.

i've spent the past few hours slowly drinking coffees, eating a sandwich, and trying not to fall asleep in the comfy armchair while slowly reading some more blindsight.

and spending a fair amount of time just staring into space. i guess i have a lot of processing to do.

reinforced

 trump and bibi's announcement earlier was very interesting - even the ridiculous waffling was amusing, i guess that counts. my interpretation is that either hamas disintegrates now and we actually get the hostages back, or (more likely) we now officially have everyone's blessing to continue to fuck them up, rotten qatar included. either way, i see this as a win.

...

mr smear went to school by himself today. gd was more nervous about that than me, but the moment he was out of sight he was out of mind, and almost an hour later i remembered to check that he got to school alright :P

we had our final parental guidance session with the therapist, which was interesting and largely positive.

...

it was a long work day, but very constructive in spite of the fact that i developed a bit of a headache from the get-go. the new devops seems to be finding his groove, and the contractor and i had a spectacularly good day; that "unfinished" work i pushed a couple of weeks ago? we finally fixed the things that were blocking it, and it worked. seeing a completely successful run was one of those special, pivotal moments, and it unlocks a bunch of cool things* going forward.

* things that will make everyone's lives easier

i got home in time to have a pleasant chat with mr smear (and try to figure out why my computer's behaving badly), and dinner was great, and bedtime went smoothly. the past couple of hours have been quiet, and i'm now contemplating heading to bed early.

...

oh, shit! i completely forgot to mention yesterday that our company's acquired another startup in order to merge its fifteen-person development team into ours (O_o)

i guess things are going to be busy. also, that means we've just run out of space in our huge new (temporary) offices :P

busy

 i'm starting this while the day's still not over - it's almost 11pm and i'm testing a contractor's changes in the hopes i have a good answer for him by morning.

today was busy. i dropped mr smear off at school and went straight to work, and got stuck into an interesting hour of explaining my vision to one of our new product managers. then i discovered that it was one of our incoming devops guys' official first day, and spending the day with him, onboarding and planning, was generally much easier than our previous interactions.

the day involved a lot of management, strategy, and a lot of testing and fixing.

i guess i ate relatively well, too, but that wasn't out of choice, more lack of snacks in the office kitchens.

my only real break was picking up mr smear from the station and taking him to his final therapy session. tomorrow morning's our last guidance session with the therapist, too.

it took me longer to leave the office than i'd hoped, and gd's arm's so messed up that mr smear and i both needed to help her get dinner ready. we did it, but unfortunately so late that we couldn't watch anything while we ate (no screens an hour before bedtime) and mr smear ended up getting into bed much later than he should have, complaining about there not being time for reading and then about his "night light" (the air-conditioner). i eventually managed to get him to go to sleep by himself, but it wasn't easy. (to be fair, it wasn't that hard, but everything's relative to how tired one is)

at least the hole in his leg seems to be getting better.

i've spent the past two hours on the testing, and it's still not done. and i haven't even looked at facebook because i know there're a bunch of messages regarding the comic printing that i don't really have energy to go through right now...

paused

 i did eventually get back to sleep for a bit, and then woke up to a pretty good day. i read a little more blindsight (but only a little), we all watched kindergarten cop together (it's aged well), and in spite of his initial protests mr smear and i went out for a very nice walk, getting exercise and sunshine but also a couple of games of jurassic park at babylon park.

tomorrow's back to work and school.

i'm feeling a bit less post-vaccine, at least.

holy dad joke

hello darkness my old friend...

it's now 3.45am and i haven't been able to sleep for a while. but i'm really tired. i actually feel like i have legitimate reason to be, but in addition to everything else i believe that this morning (or during the night) the flu vaccine side effects kicked in and i spent most of the day feeling weak, slow and irritable.

i accompanied gd to the clinic for her flu shot (reading blindsight on my kindle app whenever the opportunity arose). we walked to the mall to try and get mr smear's school shirts printed, but they didn't have the correct logo so they referred us to a different branch. we headed to the bakery for a coffee and a sandwich, and picked up a couple of yummo's vegan protein bars (which are delicious!). we returned to the clinic so that gd could get a prescription made, then returned to the mall to pick it up. on our way out, i was inspired to write a post to my israeli "hive-mind" asking for assistance with the comic printing.

by this point i was long over the morning and feeling shitty and impatient.

we returned home, then almost immediately left again to get the shirt printing done at the other mall. and then finally return home, dragging in the delivered groceries when i arrived.

by that stage, mr smear had already finished school for the day. i tooled around until he got home, and the rest of the afternoon was a combination of napping (crashing), helping him with his reading and tanach homework (which went relatively smoothly), and doing dishes.

...

for years, i've been begging gd to make challah-peño: challah with actual jalapeño in it. this evening, in addition to giving her a hand in the kitchen because her shoulder's out, we actually made the thing and it came out beautifully. i'm extremely proud and excited: not only did we invent a fun idea, and actually execute it, but the execution was a raging success and the challah-peño is spicy and delicious ^_^

...

during the afternoon and evening, i began receiving some solid advice and leads regarding the comic printing, so i've got homework to do but it's feeling positive. amusingly, a friend put me in touch with someone, who it turned out i had a conversation with trying to recruit him to the project in 2012!

i also had a chat with our kibbutz cousin, who's finally given notice and is going on pension soon. and her eldest son (a few months older than me), with his severe learning disabilities, just completed his bagrut for a job which is pretty darned impressive.

...

i tried watching the charlie kirk and netanyahu southpark episodes with gd after getting mr smear into bed, but i passed out about three quarters of the way through the first one. in theory, i should have enjoyed a good night's sleep...

sirens and sex-ed

 > now... probably going to bed soon.

and then, shortly after i wrote that, another houthi attack. having to drag mr smear out of bed, and then afterwards get him back into bed.

i tried reading in bed, but my eyes started closing on me, and i thought that meant that i'd fall asleep soon. but it didn't. i struggled for quite a while. and then, when i did sleep, i managed to injure my neck, and it took a while to work through that.

so i woke up pretty tired this morning.

yesterday, on our way to the dentist, mr smear informed us about a conversation he'd had with some of his new friends about "backshot" - a term for sodomy that we weren't familiar with - so on the way to school this morning i gave him "the talk". it was less awkward than i'd anticipated, and it seems to have landed...

first rain

 this morning started out alright. i accompanied mr smear to school, taking turns to carefully carry his miniature sukkah. i proceeded to the ministry of the interior offices to pick up a replacement cover for my id card, which went pleasantly smoothly.

i continued on to the electronics store with the intention to purchase a gaming machine, but halfway there realized that they weren't open yet.

i returned home, bumping into the irish ze german for a catch-up, and then accompanied gd to the hospital to make an appointment for her shoulder. we managed to get one for december :/

on the way back, we stopped by the clinic to secure authorization, and i headed up to the nurse's offices for a flu shot. i was surprised to not feel it going in at all!

almost home, the skies opened, and we got caught in a downpour. the first rain of the season was intense.

the afternoon was spent resting, and starting to read peter watts' blindsight (i had to skip the description in gomel's the end of humanism, part 2 because of spoilers), and then...

... we received a photo from mr smear, who on his way out of class found that someone had destroyed his miniature sukkah before his teacher even got to see it 💔

we never even thought to take photos of it before :(

we're trying to console him, and keep reminding him that at least we got to appreciate it, and that he did a great job. but that really sucks.

...

we all went to the dentist together for gd's scan. afterwards, we opened a table at the hummusia, and then enjoyed a pleasant evening walk home. the evening went smoothly.

i've spent the past while re-watching bill hicks' sane man. now... probably going to bed soon.

bother

🤦

today was a mix of me finally finishing nightwood, and being uncomfortably conscious of how i've been spending most of my downtime watching crap on youtube while doing minesweeper challenges, or playing relatively mindless games (slay the spire and hades), and not doing anything constructive that does my soul any good.

i've been becoming more and more disturbed by the influences of social media and AI, by the dumbing down of humans and by the geopolitics that are being shaped around these technologies. god help us all.

...

we had yet another big fight with mr smear today, which was exactly the same as yesterday's and exactly the same as we've been fighting about for the past couple of weeks. again ending in what felt like a breakthrough moment, but who the fuck knows?

otherwise, he did a pretty good job of putting together a miniature sukkah for school, i went outside with him to gather leaves and helped him with the construction itself, he did an amazing job of drawing the walls, and it was great watching him do it all with a good attitude and seeing him feel proud of his work when he was done.

...

i'm supposed to be on vacation tomorrow. assuming no work emergencies, after taking mr smear to school i'll need to take gd to the hospital to try and get her some help - her shoulder's really in a bad way :(

sweet-and-sour new year

the theme of the past two days has been strongly aligned with the past two weeks; lots of fighting with mr smear because he doesn't appreciate the relationship between cause and effect. specifically, his bad behavior causing negative consequences.

 yesterday:

yesterday was mostly a combination of pre-chag shopping runs. a mall mission to find a backpack for mr smear to replace the one he left in the street, a grocery shop, a neighborhood store fruit and veg run, and gift shopping. then we stopped for lunch (gd and i for a vegan sandwich and fake-greek salad, mr smear wolfed down an entire laffa), and then we returned home in time to get started on preparing the choc-chip challah and other dinner contributions (mushroom pie).

in the evening, i learned just how much damage the mongoose's physio had done to gd, not only hurting and bruising her, but also scratching the shit out of her with her fingernails.

everything was ready in time for dinner at our friends. the evening was generally lovely, though all four of the kids (ours included) took turns being offensive and upsetting their parents; mr smear's most offensive moments included running down his old class as "garbage" when his friend's still struggling with being in it.

and shit vibes from mr smear as we arrived home, super late.

today:

today started with me helping out a contractor, then playing games and reading while mr smear was very bored and quite unappreciative of the fact that it's his own behavior that got him into this mess (not just being rude, but he made a new hole in his leg). it also included gd's arm going out of joint again and me needing to cancel our participation in our cousin's dinner tonight :(

this morning included a lot more shit from him, culminating in a pillow fight with me smashing him over the head repeatedly trying to get him to understand cause and effect. this had the strange effect of calming him down, and afterwards we went out on a flour mission that turned into a very pleasant, long walk culminating in a really nice lunch.

mr smear was being playful on the way home, and we were almost all the way home when his mood suddenly turned sour but he continued to provoke responses even after i warned him to stop. this led to some very serious, horrible moments, and when we got back it took a lot of fighting (on both my and gd's parts) to bring him down to earth and get him to see some kind of reason.

it was literal insanity.

and then, just as everything seemed to be resolved and becoming peaceful, gd came in and "misread the room", effectively undoing all of the progress. i'm still in shock, but mr smear seems to be more aligned in spite of that so... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

the rest of the evening so far has been good. now it's dinnertime. hopefully tonight will set a better tone for the new year.

not-holiday mission accomplished

 hades is cool, i'm enjoying it so far.

yesterday was mostly spent lying flat, reading or napping or introducing mr smear to futurama or trying to keep an eye cracked open for a ren & stimpy episode.

and doing lots of dishes.

today, after taking mr smear to school i stopped by the mall to pick up some underwear, which turned out to be a little bit too large because i've lost a little weight since the last time. i'm not sure if i'm happy about getting smaller, or sad about getting underwear that's not quite the right size.

i was supposed to be on vacation today, but was called in for an urgent deployment. due to the urgency - not least of which was due to tomorrow being erev rosh hashana - three of us were supposed to be working in parallel. so i was a little bit annoyed that one of the guys was suddenly moved over to something else, and then there were just two of us.

we encountered a hell of a lot of issues along the way, but by 5.30pm we were done and everything looked good. so... cool.

otherwise, today was about trying to eat responsibly and failing just a bit, and there was a short break between deployments to take mr smear to his therapist appointment.

the evening was pretty relaxed, and now i'm on holiday until next sunday which is much needed.

the road to hades

 i picked up mr smear; we'd planned on heading south on the light rail, but for some reason he changed his mind at the last minute and we just came home instead. we picked up some urgent groceries at the local, and spent the rest of the day indoors.

i rested a bit, and spent a large chunk of the day doing what's making me feel more and more uncomfortable: youtube and social media. i know it's not good for my brain, and i'm not getting anything productive done.

aside from that, though, i helped mr smear through his math homework and it was a pretty positive experience overall.

gd's been having a really, really hard time with nerve pain, on top of being sick.

after dinner and getting mr smear into bed, i spent a little time playing slay the spire while waiting for hades to download. let's see how that goes.

quieter

in retrospect, it was obvious that not finishing the cards at night was a mistake. fortunately, we managed to get to the school with five minutes to hunt down the class post box (an impressively detailed hot hair balloon with all the kids' names in a word search on the basket).

then i bussed back north to the post office to send a package, then back again to the office.

my vacation day on sunday has been cancelled due to some urgent (relatively) manual labor. my british coworker and i communicated everything we needed to to our boss regarding the two incoming guys, who're putting pressure on us without understanding nor appearing to be too concerned by how our devs operate.

happy hour was nice, we went to a pub close by. i made an effort not to eat too much, but i'd already eaten a much larger-than-necessary sandwich for lunch on top of a lot of fruit and veggies in the morning. this morning i also ate more than i should have - muesli followed by roasted veggies - and gd's laughing at me for sabotaging my own diet :(

...

today's been relaxed so far. i booked myself and mr smear for the class camping trip next month, upgraded my work macos, and took a trip to the mall only to hesitate once i arrived... i don't think i'm ready to pull the trigger on purchasing a new computer yet.

i walked to mr smear's school to pick him up, and have been writing this from a very nice urban park.

back to the office

 back to the office, still messy but i tested myself to make sure i was clear. busy workdays, not too much stress though - i'm being cautious not to let anything drag me back to pre-illness stress levels, that was definitely burnout.

i've at least been sleeping alright, but i'm still feeling tired.

on tuesday i left work, spent two hours hanging around the train station platform because fires interrupted the schedules, and then nystire picked me up and we took a friend out for burgers in a really classy* nes tziona pub. i ate too much.

* </sarcasm>

we're currently finishing up mr smear's new year's cards for his class (i'm still riding high on the success of finding envelopes that can handle A5) and then heading out.

WFH

 it wasn't an easy day, but it was alright. there was some more drama between our incoming manager and the already-established (british) devops guy. i eventually managed to make my code do all the things, but put it through "unfinished" because the rabbithole it demanded is 100% covered by the other incoming devops guy, and he's just about done.

so hopefully tomorrow will see a success merging of the two.

our very sweet elderly neighbor knocked on our door today, and surprised us by delivering a nice, large bowl of roasted veggies because we'd told her we were down with the flu when we bumped into her yesterday morning at the clinic!

mr smear seems to have had a good day, and had a relatively calm, cooperative evening. i finally got in touch with the conversatory, we're trying to get him registered and it looks like an amazing program.

i ate too much at dinner, and my stomache's feeling bloated.

gd's neck and back are on/off these past few days, and we're both coughing a lot and gross.

[grabs reolin]

reset

 these are big, hairy days and i'm having trouble keeping track.

i felt much better for the entire length of saturday, but saturday night was once again plagued by night sweats and hallucinations. last night i still had a couple of night sweats, but i don't think i had any hallucinations. i was able to work yesterday - a particularly long, nasty workday working around a bunch of shit, broken tools - and i'm going to work today, though from home because i'm still gross.

yesterday morning started with taking mr smear to school*, and then spending a couple of hours supporting gd with a doctor's appointment and a pharmacy visit. at least she has the meds she needs.

* he looked miserable on his way into the school, and i asked him what was going on. apparently, he's really scared he's getting fat. we've since had a family discussion about that, and i guess we'll see how that goes.

mr smear came home by himself yesterday, but was literally coming up the stairs when my alert went off for his therapist appointment and it was the default **** ten minute alert. that's what happens when i'm not the one to add things to our shared calendar 😡

so mr smear and i - with me in the middle of a work struggle - rushed out to grab a bus, get stuck in traffic, and arrive there with only fifteen or twenty minutes of his appointment remaining.

...

last night, mr smear was supposed to be doing his homework while i was trying to work, and after a week of him giving us shit about it i had zero patience, and i got violently angry. a bit later, i sat across from him and explained that over the past year or two it's become normalized that we only get positive results from him after intimidation, threats, or things getting physical, and i don't want that. even if it's largely performative, i'm embarrassed by it, grossed out by it, and i don't want to do that any more.

so last night i reestablished some ground rules. if he wants to FA, he can FO. i'll do what i can to help him and guide him, but i'm not going to fight with him to try and stop him from doing things that hurt him or take him down a dark path. he's going to do the things that need to get done, or face the music. if he needs to learn his lessons in the hardest ways imaginable, then so be it.

the first result of him not completing his homework is that the homework piles up, and there's no screentime until it's all done. but last night he had to copy his hebrew homework into his workbook, and it took him a long time to realize that i was serious about him not going to bed until it was done. he tried to run out the clock by doodling, at which point i informed him that if he continues doodling in his workbook (as opposed to in his sketchbook) i'm going to make him take a fresh workbook and copy everything across into the new one.

eventually, around 10pm, he finally went to bed. around 10.30, i finally was able to report a success of the work i've been struggling with since before the previous weekend.

...

this morning's wake-up wasn't pleasant. accompanying mr smear to school was fine. gd's coughing and hacking in the background, while i cough and hack in the foreground. it's past 9am and i'm tired.

flu A

it would have been my second mum's 98th birthday today.

...

 this week did not go as planned. monday morning started with a cough, and a warning to my co-workers that i'd be working from home in order to keep it away from them.

just in case.

by the time the school called to tell me mr smear wasn't feeling good and that i needed to come pick him up*, i was already pretty sure that i was coming down with something real.

* they wouldn't let him go by himself unless i explicitly waived their responsibility, and after the previous day's attack in jerusalem i wasn't feeling confident.

i arrived at the school just in time to meet his teacher leaving it, and in a brief exchange she informed me that socially he's doing great (yay!) but academically he's not participating (oh, shit).

we made our way home, and aside from a masked family excursion to a pharmacy to pick up rapid antigen tests on thursday (and a rocket attack around 4am today) we haven't left the apartment since.

...

so far, this flu (A type) has been so hardcore i was confident i had covid again. gel in my sinuses and lungs. relentless fever temperature switches and ceaseless spontaneous heavy sweating (which doesn't even feel directly connected to the temperature switching), weird but consistent-over-hours hallucinations, muscle pain, fatigue and brain-fog, struggles with appetite**. it's just been horrible.

** it turns out that "feed a cold, starve a fever" is a myth and one should try to fuel one's body's fight against the invaders.

but, at the same time, we've been having parenting issues with mr smear, triggered by his academic report after he'd committed the week before to a new school with a new attitude. we've had really, really tough fights with him this week, and big, serious talks. i'm honestly not convinced that he's able to see the connection between him behaving badly, and receiving negative consequences, in general. but over the days his behavior seems to be getting better, he's much more cooperative, and yesterday we had some breakthrough moments in math and hebrew that i think he's just as proud of as we are.

...

it seems i got the worst of the symptoms, and mr smear's been feverish but apparently totally fine otherwise. but for the past two days gd's been coughing to the point of literally injuring herself***, and i think the fact that only her RATs are showing negative is a sign she's doing them incorrectly somehow.

*** she's been having nerve pain in one of her shoulders for a while, and this has exacerbated it in addition to messing with her neck and back as usual. also, her coughing fits are scary. also, why is it she always only gets sick on weekends when getting medical attention is infinitely harder?

anyhoo, this is the first time i've been able to sit down and write something since monday. every day i feel like i'm probably through the worst of it, but every night has taught me a big lesson. i do feel last night was significantly easier, though, so... maybe? 🤞

...

and then, charlie kirk was assassinated. of all people, the man who lived (and died) by the idea of debating ideas freely and speaking to people as human beings regardless of their beliefs. the speed at which half the internet justified or even celebrated his murder is terrifying. as jameela jamil puts it: social media algorithms are driving us apart. they're doing it on purpose. we are in deep trouble as a society, and the western world is literally under attack.

RIP charlie kirk, your murder is as shocking as what it says about the state of america. you knew that america and freedom are under attack and you stood up proudly against lies and evil, and the world (israel in particular) will always remember you as a courageous hero.

small iterations

 well, the sleep like a baby trick did seem to help last night. hopefully it'll work again tonight.

i dropped mr smear off at school, and for some reason decided to pick up a copy of yisrael hayom on my way to the post office (after dropping my bag off at my office). it was an interesting read, not least because it informed me about tonight's lunar eclipse.

i picked up mr smear's new shoes, walked home, then returned to the office. it was a bit of a weird day, but i did make a bit of progress on my main task (each step forcing me to wait five minutes), convinced my boss to start looking for an IT guy, and got mr smear to his therapy appointment and encouraged gd to let him make his own way home (he succeeded without any issues).

in the evening, i rushed into the kitchen to confront one of my coworkers in a way that i hope he found amusing: "hey! are you a computer? no? then why are you adding items to lists in non-alphabetic order?"

[interrupted by jackals howling]

i came home, and what followed was a mix of good and bad vibes (helping mr smear with his math homework). then we rushed dinner and went out to see the eclipse, which fortunately we had a good view of from right across the road.

i was pleased that mr smear was interested, and nervously amused by a neighbor trying and failing to get his teenager into the spirit...

the bedtime routine was mostly positive, and reading about the time loop in the neverending story was fun.

the past couple of hours have been a mix of downloading random feeds into my brain while mindlessly playing minesweeper, and getting through a few chores that have been piling up. hopefully tomorrow will see me getting through the big ones that are still outstanding.

breath pt iii

 the rest of yesterday was pretty relaxed. last night, for the first time in a while, i actually got a pretty good night's sleep.

today was pretty relaxed. the only constructive thing i did was filing documents. we watched mrs doubtfire together.

mr smear started fighting about going outside again, and we had A Talk. quite a long one, but ultimately he came out with a good vibe and we rode the the beach (for the first time he made it up the ramp at kikar atarim without stopping), enjoyed the sunset, and talked non-stop the entire way there and back.

the rest of this evening went pretty well. my back and neck are a bit sore - i've had nerve pain down my arm the past few days, but my lower back which was feeling better was jarred by a bit of a stumble on my rollerblades earlier.

i guess i'm going to try going to bed now and hope for the best. maybe this "sleep like a baby" trick will work for me? maybe the shot of vodka earlier will help?

breath pt ii

 we walked up the road to do some shopping, and mr smear decided he wanted a falafel. so we left him to it while we did our thing, which included finding panda's vegan answer to reese's pieces, and rejoined him. the store owners were in a very good shabbos mood, and i readily accepted their offer of araq with lemonade, not expecting the large cup to be three-quarters araq.

we did some snack shopping on the way home, mr smear has been quietly catching up on his homework and i have been quietly not doing anything productive (read: slay the spire).

and it feels fine.

breath

yesterday:

early up, and dropped off mr smear at school. then i made my way to the clinic to pick up some meds for gd, which resulted in an uncomfortable exchange with the pharmacists because their labelling is - and they admit it freely - extremely confusing. if i see on my prescription "take 1 tablet x 1 day x 28 days", i presume that means "one tablet daily for a month", and i expect to be given 28 tablets accordingly. but in this case, gd was given ten tablets with those instructions, and apparently the intention is "ten tablets, once per day as need for 28 days. that's just dumb.

i picked up my bag and i went to the office. i walked in to a bizarre discussion because one of my coworkers *luckily* checking on a machine just before it crashed, and so for the first time we actually have data indicating the root cause. we also learned that ubuntu AMIs don't have swap memory configured by default, which is very surprising (read: shocking) even though it does kind of make sense once we considered the different kinds of volumes that could be attached (or not).

the morning was full of meetings and distractions, and the entire afternoon was spent in an on-site company culture exercise. which has inspired me to put together a presentation for our founders on gaming and gamification.

while that was going on, mr smear's school day ended and he went with a bunch of kids in his class to the survivalist activity. that meant me repeatedly, nervously refreshing his family link location and worrying how things were going. and hour or so into the event, he sent me a flurry of messages begging me to come and pick him up.

on the one hand, he did his usual thing and shut down when he decided the activities weren't for him. also, he lowered his hat to cover his eyes and protect him from social contact and then pulled out his phone and began making animations because i forgot to lock down the flipaclip app... on the other hand, he did go in good spirits and gave it a chance, and apparently is getting on nicely with the kids from his class.

unlike our last happy hour vegan sushi experience, i watched like a hawk and the moment i saw people tucking into the vegan platters i grabbed a plate and made sure mr smear had a good selection. he enjoyed it, and so did i ^_^

(i also taught one of my new coworkers how to use chopsticks)

mr smear and i met up with gd at the school for the parent's class introduction. there was some drama - it looks like there were real issues with the previous year's teacher and the parents got him fired - but overall it feels like this is a completely different calibre of parent and so far the teacher is really solid.

mr smear had been waiting for us the whole time, and was rewarded with 1-on-1 attention with her afterwards. we clarified some things, we talked about his arts tracks (music vs film), and she informed us that he and the girl from tuesday had spoken and that mr smear had been really big about it. later on he informed us that so had she, so that's pretty amazing.

while we were talking, firefighter and his wife bumped into us, and i was startled to learn that both their daughters are in the school, one ahead of mr smear and one behind. so that's pretty cool!

we got home very late, forced mr smear to share his lunch with us (he didn't want any, but all he'd eaten since breakfast - aside from the sushi - was a large tub of allegedly-vegan gummy strips), and got him ready for and into bed.

and then we were done, too.

today so far:

i guess i slept alright? certainly an improvement. i accompanied mr smear to the school, and it was a very quiet morning. as i said goodbye and left the premises, i felt, for the first time, that this is real. it's happening. mr smear, against all odds, is officially in the school of arts and he's off to a good start. this is a moment we've barely dared to fantastize about, and here we are. after every hardship he's and we've been through.

it's kind of like those moments after gd's aliya was finally authorized, just being in tel aviv after years of fantasizing about being here and feeling safely at home.

mr smear's whole life, in a moment, just turned around on a dime, changed direction, and the universe has gifted him with a rare opportunity to be in a place that we believe is best for him and his future. and we're going to do everything in our power to support him on this journey, whatever the cost.

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה' אֱלֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם,

שֶׁהֶחֱיָנוּ וְקִיְּמָנוּ וְהִגִּיעָנוּ לַזְּמַן הַזֶּה.

...

i took a slow walk (and talk, with gd and my mom) to the clinic to sort out authorization for gd's next nerve block and make an acupuncture appointment for her, then came home and got a tiny amount of work done, and then napped, and it's been a restful, peaceful morning so far. now mr smear's on his way home (i'm following on the map) and we'll go out and do some chores and then... chill? or maybe put together that presentation.

intensity

> there were some minor incidents, but according to him he handled them well.

he did not handle them well. i woke up this morning to a message from the girl's mother and learned that mr smear had handled the incident particularly poorly. horribly, in fact. so most of the morning was invested in dealing with that.

the irony: he prepared himself to apologize to her, but he didn't recall what she looked like so his super-shy self awkwardly approached every single girl in his class to ask "are you <insert name here>?"

at least, from my brief talk with her, the girl's mother seems cool.

...

shit start to the day aside...

i didn't sleep well, but i definitely slept better.

it was a long work day. with some very intense feelings during meetings. with some badly-handled interruptions. with some success, but not enough success.

i lost my temper with gd last night because she's injured and insists on doing things that interfere with her recovering, on pretext of not wanting to make my life difficult.

i've spent a good chunk of the last couple of hours of restlessness worrying about mr smear's expectations regarding the survivalist activity this afternoon.

spinning

 it's the middle of the night and i'm having trouble sleeping, but i did sleep a bit and - surprisingly - without the mattress topper i'm hurting less.

i woke up a short while ago, and have been lying in bed with my mind in a spin about mr smear's new school, and the sonnet comics, and spoken word...

...

i accompanied mr smear to the school in the morning, he insisted on taking the light rail. it takes a lot longer than the bus, but he much prefers it... i dropped him off, dropped off a form with the secretary, and on my way out the building bumped into an old friend whose daughter's in the same school! i only found out in the evening it was his birthday, but that served as a good excuse to determine that i still had his phone number :P

from there i went to the allergy clinic, and almost cried when they told me the next possible date for mr smear's dairy challenge is mid-december.

from there i headed to the office. i had an interesting and positive chat with our tech ops manager, and then got into work early.

i can say that my two primary objectives for the day were, for the most part, achieved. the first was supporting my coworker and getting my own part of the work done, the second was shutting out anything that wasn't the first part. i wasn't 100% successful on that score, but i was pretty successful nonetheless.

...

around lunchtime i realized that i needed a face-to-face with the school councillor, who refuses to communicate over anything other than email. so i ducked out and went to the school, and lurked around her office until she (luckily) appeared. we had a quick chat, put faces to our names, and she introduced me to the principle who laughed at me for being around so much this week :P

unfortunately, it doesn't look like mr smear will be able to get into the music track unless he's a student of a particular music school; and it's not clear to me how much that's going to cost nor precisely which music school that is because there're apparently a number of the with the same name (O_o)

...

i'd asked mr smear to wait for me because i was already at the school, but he was champing at the bit to get himself home on his own. i took the opportunity to interrogate him about his day; there were some minor incidents, but according to him he handled them well. i guess we'll see ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

additionally, i spoke to the woman in charge of the self-sufficiency group that's an alternative to the scouts, it sounds amazing but i'm not sure how gd will handle their approach.

...

by the time i left the office, my coworker had almost made good on his delivery that he'd assured everyone in the morning would be ready before lunch. and i'd managed to lay the groundwork for some big changes coming in. i arrived home absolutely exhausted, just in time to help mr smear and his friend make actual plans. gd - in spite of her neck still being in a horrible condition - made delicious vegan pizzas and his friend joined us for dinner.

it was relatively late by the time mr smear got to bed, and gd and i followed suit soon after.

no sleep for you

 i ripped off the mattress topper in the middle of the night, i think it's causing more harm than good.

and i'm deeply resentful of not having been able to have a good night's sleep in years.

my back hurts.

i'm tired.

...

the insect turned out to be a gigantic moth.

doing it wrong

 i barely slept last night, (and) my lower back's messed up. gd's in an even worse state.

we got up at 6am in order to get mr smear to his new classroom by 7.30am. gd forgot that his dairy challenge was scheduled for wednesday, and gave him an antihistamine, so now we have to postpone that and it's usually months before there's a slot available.

gd wasn't able to come with to his first day in the new school.

he was very awkward, but the general vibe and other parents were cool, the school is (as is to be expected) completely different in every way. but some of the adjustments are hard. and me having to handle the admin side of things, and then walk into the office only to realize someone cruelly scheduled an interview on the first morning of the school year, broke me.

it didn't help that there was little oxygen in the room - i really don't handle the meeting rooms well at all.

i left the hour and a half interview and went straight back to the school to pick up mr smear, and then spend more than half an hour waiting in line for his books. then i taught him how to open his locker (i'm sure it'll be a struggle for a while, it's an old-school combination lock) and we went to the light rail together.

and then i got off at my stop and let him go the rest of the way home by himself for the very first time. that wasn't stressful at all.

the next couple of hours was mostly spent getting the team aligned with our new priorities, and then i went into another interview. more interesting than the first, but i still had trouble staying awake by the end of it.

the last hour was torture. and i think i made one of the new guys feel bad. i'm pretty sure i'm making a bad impression on everyone lately, because i'm just burned out and every interruption has become a thing and i'm finding it really hard to display a positive attitude.

i'm fucking tired.

but i'm also tired because i have to handle all the new-school shit on my own, which includes the parent groups as well as figuring out how to get mr smear into the music track, which until today we had no idea required a history of formal lessons.

godsdammit.

anyway, at least mr smear is happy so far. on the other hand, our friend's daughter / his classmate decided not to leave the school, and is apparently deeply regretting it.

just before dinner, i managed to get in touch with someone in his old school who didn't register for their book program, so he took over mr smear's books and i'm grateful that it didn't cost us double.

...

there's some huge insect or something that was flying around our living room earlier, but it hasn't shown itself since. i'm going to bed now. i hope those two statements don't clash at any point.

pivot

 a week or two ago, i checked in with the municipality and was informed that there was still no news regarding whether mr smear had been accepted into the school of arts, so this late in the game we just assumed that that would be the end of the story.

but we got a phone call this morning, informing us that yes, someone had dropped out and mr smear was being offered a coveted place. we woke him up and had a Talk, and we called them back and very enthusiastically accepted. this is one of those life-changing moments, and we're really excited and really anxious for him.

gods, i hope this works out as well as we hope it will.

the rest of the day was a complicated mess of work and phone calls, and running back and forth to make sure mr smear was where he needed to be because gd's neck pulled a fast one on her and she's really suffering, and the discussions and introductions and planning and farewells* didn't slow down until less than an hour ago.

* mr smear's best friend is really (understandably) distraught, and his teacher was as shocked as we were. and i posted a very careful farewell message to the other parents...

work-wise, today was a shit-show, although it ended in a relatively good place with a meeting with my boss and a couple of the other leads and we all agreed on a way forward, primarily on how i should be saying "no" to anything that isn't the one thing i've been trying and failing to get done for months now (due to constant interruptions and babysitting contractors and bigtalk). it took until about an hour ago to finally have a chat with the incoming manager and sync, and we'll have a planning session tomorrow.

i'm starting to fall asleep. i think i'll go to bed soon.

a good filling in a disturbing sandwich

 i just woke up a short while ago, and i'm sitting here nursing a coffee and a sore lower back. i barely slept last night due to a combination of physical discomfort and insomnia, i was just uncomfortable throughout. and when i did sleep, i had deeply disturbing dreams.

one of those dreams was like an action movie, where we were defending our company from terrorists trying to take over. i don't recall the precise reasoning or sequence of events towards the end, but i used the new sharp knife in the office and decapitated a few people, who then subsequently came back to life and convinced me that i'd lost my mind.

...

i was woken up yesterday morning by a sharp "tic tic tic" sounds coming out of the wall, and i grumpily, foggily posted a video to our neighbor's group. two minutes later, i opened the window and realized that it was the sounds of water dripping from upstairs, so i wrote in the group that it was dripping from above.

hours later, our upstairs neighbor sent me message saying there's nobody else it could have been, and that i could have just messaged him privately. i only saw that message hours after that, so i scrambled to assure him that i hadn't known where it was from at the time and hadn't intended to call him out passive aggressively, and i've been carrying that shit in my chest ever since.

...

aside from "the usual" random shit over the course of the day: i read some more nightwood (a few pages, and then passed out on the couch), gd beat me at battleship in spite of the fact that she dropped all her pegs (it was the third time she accidentally bumped the game 🤣), mr smear and i walked to the park and played frisbee for a while*, and we decided that mr smear's old enough and watched ace ventura last night. of course he's talking out of his ass now :P

* after yesterday's incident, i discussed with him that i think that a big part of a dad's job is to force a child through all the necessary small traumas in life so that they can grow up strong enough to handle the big traumas. and get over themselves and get good at things that don't come naturally to them.

i went to bed early, after taking a short look at some ideas for the interview i'm doing today.

...

i'm tired. like, burnout tired. i'm sore. i'm a little bit resentful that i'm not on vacation today.

failure

 we had a blowout at the fair. he wanted to sign up for animation again - even though last time he made everyone miserable until we took him out - but he steadfastly refused to even try the drum kit. we had a long conversation during which it sounded like he understood what i was trying to tell him (the usual mix of "you only fail if you don't try" and that one has to get out of one's comfort zone if one wants to grow, along with a helping of "i wish i had had such an awesome opportunity because you can't just buy drums and try them at home"), but after our conversation was over he reverted straight back to "just, no".

we walked to the bus stop and caught one to the shuk. around the middle of the shuk we found some vests, a grenadilla slushie and some coffee - i agreed to let him taste it, and he hated it 🤘 - and we proceeded to walk down allenby, up levontin, and then around to yuka monsters. the entire trip from bus there was really pleasant, it was a beautiful and quiet day and mr smear was being very cool.

we got lost in the store, and then gd finished her class and decided to join us, following my live location and walking down some dodgy streets. after she called, panicked, we left the store and met her halfway, then returned, where mr smear and i played some arcade tetris and gd and i went through all the books mr smear and i had been fawning over.

it's all incredible stuff, but very expensive and we wanted all of it.

from there we headed out in search of lunch. we weren't interested in meshek barzilay (not for a midday breakfast, at any rate) and we had trouble finding anything else, which is the point at which gd discovered that mr smear hadn't had breakfast and started freaking out. i picked him up a vegan onigiri from oomai, and we eventually made our way to cafe barzilay, which turned out to be a really good idea.

the two meals we went for turned out to be plenty of great food and an overall cool afternoon experience. then we took the light rail home, and the rest of the afternoon has been chilling, punctuated only by cleaning all the fans, and gd injuring her toe again (in the same way as before) that's finally been healing.

good grief.

so now i'm having a rum and hoping the rest of the weekend won't be dramatic.

...

watching mrbiscuitspeaks reactions to tool (starting with lateralus) is fascinating.

interrupt

yesterday began with a fun find - i didn't use up my food allowance, so i purchased a voucher with it. as usual, it took a few steps to add it to my wallet, during which i discovered that one of my phone numbers wasn't connected to my account. when i did that, i found that my first israeli employer had gifted me two vouchers on my other number that i'd completely missed! the big one's link had expired, but i got on the line with their customer service and they reactivate it for me ^_^

so i basically found some money that had been stuck in the couch since 2023!

...

the story of yesterday was basically me starting to do things and almost immediately being interrupted and pulled in a different direction. it was frustrating, and constant context-switching is overwhelming.

to make matters worse, i was planning on taking sunday off, but now i've got interviews lined up for sunday and monday, some important stuff on tuesday, and mr smear's dairy challenge on wednesday, so there really isn't a good day next week that's worth taking off...

[shifts it to the following week]

i felt stretched thin by the time i got home last night, we had dinner, showered, and i read a little of the neverending story to mr smear (and gd)...

... and then i got back to work for the next hour or so :(

i spent the following hour or two trying to understand crop marks for my comics and playing slay the spire, slept kind of alright, and now i'm gearing up to take mr smear to the extra-mural fair at the school.

off script

 so there was a monday, and a tuesday, before today - but i only really recall the tuesday, so i'm going to work backwards and see if i took any notes...

today:

i did do a little work, in the morning and in the afternoon, but for the most part it was an admin day. on my way to the bank this morning i called the absorption ministry and made an appointment for gd to find out if she has cover for private hebrew lessons. at the bank, i signed off on the documents to open a savings account, one that i have to message them to ask them to deposit money into [i tried to locate a "scratch head" emoji and failed]

i walked to the mall and grabbed a cup of coffee, and then was joined by gd and mr smear and we got into buying his stationery for the fifth grade, which he enters next week 🤯

a religious woman overheard us working with the clerk to try and figure out what the list we had was asking for, and decided she knew better. the clerk was offended ("i'm not a retard!") and she didn't have much to offer that was actually helpful. afterwards, she tried to make smalltalk and i managed to drag gd out of there just as i heard her awkwardly transforming it into a real conversation...

we spent a few hours indoors, with mr smear playing a monster-eye-view of poppy playtime on roblox and promising that it wouldn't affect him.

we all went to the school together to pick up some of his books for the new year, then picked up a couple of things at the supermarket, walking home with our minds and tastebuds blown by the vegan cornetto ice-creams...

we then headed off to dizengoff center to try and find belts and sleeveless shirts for me, and a school diary (one that doesn't suck) for mr smear. we gave up on the shirts, but we did pick up new, smaller (better fitting) shorts for me, and then we went downstairs to the vegan market.

the burgers looked great, but i didn't trust the guy making them with his bare hands. mr smear wanted tacos, which was a great experience even if the filling wasn't amazing. we took barbecue seitan and quiche from the mom & son's random wares, and it was amazing. we made a terrible mess (mostly gd booby-trapping a drink and me and mr smear eating the tacos as best we could), but overall it was a good dinner and we ate too much. (we have untouched leftovers in the fridge)

we ran into some cousins on the way out the mall, hopped on the bus home, watched the second episode (episode 1) of ren & stimpy, showered and brushed teeth (i'm now using an ultra-soft brush, it's a weird experience), and read some more of the neverending story.

yesterday:

yesterday was supposed to be relatively relaxed. what began with me trying to finalize monday's fix (i'll get to that) turned into debugging bigtalk's build scripts, turned into me understanding that he literally built it from the ground up in direct opposition to what i'd instructed him, and in such a way that it would never work. i actually reverted his change before adding some stuff we needed to the original scripts, and every piece of code he wrote for us (or his imagined alternate universe version of us) has now been purged.

everything after lunch and until about 7pm was us scrambling to rescue a cloud machine that a) we have no way of interrogation for what went wrong and b) we had no idea was being treated as operational by our customer (officially it was a preview for testing). to make matters worse, in spite of my loud protests, one of the guys instructed the new devops to take it offline which made it impossible to recover. additionally, before bringing it back up they changed something critical about it, which broke my scripts.

it was as much miracle as effort, but we eventually managed to get it back up and running, and tomorrow i'm going to poke and prod everyone about doing a thorough RCA (even though i've already posted my recommendations).

we watched the second episode of ren & stimpy (to review it for appropriateness), but i started to fall asleep towards the end and i completely passed out while gd watched (until she passed out) the second season of the sandman.

monday:

i had difficulty getting up. i got to work, straight into a meeting with the new devops and incoming devops. and the meeting devolved into very severe unpleasantness - both in terms of cross-cultural communication (the incoming boss said something that our british devops understood as "your idea is shit"), and in terms of both me and the british devops losing respect for the incoming guys before they've even arrived. i ended up speaking to my boss about it, and his response to my saying that the drama "really isn't in my wheelhouse" was to chide me and remind me that in my current position, it's precisely in my wheelhouse.

anyway, at least the boss knows what's happening, and i'll worry about actual repercussions when the time comes.

the day was full of random distractions, but came to a head when a bunch of us sat down to troubleshooting the canadian contractor's code with him. we had no clear direction, but after an hour and a half we'd tracked down the issue and resolved it, which was a huge win because it's been hurting everyone in the team and preventing us from moving forward with a new release.

...

i tried to help my mother with her email issues after putting mr smear to bed, but i needed a nap. so i lay on the couch and set an alarm for half an hour, which i effectively snoozed over and over until eventually crawling into bed around 2am.

better

 today was better. it started rough, with a lot of time on hold with our medical insurance, and then we all went for a walk to track down the sleep lab at the hospital (the old lady at the information desk initially sent us to the wrong floor, a not-very-hospital floor) and i booked the earliest appointment available (april).

oh, and i picked up a copy of claudia ira davimes' the joy of being wrong, which is off to a promising start.

we then walked down the road to our bank branch, where it took about fifteen minutes for them to tell me they couldn't help me (i got a call in the afternoon and i'm satisfied with one of the savings "products" they offer) but gd picking me up an coffee slushy took the sting out. on the way home we picked up a bunch of things, including a lemon juicer like we have at the office which i'm way more excited about than i should be.

most of the afternoon was me installing and being sad that counter-strike doesn't run on macs, playing slay the spire, reading watchmen, and deciding that we were out of bookmarks and needed to fix that. and that if i was fixing that, i should make an attempt to figure out how to get organized with a gaming machine. so i hopped on a bus with mr smear, and the first store we arrived at was closed. then we hopped on another bus, and while waiting for my turn at the computer store i examined the bookmarks at the book store and was disappointed (to say the least). the guy at the computer store gave me a good quote and then advised me to try facebook marketplace first.

we went to the anime store, but while they didn't stock bookmarks, they did have a bucket of various trading cards so we chose a few one piece cards which will now serve us just as well. and then we got another quote from another computer store, and mr smear obsessed over all the anime figures, and then we walked home, having pretty good conversations along the way.

dinner was great, we introduced mr smear to ren & stimpy and watched another episode of the simpsons. gd's neck's been spasming all day, but i read a bit to mr smear at bedtime and the rest of the evening has been a mix of slay the spire and a new round of tool reaction videos.

omg i just realized it's 00.30 already and i'm working today. i had a couple of anxious moments today because i had to assist a couple of coworkers, and also had a chat with an applicant i used to serve with, but overall i guess it was a pretty good day off.

kombat

 yesterday was pretty horrible. gd and i had a couple of fights during the day, the first one triggered by me losing patience with mr smear and telling them i needed my space for the afternoon. the second one because later, i was trying to get to the bottom of something she'd said earlier.

we took a break from fighting to go to our friends for dinner, and we all had a really nice evening. everything was great until we got home, and then things got explosive and continued to be full shit until about 2am.

today was spent... recovering? i dunno if that's quite right, we both still feel horrible. i spent a large part of the day continuing to read nightwood, and napping, but we did watch the mortal kombat movie this afternoon and i really enjoyed how much fun mr smear was having. later, we took the bike and blades for a ride... there was a bit of an emotional breakdown triggered by his brakes not responding fast enough, but we moved on and i introduced him to charades (it appears we've never played that with him) and the rest of the ride was really nice.

dinner was pleasant in spite of no screens (he took too long in the shower), i read some more of the neverending story to him and gd at bedtime, and gd and i watched a psychotic episode and a half of the rehearsal reality tv show which is unbearably disturbing.

down

 burnout? probably. sick? possibly. slow and clouded? definitely. yesterday was still rough, i walked in to the office (with mr smear) into a production upgrade that hadn't been prepared for, and that was missing a critical element. and then, on top of everything else, it took forever to understand that something in my personal environment was broken. it would take three hours before we were confident that the upgrade could be done and that somebody else would be able to take care of it.

at lunchtime, the salad group made salad. it didn't even occur to me to ask them to leave the walnuts out, which mr smear couldn't stand :(

the afternoon was full of interruptions. and when my boss informed everyone that bigtalk's out of the picture, he tried to take the sting out by joking that i'd "be happy to tell you the details" 🤮

happy hour was pretty good, mr smear loved the massive savory crepes and i made the mistake of drinking an 8% cherry beer right before heading into a nasty hour of troubleshooting with our frontend lead and a canadian contractor.

eventually, mr smear and i headed out and home, dropped our bags off, and jumped on a bus to join gd for dinner. but due to the protests the bus got stuck in heavy traffic, so we jumped off and practiced live location navigation (gd was a bit panicky about it), meeting up relatively quickly and then continuing to look for a place to stop.

...

the first place we sat down didn't have much that we were interested in, but then mr smear refused to ask a waiter for something he wanted and the ensuing argument made me get up and go. a short while ago we just had a repeat of that, and with everything else i'm dealing with i've explained that i'm taking a "parenting break" for at least a few hours.

...

the second place we found was rainbow burger, which was already one of our favorite spots. they've just introduced yo! eggs to their menu, as well as their new "sensational" seitan burgers, so we ordered one original and one sensational with an egg and the new won out over the old, and everyone was happy.

tired and grumpy, but happy with the food, at least.

the rest of the walk home and the evening was fine, though i was thoroughly drained. everyone hit the hay early, and aside from waking up and playing slay the spire for a few hours i was in bed until quite late.

...

i sent bigtalk a message this morning, even though i'm feeling completely out of it right now, to let him know i want him to succeed and offering him (when he's ready) to talk. i really hope his path corrects quickly.

...

i'm probably going to lie down again soon.

processing

 i'm feeling less physically and emotionally drained today, but i'm still struggling. mostly emotionally and in terms of desperately needing an uninterrupted day off.

yesterday:

starting to write up my experiences with bigtalk

mr smear and the drone workshop - he kind of shut down the moment he encountered the other kids, which really sucked. but my coworker who was running it was kind enough to do a private drone session later, and mr smear had an amazing time ^_^

...

making progress with the new devops guy, but uncovering layers of bigtalk's bullshit (amateur-hour and AI vomit). my boss informing me that bigtalk's hearing was basically him begging not to be let go, which is heartbreaking. i really feel bad for him, and i feel like the whole world has let this dude down; and he is one courageous dude.

...

a big moment with mr smear about tearing up artwork he doesn't like

planning to get dinner with mr smear (gd was getting her hair cut), and his friend inviting him to play table tennis. accompanying the two clowns on the bus, sharing hummus, falafel and chips for dinner, and occasionally jumping in to play some ping pong.

my mom's laptop being expertly stolen from her car

getting the kids home late (because his friend realized he'd left his phone by the tables when we were already on the bus we'd waited a while for)

a very late bedtime for mr smear, and therefore for us too

today:

i slept alright, but woke up early with my thoughts. continued writing.

we had a family meeting in the morning (regarding mr smear's workshop behavior, and his looking-at-his-failures behavior), and mr smear was very angry with me. but on our way home this evening, we had a very mature discussion and he acknowledged what we were trying to get through to him.

gd took mr smear to have bloodwork done while i had a meeting, apparently mr smear handled it impressively well.

it was a quiet day at work, though jam-packed with meetings and included a very intense lunchtime debate about israeli politics. it also included a two-hour long demo by a contractor, and i found it very validating that the new guy and i both came up with similar alternatives to his architecture and we both feel that what he's put together in two months is something either of us could do in a matter of hours... and better.

i came home, and took mr smear to dizengoff for their japanese food. we had dumplings and onigiri again, and mr smear ate the dumplings with chopsticks this time, and then we walked home picking up ice cream on the way. and talking a lot.

a lot of the talk was about bigtalk, and why this is such a difficult experience for me personally.

...

on an unrelated note, but running in parallel through the day, is responding to a south african connection on linkedin's anti-israel propaganda post. i felt i couldn't let the lies stand unchallenged, but the experience is gross.

...

i don't want to take vacation days unless i can actually enjoy the vacation, and i don't feel like that's going to happen anytime soon :(

off a low base

 well, to be fair today was easier. but i felt completely exhausted, and disorganized, and my brain seems to be seeping down my spinal column and into my butt.

i started the day with a walk to the post office to pick up my new phone covers - the three of them cost less than gd's failed one, and they're all awesome. so i'm proudly sporting the hunter license:

(ugh, those nails 🤮)

on my way home i stopped by a mor clinic. it was uncomfortable that i couldn't even get a number for the receptionist because i didn't have an appointment. when a receptionist did become available, she informed me that they can't help me with what i'm looking for. when i asked if there was anyone i could speak to about gd's cannabis story, she shrugged and complained that she, too, has difficulty getting human assistance and she works there.

i came home, completed the deployment i'd triggered on my way out, picked up my gear and walked mr smear and gd to the clinic (he was supposed to get blood tests done, but we hadn't realized he'd needed an appointment). i bussed to the office, where my future team was already waiting for me, and we spent the following few hours strategizing and getting some work done.

two jumpy dogs + a bunch of jumpy kids = distraction.

i spent the remainder of the day being set upon by various coworkers, constantly context-switching and generally feeling worn out and slow. i did get some good stuff done, a few good things, actually, but at least twice i got told off by my boss about not having taken a holiday.

i definitely need to take a holiday. it would be nice to not literally be the only person holding the devops fort right now.

at 7pm i told gd i'd be leaving in ten minutes, and ten minutes later it was 7.30pm, so i don't know what the hell happened... i came home, joined my family for dinner (accompanied by a shot of rum) and some of the fifth harry potter movie, was shown some of my son's amazing artwork (his "realistic" minecraft characters), and after showers and toothbrushing (i'm being very cautious about brushing as softly as i can) i read a little more of the neverending story.

sometimes mr smear isn't in the mood, but tonight he was upset when i stopped reading.

it took me a little time to decompress enough to write this, now i'm not sure if i'm ready to crash yet.

facing the music

 i slept surprisingly well, all things considered. but i woke up feeling wired, so i skipped my first coffee and had a tea instead.

i'd woken up to the sounds of protesting, so i was surprised by how quiet everything was on my way to work.

i went past the clinic to try and make an appointment, but the receptionist didn't know how to help me. i walked to the closest bus stop, but didn't trust the public transport app and walked on, which turned out to be the right call. i did take the light rail for a single stop, but that was mainly as a break from the already rising heat. (still nowhere near as harsh as the last week)

i walked into the office just as my boss had informed bigtalk that he was going home until his hearing. i offered to speak with him, which in retrospect may have been a mistake, because a) he really has no idea why he's being let go and b) he blames me for my reporting to the boss and c) i realized, helplessly, that no matter what i say to him he's only going to hear what fits his narrative, which is precisely how we got here in the first place.

so... i tried not to say much, and i tried to be comforting, but doing both those things was literally impossible and it was just shit feelings all the way down.

and - since last week - the more i think about it, the more i think about how much of what he's told us is fake-it-till-you-make-it self-deception. all i saw today was a scared little kid, raw vulnerability, trying to make sense of something in a way that he's not going to be able to make sense of without a much deeper level of self-awareness.

as i said to my boss afterwards, if we were big enough to afford it, i would offer to mentor him.

the next hour or so was fully invested in disabling all of his accounts and rotating shared passwords.

...

at lunchtime i walked to meet up with gd and mr smear for his psychiatrist appointment. the intention of the appointment, to my understanding, is for the "doctor" (see the attached summary) to determine whether his social anxiety (which we now believe is no more severe than any kid's) warrants an "accompanier". but, of course, "it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

the meeting was okay, mostly, although there was a fair amount of awkwardness in mr smear's discomfort answering his questioning in hebrew (and the questions were uncomfortable questions in any language) and then, after he'd repeatedly mentioned his english not being great, he became offended when mr smear responded in english that he has "intrusive thoughts" and i asked if he was familiar with the term :/

...

i returned to the office for an hour or two of frustratingly difficult IT (security) work, then a couple of hours working with the new devops guy trying to restart the project that bigtalk never delivered.

and then the day ended (kinda) with me and another team member running through all our accounts to make sure we'd caught everything in the morning.

...

the protestors were gathering by the time i went home, and i walked through crowds of more and more people whose behavior (and placards) just upset me more and more. they're protesting against our government "abandoning" the hostages, as if there's anyone reasonable on the hamas side of the table to negotiate with. while i certainly appreciate their intention and their desperation, in practice all they're achieving - in my opinion - is demonstrating to hamas that the time for playing games isn't over.

...

the evening was pleasant, although i'm struggling with radiating nerve pain down my right side. and while gd had a much better day today in that department, she's also been struggling a bit this evening.

i'm exhausted, emotionally and psychologically. i hope tomorrow's easier.

fairy tales

 it was a hot walk, even if it was less hot than the previous days. we walked past a store and picked him up a malt beer, which made his day (up until that point), and eventually got to a coffee shop where i ordered a vegan dessert that was so over-the-top that it really made his day, and i read a brothers grimm story (the golden goose).

then we walked back home, where i picked up a (free) copy of joseph jacobs' english fairy tales and read jack the giant-killer while he played minecraft. then it was dinner time, and a smooth evening including more of the neverending story at bedtime.

after he went to sleep, i synced with my boss about tomorrow, which (confusingly to me) looks like it's going to be spread over a couple of days, so my plans for taking a day off this week are clearly on hold. i've spent the rest of the evening just trying to wear myself out with youtube and slay the spire in order to get some sleep, but i'm not feeling too confident right now.

i probably shouldn't have had that late iced coffee...

thinking

 well, mr smear did it - he handled his fears and he went to bed 🙏

i stayed up pretty late, but finally crashed and slept a bit. not enough, apparently, because i've spent most of the day uncomfortably alternating between reading and napping, with only a couple of longer periods watching an episode of doctor who and giving up on acquiring the zerg campaign in starcraft ii and ending up installing the original starcraft instead.

i've been making a lot of progress through elana gomel's nightwood, and it's riveting fairy tale horror.

now, to mr smear's usual chagrin, we're going out for a bit.

...

i've spent a lot of today thinking about tomorrow's dealings with bigtalk. i occasionally feel like things are going to be alright, but for the most part i'm quite anxious.

stretch

 today was almost entirely spent hiding at home with the A/C on, aside from a few minutes taking mr smear to the corner store to pick up some stuff, most importantly tortit ice creams.

if it wasn't for the discomfort in my neck and legs - possibly a sympathetic response to gd's difficulties - it was a quiet day. we all watched american pop together, which is an absolute masterpiece. there were two moments in the entire movie which were a little too edgy for mr smear, but overall it was thoroughly brilliant, beautifully animated, and wonderful.

before we made kiddush - this is becoming a tradition - mr smear and i played through another level in starcraft ii. he *really* wants to skip to the zerg, though, while i want to play the story through sequentially, so we agreed that next time we'll take turns between zerg and humans.

over dinner and until (late) bedtime, we started watching the doctor who reboot. great experience, and now we're back into mr smear needing to be brave at bedtime because he found some elements disturbing...

the good and the bad

 i don't remember how well or poorly i slept on thursday night, but last night was alright... until about 4 or 5am, when my hips started hurting but i was too exhausted to physically get out of bed and try to sort myself out.

bigtalk and i actually had a conversation about sleeping yesterday, he suffers from PTSD and he takes ritalin for ADHD and he was proposing melatonin, when i told him some of my stories about treating my RLS-like issues he was mortified - there's no feeling quite like winning the victim olympics :/

...

i woke up to a message from my boss letting me know that he's initiating a process to let bigtalk go.

i feel bad for him, but it's a relief. it's also scary, because the longer the week's worn on the less predictable he's become, and he's a security expert, and i'm nervous that might be able to do a lot of damage once he finds out. so when i got up this morning and spent twenty minutes writing up a protocol for his "offboarding".

still...

i really like the guy, but if you put a gun to my head i wouldn't be able to make a call as to whether he's for real or not. i want to mentor him, but at the same time i don't feel he's capable of receiving advice that doesn't already fit into his very narrow view of our field.

...

mr smear and i accompanied gd to the pharmacy on our way to the office in the sweltering heat. we moved from airconditioner to airconditioner, we took the light rail, and we arrived to find my vegan avo bagel untouched. so mr smear had a solid breakfast (parenting score!) and thoroughly enjoyed it :)

...

the big effort of the day was trying to deploy with bigtalk's new system, and trying to fix it, and becoming more and more convinced that this was an incredibly bad idea. the deal-breaker for me - the final, tiny straw amongst a host of others - was discovering that all of his work wasn't even based on our original scripts and didn't account for some very important behavior.

for anyone who works with code, the above is real, and it's not even the worst part.

that all came to a head - me explaining to him that we weren't going to merge, and that we were going to park his PR and rebuild a solution piece by piece that can hopefully salvage it for parts - while mr smear (remarkably patiently) waited for me to go and get him some lunch. the ensuing argument was painful, and went on for about half an hour, with him continuing to try to convince us that we were making a mistake.

...

mr smear put together a good salad, and enthusiastically demolished it. later, at our happy hour, the two of us hovered over the vegan sushi platter. at first, i handled feeding him with chopsticks, but at some point i managed to convince him to give them a try. he followed the instructions, and within minutes he'd got the hang of it!!

i don't know which of us was more excited ^_^

i didn't really get to participate in the game hacking event because it was a thursday evening and i was busy breaking our test site with a new release candidate. it was the perfectly horrible ending to a perfectly horrible day (for me), but mr smear had overall had a great time and even participated along with the two guys who were doing the game dev (although he got them into trouble with chatgpt because one of his proposed ideas wasn't safe for work :P)

we came home pretty late, and found gd in a rough state - she's basically been bedridden since yesterday morning due to nerve pain in her back that's radiating into her chest :(

after getting mr smear into bed, i played some slay the spire and then went to bed (relatively) early myself.

meat popsicle

 i didn't get back to sleep for another hour or two, and even then i didn't sleep very well, although i was able to get up later than usual.

my mouth guard is starting to fall apart :/

i was really tired today. really tired. like, possibly coming down with something tired. i arrived at work for another full team meeting (although bigtalk wasn't around), and it went on for a couple of hours, so we missed the daily with the rest of the department.

also, i left the meeting room freezing cold.

...

then i rushed out to meet up with gco and co, we ended up at the top of the building and had to rent a meeting room to get going, which was surprisingly expensive. getting sorted out took us about half an hour in total, but the hour that followed was very interesting and constructive. all in all, i'm very glad we did it.

also, i left the meeting room freezing cold.

...

i made it back in time to help out a couple of guys with random things, and then went into another hour-long meeting. at least this time i had coffee and a slice of cake with me :P

also, i left the meeting room freezing cold.

...

at this point, i was falling apart and i made myself a fourth cup of coffee. i needed to sync with some coworkers on our priorities for the next few weeks, and that was when i learned that bigtalk wasn't working on what we were working on, which is absolutely insane. i was completely stunned, and i lost my temper in front of half the office, and my coworkers ushered me into a meeting room where i explained to them why i was so deeply affected. they heard me out, and they were very supportive.

...

also, i left the meeting room freezing cold.

...

i found another meeting room, and sat down to be interviewed for a talent spotlight. i was still very upset about bigtalk, and i spent the few minutes i needed to wait just trying to calm myself down and get into an appropriate headspace.

i wasn't prepared (they'd only sent me the questions this morning) so everything was off-the-cuff, but by the end i felt like we'd all had a good experience and they seemed happy with what they had. i felt relieved because it went a lot better than i could have planned, and i feel like the resulting story they have to work with is good.

also, i left the meeting room freezing cold.

...

the next couple of hours were me trying to get work done with providing support to others, and eventually i left the office having encountered confusing errors with bigtalk's changes.

on my way home, i spoke to the incoming manager and informed him that i've completely lost faith in bigtalk's ability to function in our organization, and i made an appointment with my boss on sunday (when i'm on vacation, but he isn't) to let him know that this experiment is over.

...

i got home wired and overwhelmed, and needed to vent the day's stories to gd before i was able to calm down enough to eat. we had a good dinner, we enjoyed two simpsons episodes, and mr smear's bedtime (after putting in a few additional minutes of work) was pretty smooth with more of the neverending story.

the rest of the evening has been peaceful, not least of which being completing a fun run of slay the spire, and i think i'm just about ready for bed. caffeine-allowing, of course...