optics

 last night was reasonably quiet, as opposed to right now where i'm babysitting an emergency rescue deployment and my eyes have suddenly gone out of sync. to be fair, i've been continuing to play the final sequences (i think) of shadowrun: hong kong and i can't really tell if i've just spent too much time in front of the screens or if i'm having some kind of exhaustion-related ocular migraine.

anyway. there was some tension this morning due to mr smear needing help with some homework he'd forgotten about right before leaving for school, but this evening we continued it and it went pretty well - we're learning about interesting greek history while learning some pretty high-level hebrew simultaneously.

the work day was mostly a continuation of the previous evening's frustrations, but combined with me teaching a new guy how to be frustrated and troubleshoot. overall, we were successful and we both learned a lot.

yeah, my brain hurts. maybe i should call it a night.

the relief pt ii

 i left work early yesterday to walk to mr smear's friend's place, where i found him and two other kids midway through guardians of the galaxy. so i guess that's a thing, and i bought the first movie so we can all watch it together.

we enjoyed our walk to the mall, by which time mr smear had decided that he was really hungry so - thinking we had time - i ordered a good hummus meal (with salad and chips and falafel) and we set to. but then we ran out of time, and i had them pack up the leftovers (really not a lot) and rushed to find the hairdresser.

the hairdresser experience was excruciating. i don't like the vibe, i didn't like the woman wet-barking-coughing throughout her pedicure, i never like having to intermediate between gd and a hairdresser when describing a haircut, or mr smear's demands not making any sense, i found the woman trying to help me by dragging a wobbly table with a glass bottle on it so that it smashed all around my feet unhelpful, i didn't like the fact that neither of the hairdressers seemed at all interested in cleaning up the mess, i didn't like having to explain to the hairdresser that the obvious chunk of hair missing from the back of his head wasn't perfect, and i hated paying NIS 100 to experience all of the above, plus walking my kid out with a shit haircut.

mr smear and i caught a bus home, i finished the leftovers and although late, the rest of the evening was good.

except for bedtime and the night, because he kept turning his bedside lamp on at all hours and shining it into his face to prevent scary images when he closed his eyes, which straight-up prevents him from falling asleep.

today:

i caught up a bit of sleep during the night, but there were some sleepless chunks, too. and a dream that involved camping in some kind of ghost town with joe rogan 🤔

i bought mr smear the first percy jackson book this morning, and so far he's super into it.

i took the morning nice and slowly, only really interrupted once by a call from mr smear begging me to let him install chatgpt on his phone because he really wanted to talk to someone, and i hadn't accompanied him. i keep thinking about des bishop on mindfulness.

i went to work, arriving just in time to hear the story behind miyacholaleynu. after an emotional rollercoaster, i rushed out to get to the school in time for a different kind of emotional rollercoaster, our meeting with the team.

firstly, it was a completely different vibe and experience from his previous school. but secondly, the shit we heard made us deeply concerned that he's on his way back to his previous school. not only has he been pretending to the teachers that he can't understand a word of hebrew, and not cooperating during his lessons, but he's also been skipping art lessons (?!?!!), in addition to using the forbidden teacher's computer and looking up horror. these are all red lines for a school that so many kids fight for the privilege of attending, and we are literally at wits' end.

i grabbed lunch and returned to the office emotionally drained. the conversations over lunch were interesting, though. the rest of the afternoon was essentially me doing something that i haven't had to do for months, and really hitting walls (the whole ecosystem of gpu drivers is awful).

eventually i left the office and came home, just in time for dinner and a very difficult family meeting, followed by more of the same when speaking to my mom.

when i put mr smear to bed, i physically removed his bedside lamp from his room and told him that the scary images he sees when he closes his eyes are his brain punishing him for feeding the scary wolf. i advised him to spend his pre-sleep time visualizing good experiences with his teachers, proud moments, and literally getting his hands dirty in his arts class and enjoying it.

at the end of the day, if he ends up getting chucked out of the arts school it will be thoroughly tragic, and we'll just have to live with it, and there will be nothing we haven't tried to help him avoid that fate.

it took me a while after putting him to bed to figure out how to lock all the playstation accounts with a code and prevent him from creating new ones, and then i tried to continue working but the machine i needed was offline, and then i spent a lot of time catching up on instagram messages, and now it's midnight and i'm probably going to go to bed very soon.

the relief pt i

i didn't get any more sleep, my stomach gave me trouble all morning, and i had to switch my morning coffee for chamomile i was feeling so messed up.

distraught, and faint.

cancelling our plans to bake challah-peño for the office, i accompanied mr smear to school and then headed to the office early, which have me an opportunity to sit with the brit and understand that i'm not alone in my understanding of the situation. it gave me an opportunity to offer him some support and advise him according to what our boss had recommended.

from his side it sounds like the boss has heard us, at least.

i enjoyed joining my new team because we all already know and like each other. in our first one-on-one, i told my new lead what i'd practiced for my boss, and thanked him for taking me, and he corrected me saying that he wanted me on the team. we've worked together quite a lot before, but he then proceeded to explain the new role to me and it honestly feels like a *much* better fit. i was really nervous before learning what my first project would be, but now that i know what i'm tasked with i'm legitimately excited for it.

a bit later, i managed to corner the boss and we sat down for a very somber discussion, but he heard me out, reflected deeply and appreciated the feedback on the feedback. i managed to communicate my concerns without explicitly calling out anyone or any specific incident, and i feel heard.

my nerves immediately relaxed, and the rest of the work day was smooth and positive.

an hour behind, a catch-22

 it's 2.50am, when yesterday it would have been 3.50am (daylight savings time). but i don't get to enjoy the extra hour because i can't fucking sleep.

my insides are roiling with the tempest of feelings: the new captain's first mate has been working overtime all weekend to deliver what he promised me would be in last week, and now i realize that he's probably been dragging his feet so that the new captain would be the one to look good on it. and that made me think of the new captain warning me - a month or two ago in private - to watch out because the other manager is a viper.

it bothered me back then when he said what he said - at first i didn't understand why he would - but i've been watching him cozying up to her the past week and i now realize that i may well be in the process of being fucked. and connecting those dots with some others, i'm now quite convinced that he's been trashing me behind my back.

i have spent every moment since panicking, flitting between anger and terror, freaking out because if i address this and i'm wrong, i'm a paranoid asshole, and if i don't address this but i'm right, myself and my reputation are going to be in big trouble.

i might already be in big trouble.

at my mother's suggestion, i spent a good chunk of last night compiling all the things i should say, and possibly some things i shouldn't, and have since had my brain going full tilt on processing and reprocessing conversations that i have no way of knowing how they'll go until they're gone.

i might well be losing my job for trying to rescue my job. i might well lose my job if i don't. i literally cannot afford to lose my job.

...

in the midst of all that noise, i took mr smear out for a bike ride in the afternoon, which was very nice - except for when it wasn't. i think i handled it pretty well (it's all the same "i hate going outside" routine), but it does detract from the experience and the experience was already shadowed by my panic over all of the above.

...

he's really having trouble sleeping again :(

...

the morning was nice, though. i picked up a bunch of books on kindle (including the robert fitzgerald translations of the iliad and the odyssey, inspired by our talk around the hercules movie).

out of air

 i didn't get much sleep last night. i've been having difficulty breathing and my stomache's been upside down all day from the anxiety.

i accompanied mr smear to school this morning, mainly for the fresh air and our usual banter, but also to keep him on track with his school council election slogan. apparently he ended up doing it properly.

my way home was essentially me running through scenarios with the team leads and running through possible conversations with my boss. by the time i got home and sent him a message asking him to call me, i was practically hyperventilating.

but he did call, and i said everything i meant to say and then some. because it turned out that requesting brutal feedback from him was a good idea, and i now understand the trap that i set for myself months ago: i took on all the shit, background, thankless work that nobody else is interested in in order to enable the rest of the team to focus on real stuff, and i've been managing the devops guys (some well, some not so well), and it now looks like i haven't actually delivered anything of value.

not only that, but nobody likes a policeman, and all the things i've been responsible for have required alignment from all the teams...

so now that i understand all that, i realize that how i've handled the situation was fundamentally flawed: instead of spending all day every day being interrupted by context switches, what i needed to do was dump the various responsibilities on other people so that each person would only get hurt a little bit.

i also made it clear to him that as much as i stand by what i said yesterday and recommend that we keep an eye on the new captain, as long as the current situation is what it is i'll be giving him all the support he needs to succeed.

unfortunately for the british guy, there's no way out of his dilemma; either he plays nicely with a manager he abhors, or he leaves. which makes me sad both for him and for the company.

anyway, i'm really glad that i spoke to my boss, both for the clarity on my side and because he was happy to hear what i had to say. having said that, i'm still processing, still running through scenarios, still struggling to breathe properly.

what will be will be.

...

perpetual anxiety aside, the rest of the day was great. i took gd to find a pair of shoes, and she found a pair she's happy with, we got decent coffee and waited for mr smear and another new friend to finish school. we all came home together, then gd and i left for a pharmacy / grocery mission (i would have gotten shoes, but the only ones that made sense were twice the price i was willing to pay), picked up some stuff from the bakery on the way home, and walked in to find the kids playing 99 nights in the forest :/

(they both knew that roblox was supposed to be off the table)

for me, the afternoon was a mix of reading, napping, playing shadowrun: hong kong. for the boys, it was computer games, card games (!), and then his friend convinced him to go outside to one of the parks (!!!) for a while. so that happened.

on his way out, mr smear told me that his friend's father was apparently a famous singer, so we checked it out when he'd left and holy shit he's a cultural icon :P

the late afternoon / evening was all about dishes, baking challah-peño (and finally understanding why some of them haven't been rising properly - too much flour), a little more shadowrun, and then dinner. which was going well - we're still watching disney's hercules - until mr smear started scratching another hole in his leg so his screentime is done until that's healed🤦

anyway, the last hour before bedtime was pleasant, bedtime itself was smooth*, and i've been playing shadowrun since... until i became overwhelmed by intrusive work-related thoughts again and had to stop to post this.

* he really wanted to read call of cthulu which i organized for him, but i wouldn't let him read it right before bed.

...

at least i can say that i'm loving shadowrun: hong kong. i'm playing it on easy so i can focus on the story, but even easy isn't that easy and the story and mechanics are great as always.

a dramatic start to the weekend

i've got two days to process everything that happened today (also, this last week, and possibly month or two) before starting to deal with a bunch of things that make me nervous.

...

this morning started off alright. mr smear went to school, i did the dishes and took gd's wrong-sized shoes to the post office for return. then i caught the bus to work, and immediately got caught in a web of onboarding stuff. otherwise i worked straight until lunchtime.

the good news is, i got my primary job done. and, while i was out talking with my mom on the way to and from getting lunch*, bigtalk stopped in at the office to say hi and report that he's got a new job in the building, which is a relief (i really hope his new job is actually good for his career, and not just another employer blowing smoke up his bum).

* omfg. my niece is three months' pregnant and hadn't told my sister, and when confronted she said "she didn't think she'd be interested". my sister and her son have been living with her and doing all the heavy lifting in the parenting of her kid as it is, whose father (the ex-husband) is a known paedo. the boyfriend is sweet, but useless. all the fucking drama.

the bad news is that just before going to get lunch, the new captain shared his "roadmap" with the team and my british coworker responded (in our team chat) that it looked like it was ai-generated and that it was "mental" to devise an 18 month roadmap for a devops team**.

** it's pretty crazy in general, ignoring the fact that we're a new startup and the captain doesn't understand how anything works yet.

after lunch, i took him aside to explain to him that whether he's right or not (he's totally right) it doesn't help him or anyone to be so tactless.

immediately afterwards, we returned to our desks, at which point the new captain - in front of everyone, because it's an open-plan office - climbed into him, resulting in him telling him "i'm in charge, i tell you what to do, and you do it. if you don't like it, go speak to the boss".

i just kept my eyes fixed on my monitor while this took place. the feeling of the two of them hating each other was palpable.

half an hour later, i had a meeting with the boss. he asked how i'm doing, to which i responded that he'd need to start as he was the one who'd called the meeting. he informed me a) that i was off the devops team and b) that he wanted me back "home" and programming, but that "neither of the r&d dev captains were particularly excited about me joining their teams".

now, i don't know if he was reporting accurately, or if he was being polite and saying that they'd refused to take me, but either way i'm very unhappy about the fact that two people i've been working with for eight months don't want to work with me. even if i do have some idea of why not (each of them for different reasons, but mostly in approach). so a huge part of my processing anxiety right now is trying to figure out how to approach them on sunday and try to find a way to achieve some kind of feelings reset.

so i've officially - with immediate effect - been moved to the system team. this is a fine outcome in my book, at least, but knowing it's my boss's third choice does leave me with a bit of an aftertaste.

of course, that happened right before we all walked out to a special happy hour. which i spent most of talking to the guy i used to serve with. although it was an interesting conversation, i kept seeing my boss and the new captain and a bunch of others out of the corner of my eye and i had a strong feeling that i should have been there instead...

...

gd was supposed to finally be getting her tooth sorted out this evening, and i was expecting her to be done by the time i left the not-so-happy hour. she didn't answer her phone, so i called mr smear and learned that the dentist had been forty minutes late, and that gd had been on the chair for twenty minutes already, and he was sitting in the waiting room bored out of his skull.

so i talked to him until i caught a bus to join them, unlocked a couple of games on his phone for him, and then sat quietly stewing all the way there.

i met up with the two of them just after gd had finally finished, with the unfortunate result that the new tooth didn't fit properly, so she's now got to wait another two weeks. we headed to our usual post-dentist hummusia, had an enjoyable dinner (the food, not the feelings surrounding our respective days), and then caught a bus home.

...

while we ate, i asked mr smear if he'd apologized properly to the girl from yesterday. he informed us - and we double- and triple-checked - that she'd merely giggled as a response, and that aside from that they hadn't had any interactions.

hmmm.

...

mr smear went to bed relatively smoothly, and now i've posted this perhaps i'll have energy to shadowrun a little. last night i clicked through a whole lot of dialog, but by the time i was ready for a mission i was done.

war & peace

 i woke up this morning to an unhinged stream of invectives from the mother of a girl in mr smear's class. it appears that she was so terrified by something that mr smear looked up on the teacher's computer that she was unable to close her eyes until almost midnight. also, the following is the list of "curses" that mr smear name-called her:

1. stupid 

2. miss underpants 

3. a little girl in the nursery 

and that we must keep our child away from hers.

OH MY GOD. considering the rather disturbing vocabulary he's capable of, this is what upset her? as a fifth grader? fucking grow a pair. jesus.

anyway, after calling mr smear (who was already on his way to school at the time) to chew him out, i responded to her that a) his behavior was unacceptable and that would be dealt with accordingly and b) that i'm shocked that the kids have unsupervised access to the internet at school and c) that he claimed that her daughter wasn't entirely innocent in the story, and that i would ask the teacher to try and figure out what happened.

at that point, this woman completely lost it, and sent a stream of messages to the effect that her daughter was completely innocent, that the school has a zero-tolerance policy, and that she hopes they take the appropriate action (the insinuation was clear that he be kicked out of the school).

it was *very* hard to not respond, even to not say "i'm not going to engage any more", and i was in war-mode and literally shaking by the time i walked into the office. i spoke to a couple of coworkers, and one of them said something that made me realize she might actively try to get everyone on her side... i sent the teacher a message explaining that i'd tried to show cooperation, but that she was extremely aggressive.

the response i got indicated that her behavior isn't out-of-character and that we're not alone in our assessment.

...

the legal team guy i served with is now working from the office, so we had a fun catch-up. which included me regaling him with some tales of the bug spray guy who apparently traumatized him with a bike ride.

...

our first weekly lunch hour game hacking session wasn't nearly as successful as i was hoping, but it wasn't bad either.

...

our "daily" meeting was in the afternoon, and afterwards i sat with the new captain for a bit to discuss some things. it was a lot more constructive and positive than i expected. later, as he was on his way out, i remembered that he's from netanya, and i suspect that his nonchalant-but-needs-to-put-his-thing-down affect may be due to growing up around arsim.

...

in spite of the perpetual "urgent" distractions, i managed to focus on my primary task for a couple of hours. i think i made good progress.

...

gd and i talked with mr smear about what's going on with him. it didn't get loud, but it did get intense. i hope to god he stops FA-ing before he FO-s.

...

"i only test my code in production" - i need to get gd a shirt. i picked up some green curry yesterday, so she used it this evening for a really nice dish. only... it wasn't until she's put our entire dinner on the line that she decided that it was too spicy for her. and then, of course, mr smear decided that it was too spicy for him, even though i ate it and it wasn't spicy at all.

except for a couple of random bites, and then it was back-of-the-throat spicy, which i don't like.

in the meanwhile, mr smear decided (after chickening out of the main dish) that he was going to make shit real by loading up onion slices with hot salsa. i don't know which part of that sentence amuses me more, but the results were pretty funny.

bedtime was uneventful - less than it's been for a week at least - we read some more neverending story and then i sat down to post this. the computer's been much, much quieter than usual, though sometimes the fans flare up, but i have no idea what specifically i did that worked :/

under new management

mr smear going to school on his own. the walk to the post office. the washing machine technician coming for nothing.

the long devops meeting with our new "captain", who really isn't much of a leader and who doesn't seem to understand that the business is more important than the tech. a meeting with our security team, with the new captain, which gave me a sense of being (positively) outside the team.

lots of onboarding assistance. and coworker consulting. and a very late lunch + hot sauce run, which was interrupted by a delivery guy who'd been stood up by one of our coworkers.

syncing with the brit after his 1:1 with the captain, and being relieved to hear that it was considerably less combative than we expected.

leaving later than planned, but earlier than usual. not being able to help mr smear with his maths - both because he didn't write down the exercises properly, and because matific was down. a pizza dinner watching the first part of the hercules movie (so outrageously disneyfied that we had to stop mr smear yelling at the screen), a pretty pleasant experience between dinner and bedtime.

then a whole lot of struggling with the windows machine (the high heat and fan speed apparently may be because i use brave, but it seems to happen with chrome too, and even when they're closed).

i'm tired.

lighter mission

i almost forgot! before dinner, gd realized that the lighter for the gas stove was done. so i had to drag myself off the couch, get dressed again, and go to the corner store.

they were out, but the guy was really busy with other customers and his daughter started yelling for help because she was stuck in a tree and afraid. it took me a few minutes to convince her and her sister to come down and not go up again until their dad was around...

i picked up the lighters from the further corner store, and on my way back walked past the bookstore so i ducked in to see if they had any maps. they had one, but it wasn't quite good enough.

the woman behind the counter was being awkward, but there was something familiar about her (and her awkwardness) and i eventually asked her if she'd studied english lit, and when, and although she claims she doesn't remember me at all i now definitely remember taking classes with her!

so that was entertaining.

long and tiring

 t'was a long day. work was a bit weird, we were lucky that the aws outage only affected one of our sites, and only coincidentally. fortunately, one of our new devops was able to fix it manually, in a particularly impressive way.

i went hunting for a wall map, ended up buying a strip of batteries for mr smear's memory game instead. and then i sat down with a coworker for a slow, heavy lunch at a hummusia.

i came home early hoping for some rest, but a message from mr smear's teacher had me worried. in spite of that, we had some good time together before dinner, and we all enjoyed finishing twins. it's aged well.

after dinner, we had a very serious talk about the message; we don't know if mr smear is telling the truth or not, but if he is then he's doing well and we're proud of him. if he isn't, he's going to have to deal with the consequences.

we can only do so much.

but it was encouraging that the new arrangement for his math homework seems to be off to a good start...

bedtime was going fine right until he got into bed, and one of his eyes (his "bad" eye) started leaking. we're praying it's nothing interesting.

the rest of the evening's been nice. and included the expected amount of too much shadowrun: hong kong.

oh, mr smear expressed interest in playing DnD. i'm going to message cm and see if he's up for an introduction.

failed to restart

 i'm tired. but my coworker was worse off than me today, he came in with heatstroke :/

mr smear left a minute or two before me today, and instead of waiting downstairs, he just left. without saying goodbye. so i followed him, walking at a fast pace, and caught up with him just after he crossed the highway onramp, so i got to see him handling everything alright.

i dropped him off at school, then headed to the office.

i'm having a hard time with names and faces now. like, a really hard time.

today was another day of one distraction after another. the new "team captain" has arrived, but he's onboarding so he hasn't really joined us yet.

i struggled to not snack today.

i came home a bit later than i'd like, but not for any good reason. we watched more twins over dinner, and then had a family meeting about the new math homework rules. shower / toothbrush time was smooth, getting mr smear to sleep was much easier... he at least tried what i was telling him about relaxing his body in order to relax his mind.

i guess i'll find out tomorrow how it went from his perspective.

i passed out on the couch, but woke up with bits of the jelly beads from mr smear's "prize" all over me. and then got stuck trying to solve a bizarre work issue.

i want to play a little shadowrun before going to bed, but i don't think i have the brain for it :(

nature nurture

 this was a BIG weekend.

yesterday:

it was a very rushed morning. i dropped mr smear off at school, then took the light rail to the hospital mall where i picked up a bunch of stuff for the camping, especially the two bags of large vegan marshmallows. i carried the shopping home, then spent the next while helping gd knead the six large challot, including one giant challah-peño.

between rising/baking sessions, i rushed out to pick mr smear up from school, stopping at the office on the way to pick up my sunglasses which i hadn't been sure if i'd left there by mistake. i only had a few minutes to get out of there, so of course it was on me to discover that the alarm hadn't been set the night before and that there was some kind of issue with it... i managed to shift that off to my CEO before heading out again, arriving a few minutes late to meet mr smear at the station and take a walk to yuka monsters.

we picked up our copy of the day everything changed, then jumped on a light rail to return home, help gd with the last of the challot, and furiously pack everything. it was far later than planned when i finally went to pick up the car, return to load it, and get me and mr smear on our way to the "fairy forest".

mr smear was very excited about riding up front for the first time in his life, and he did a pretty good job as navigator keeping track of waze and relaying data. it's also been years since it was just the two of us in a car together, so we blasted his playlist, and overall it was a good ride.

minus us leaving the three coconut waters i'd bought for the trip in the fridge at home :/

the camp site was really nice. the tent we rented was way bigger than expected (it said "two man", but we could easily have fit four full-sized mattresses in there with space for bags). the tap water was potable, though it didn't taste very good, so mr smear didn't drink enough :/

in general, the class kids have a good energy together and for the most part mr smear gets along with them. with a couple of them better than the rest, which is positive.

one of the parents - a linguist - started telling mr smear that he didn't need to learn hebrew, which upset me... i tried to remain polite while making it very clear that she was doing something inappropriate, but she just didn't give a shit and it wasn't until this morning that an opportunity presented to share a bit of mr smear's history and make it clear that we (finally) actually have a handle on the language issue...

dinner was quite an occasion, gd's challot were a great success, and challah-peño received a lot of welcome praise. afterwards, mr smear's new friend's dad set up a gas stove so that we could toast marshmallows, which for mr smear was an amazing experience, while for me it was a mixture of excitement and trauma trying to fairly dole out a limited number of marshmallows to a swarm of greedy kids of various ages and cuteness levels.

and then, we realized that that whole time there'd been another family nearby with lots of marshmallows - non-vegan ones - so they could have handled a lot of the load instead :/

mr smear and i hit the sleeping bags relatively early (normal bedtime for him), and he was very excited to not be going to sleep alone. we both fell asleep pretty quickly.

i must have woken up half an hour to an hour later. the sleeping bags we bought are good. and warm. and i suddenly realized that i hadn't showered, and that i'd needed to shower. and then the restlessness settled in, and it wasn't until very late (i'm guessing around 2/3am according to what i heard later) when everyone else had finally gone to sleep that i finally managed to fall asleep again.

today:

so mr smear had a great night's sleep; me, not so much.

we got up with the sun, brushed our teeth, and i somehow succeeded in coercing mr smear to come shower with me. i explained to him that if there wasn't hot water, i'd be going first and have to suffer the longest, and when we entered the stalls we discovered that there wasn't any hot water, and i understood what all the previous evening's screams had all been about.

but the weather was good, so the moment i'd dried off the sun began heating me up. mr smear did not want to get in - i mean, neither did i, really - but he eventually did it and got through it, and once he was dry he also felt amazing.

great success!

i'm quite proud of myself for taking the towels back to the car and using them to ensure that the front seats and steering wheel weren't hellishly hot when we left - not only did that work well, but the towels were also bone dry by then.

he convinced me to start our day with hal's kettle-fried jalapeño chips, then it was breakfast / coffee / him and his friend inventing an activity that involved eating painful things (including the chips) that none of the other kids went for, then a pass-the-parcel game which he eventually joined (and took away a squishy-ball prize he was excited about), and then we assembled for a hike.

it was a much tougher hike than i expected, but it was good, and we got through it. it took a little while to break camp - mostly due to helping other parents and getting into a conversation about age-appropriate gaming - and then we were off.

our biggest issue on the way home was that the UX of the car radio is awful, and we couldn't charge the phone and listen to music simultaneously. so we charged it for the first half, and listened to music for the second half, and by the time we arrived home we were both exhausted, hot, and hungry.

the rest of the afternoon was spent showering, eating, and resting (or napping, in my case), dinner and more of twins was good, and then bedtime was a bit rough because last night reset all the bedtime ritual progress we've made 🤦

anyway, it was overall a fantastic first camping experience for mr smear, and an excellent bonding weekend for both of us, and hopefully i'll catch up on some sleep tonight.

common ground

 it's been a long ass-day and i'm exhausted, but i'm sure i won't have time to post anything tomorrow so i'm going to jot down what i can before i crash:

i accompanied mr smear to school this morning, then hopped on a bus to the post office to pick up a package for gd.

i was on my way home this morning from dropping my son off at school, it's a beautiful morning and the world feels a whole lot more right than it did just a few days ago.

and then, out of nowhere, my brain started pulling up flashes of trauma from the past two years. not the horrors of october 7th, not the endless sheltering from rocket attacks, not the immeasurable loss of our soldiers, not the endless defending ourselves from all the lies, but the "friends" who turned out to be evil scum. the traitorous jews who think that our enemies would spare them if they promote their evil agenda.

i don't know if there will ever be a reckoning. terrorists, jihadists? we know why they do the evil that they do. but those who support and are complicit in their evil? you're worse human beings than the terrorists. at least they have *some* integrity.

on my way to work i arranged for a technician to come and check out our washing machine, which has been leaking :(

i spent the work day jumping between interesting things, getting some minor stuff done along the way. the biggest and most surprising elements of the day were meeting a bunch of the new people and finding lots of different common grounds.

oh, and i reviewed and discussed the investigation results from our security company, it was satisfactory but we're still going to try to bring it in-house.

for a couple of hours between happy hour and me getting home i felt painfully bloated. but only for a couple of hours. i don't know why.

i rushed out a bit late for my hairdresser's appointment, i ended up five minutes late but it was alright. the haircut itself was good, and i only nodded off a couple of times (i tried really hard not to). the poor guy can barely understand english, never mind hebrew, so our attempts at small talk invariably resulted in him holding up his translation app to record me asking questions or making comments that really weren't important :P

although gd had a really rough day with mr smear and his homework, my experience in the evening was pretty calm. once he was in bed, i sat down to get some work done, which took about an hour and a half. i'm not quite sure what i've been doing for the hour since then, but i'm almost done with my chamomile tea so i guess this is it for now.

...

i'm a teensy bit paranoid because i either cut myself on, or got a splinter from, a hand grip on a bus this morning :/

less but not gone

 we all arrived at the hospital more-or-less on time, to discover that the woman who'd called me last week to arrange the challenge apparently hadn't registered it properly in the system. they let us go up anyway, and what followed was a couple of hours of various stages of the challenge along with a spirometer (lung capacity test).

he had subjective reactions - itchiness - but not objective ones; after the fourth increment (which he was totally grossed out by) the allergist stopped us and kept him (and gd) there for the following two hours for observation.

in short: he's allergic, and we'll still have to carry around his epipen and avoid dairy, but if he accidentally ingests any we don't need to panic. more than anything else, he no longer needs to worry about other kids eating around him or not washing their hands properly.

and i don't have to worry about him wanting to consume dairy products, he was thoroughly grossed out.

...

i arrived at the office just in time to be swarmed by our new hires who needed some accounts configured. the rest of the day was a mix of telling my life story to two of my coworkers, strategizing with my british coworker and our tech ops guy, and discussing a moonshot problem that i've been fantasizing about solving.

...

i ate some kabukim today and they really hurt my back teeth. i hope i haven't stripped a filling or something.

...

then i came home, theoretically in time for dinner if mr smear hadn't been busy dragging his feet on his homework... anyway, dinner was good, bedtime was alright, and i spent the next couple of hours doing a mission in shadowrun.

now i'm going to try to get some sleep.

shadowrunning

 i slept alright, but got up early and dived back in to shadowrun: hong kong. if i'm honest with myself, i legitimately spent far too many hours playing it today, but it's a fantastic story, i'm enjoying the mechanics (even if i am playing on easy), and fuck it, we're all just resting today.

mr smear's biggest complaint today was about how "unfair" it is that i spent all day on the windows machine, while he was relegated to the macbook :P

in the afternoon, i took mr smear out for a walk and ended up joining the mongoose for a while. eventually mr smear and i made our way back, stopping at jars and bowls to pick up dinner. we got home quite late, so i regretted having promised him he could play half an hour of portal when we got home, but he was really cool while we were out and he never looked at his phone once, so...

once we got him into bed, it was back into shadowrun, and i've now just stopped (right before a run i recall being particularly intense) and am getting ready to go to bed myself, in preparation for what we expect to be a big day tomorrow.

mr smear's dairy allergy test.

❤️💔 🇮🇱 🙏

 gd's earliest alarm woke me up around 6am, and from that point i was unable to return to sleep, not least because i was thinking about the hostage release.

the next few hours were a mess of me watching the news, then deciding not to watch the news, and then watching the news anyway. it was an intense morning, and while our little mission to the pharmacy should have provided some distraction, our pharmacy is very close to hostage square where 65,000 people were crowded, waiting for updates.

we got what we needed (gd doesn't think i made a good decision regarding mosquito repellent, we'll see*) and returned home, then glued ourselves to news feeds until all twenty living hostages were in israeli-controlled territory.

שֶׁהֶחֱיָנוּ וְקִיְּמָנוּ וְהִגִּיעָנוּ לַזְּמַן הַזֶּה.

* i went with oil of lemon eucalyptus instead of the chemicals that come with scary warnings ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

hearing the helicopters overhead bringing in hostages to ichilov hospital was surreal. today's an emotional rollercoaster for sure - the hostages returning home, their families, their losses, the bodies that haven't been / won't be returned, the thousands of soldiers who were killed since the war started... and who knows what tomorrow will bring?

so we're breathing again and celebrating and mourning all at the same time. it's one hell of a time to say chag sameach

the rest of the afternoon was distractions (chores, shadowrun) while beginning to process, so lots of celebrating and lots of sobbing. someone said it beautifully: for two years now, it's been october 7th. with the last of the living hostages returned, today is october 8th. we can finally start grieving.

even though it's not quite all over. but between trump and netanyahu and all our arab neighbors, it's anyone's guess what's going to happen in the coming days, months and years.

but today was a good day. today we collectively breathe and celebrate the return of those who survived 738 days in captivity, tortured by orcs.

the horror

 today began with preparing a document for mr smear (and gd) to learn the hebrew months, and getting mr smear out of bed to do math homework. there was some tension, but nothing too serious, and we got through it. i flipped our mattresses, did some dishes, (finally) checked that we had authorization for wednesday's allergy challenge, and left for work.

after a long chat with my mom about aliyah, i entered the office for a day filled with interruptions of interruptions.

highlights/lowlights:

a) finally getting in touch with a potential partner after being assured they'd been updated by their superiors, and they hadn't.

b) discovering that our outsourced security team had updated a policy without asking for our consent, or informing us, and it disconnected everyone in rnd, some of whom were engaged in mission-critical tasks. i lost my temper - i've never cursed that much or that loudly in the office*. i informed my boss that they'd crossed a line (not exactly for the first time) and we need to bring our security in-house. i think he heard me pretty clearly this time.

* and, oddly enough, in hebrew. i don't think i've ever done that before, i've always found cursing in hebrew awkward.

c) by the end of the day, after hours battling buggy docker behavior, i finally got to the bottom of our devcontainer / vpn issues. ironically, they were caused by a misconfiguration by my british coworker when he originally tried to fix them, but for some reason everything seemed to work well for almost two weeks before wigging out.

so at least i can move forward with my real work now.

...

i travelled most of the way home with our tech ops guy (there're two now, but whatever), and i was shocked to discover that he's a jewish israeli that was born and raised here but has zero connection or comprehension of judaism. i gave him a bit of a lecture on why i think it's important for non-observant jews to understand the history of our beliefs and practices, and he was totally shocked by what i had to say.

i arrived home, picked up mr smear, and the two of us went off to the mall to buy sleeping bags for the class camping trip this weekend. heavy cigarette smell in the bus notwithstanding, we had a long conversation during which i was shocked and dismayed to learn that he'd spent a good chunk of his day on youtube, behind gd's back, watching really disturbing horror videos.

i've now seen his watch history. i mean disturbing. thanks, youtube, for managing kids' content so safely. and thanks, also, for not enabling parents to block desktop youtube over family link.

on our way home, we sat down for some really good falafel (and i awkward didn't realize why ze british german's wife looked familiar until she'd already greeted me and walked past), then picked up a sandwich for gd, and came home.

another late night for mr smear (his antivirals), but thank god getting him to sleep went smoother than anticipated. i've spent most of the night playing more shadowrun, and now i'm going to bed, trying - continuing to try, at least - not to think about the war / hostage release situation. and now that i've typed that, i'll probably check the news and fuck myself up a bit :/

breathe in

 i finally dived back in to shadowrun: hong kong. i ended up climbing into bed around 2.30am.

i woke up around 8.30am, enjoyed a cup of coffee and more shadowrun, and then took a pleasant, quiet walk to the pharmacy and back to get gd's meds. it was a beautiful morning for it.

a classmate of mr smear's arrived, with a foul-mouth and some interesting inherited opinions (when i said we're vegan, he unabashedly responded "cringe!"), and the two of them seemed to have a good time.

and then a weird thing happened - mr smear's friend convinced him to try watching forrest gump. in spite of the initial protests, we continued watching after his friend's mom picked him up and we all loved it (and i occasionally sobbed uncontrollably, at one point mr smear misread it as laughing).

i did some of the dishes, then took mr smear out for a very pleasant walk to and through the park, and we got home in time for dinner and futurama, followed by showering / brushing teeth / doing the rest of the dishes while mr smear entertains himself and gd reading trivia and garfield out loud.

half an hour to his herpes-meds bedtime.

...

i'm sad that mr smear has decided to stop doing the inktober challenge, but he got through a third of it, and he did so brilliantly.

circus

 today was emotionally zombifying. it began with a massive fight with mr smear (his usual shit that we've been dealing with over the past few weeks) right before his friend arrived and we all went to the circus together. i'm embarrassed that i lost my temper, but goddamn - as i explained to him then and later - when your kid fucks with you in the same ways, over and over, day after day, week after week, year after year, it adds up.

the circus (circo circo) wasn't the most amazing circus experience, but it did have a lot of nail-bitingly good acts. one of which mr smear didn't see, because the scantily-clad rollerskater was too naked for him and he covered his eyes the entire act. the clowns were impressive, the trapeze artists / acrobats did some crazy things, and the dirt bike ball was just crazy.

when we came home we resumed (at a slightly lower intensity) the morning's issues in order to try and resolve them, interrupted by a nerve-wracking fifteen minutes of trying to locate his friend who'd said goodbye and gone home, but forgotten to turn the ringer of his phone back on :/

and then we all hopped in a taxi and went to the emergency clinic to get gd some help with her weird eyelid thing. we were there for two hours before the doctor could see us. we did some of mr smear's math homework, and me and him read comics for most of the wait. gd got a prescription, and we taxied to the pharmacy to pick it up, but the pharmacy was closed :/

so we walked home and i immediately got stuck in to doing all the dishes because our friend and her kids were coming over for dinner. this week, instead of challah-peño, we made challah-banero. it was also really good, but a bit different, not least of which being that the heat, while minor, hangs around longer...

dinner was great, the kids played nicely (on screens, but whatever) and had a good time, and our only complaint was that two of the kids were sporting a nasty cough and gd's terrified of having to deal with another bout of bronchitis :(

it's now 1am, everyone's in bed (finally!) and i've got a little bit of proper me-time for the first time in a while. which i have to take advantage of because tomorrow's looking to be busy.

challenges

don't count your hostages before they've been safely returned. i'm hoping against hope, but god knows if any of what's supposed to be happening right now is real.

...

in addition to everything else, gd's eye's been giving her trouble, and today things got serious. so we began the day accompanying her to the clinic, and then i walked them most of the way home before heading to the office.

the work day was okay, calm but a bit messy. highlights included terminating our contract with a guy who's been on retainer for months but who's been occupying himself with stuff we never asked for, probably out of boredom.

i consumed far too many calories during happy hour.

the game hacking session never happened, but me hanging around did present an opportunity for a wild AI conversation.

• AI Slop Is Destroying The Internet
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• and it's especially creepy hearing an AI describing how we're using AI wrong: Replacing Humans with AI Has Gone Terribly Wrong | Geoffrey Hinton Explains

i came home, we had dinner (and watched an episode of futurama), and i managed to convince mr smear to draw the amazing inktober concept he'd come up with in the morning. unfortunately, we didn't get to publish it because by the time he finished inking it - and he refuses to post it without color - it was already 11pm. and then getting him to go to sleep was a whole other story...

...

tomorrow's the day we go to the circus, but also a friday that gd needs to go to the emergency clinic. oh! and i got a call from the hospital today, mr smear can do his dairy challenge next week 🤞

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.