trade-offs (ceasefire?)

the psychological terror continues. now we pray each day for the (relative) well-being of the hostages that we're paying for in future blood as we release serial and mass murderers who have every intent on continuing to try to wipe us out.

i'm trying to not think about what we're doing and what it means but it's really hard, and there's no clear right course of action available to us. i hope our "leaders" have secured us more lives than we've already lost, and i pray we have a real plan for whenever this "ceasefire" falls apart.

...

if there's a silver lining to this shitstorm cloud, it's that otzma hayehudit has left the coalition. thank fuck.

yesterday:

it was a relaxed start to the day, but then there was another rocket attack by the houthis (who the fuck are these assholes?!) followed by a massive fight to get mr smear to come out with me for a ride, even though he'd already agreed.

what followed was gd sitting and talking him through things, for what felt like forever (probably about 20 minutes to half an hour), and then fifteen minutes of him calming down, and then...

... and then we were off. i pumped us his deflated front tire, we took a rather roundabout route to try and stay on reasonably good bike paths, and we stopped occasionally because he needed rest, but ultimately we ended up at givon square, where we stopped to have a bite - a very large bite - at schnitt.

not too far from the stabbing attack that took place in levontin :/

the food wasn't amazing, but mr smear was having such a good time that he actually - unsolicited, i might add - thanked me for taking him out on such a great day ^_^

the ride home was good too, including a long stop on a bench on rothschild to have a heart-to-heart.

the rest of the evening went really well, including a really fun session playing inscryption together, and bedtime was a riot.

then gd and i settled down to watch the end of the third venom movie. omg. the writing in the first part was weak, but by the end it felt like a parody of an eighties action flick and i turned over in disgust before passing out on the couch.

today:

i slept alright, for the most part. we had some trouble getting mr smear ready for school, but we left the apartment in good spirits anyway. when his friend and his friend's sister caught up with us crossing the road i hurriedly said goodbye so they could enjoy their walk together, then made my way to the clinic to try and figure out what they want in order to authorize gd's therapy sessions.

turns out... they don't really know. so they made me an appointment with our family doctor, who then sent me off to the hospital, where i had a bit of a back and forth before they sent me off. in the afternoon gd's therapist called and i explained to her what i'd understood, hopefully we'll get things right soon.

...

it's been a day full of distractions. i spent some of the morning working on the exercise, and managed to figure out how to get the thing running, and then some of the afternoon reading through their whitepaper to try and understand how all the pieces fit together. i spent a chunk of the day taking mr smear to his therapy session and handling him doing his homework. i've been made responsible for the keys to the bomb shelter for the building. i've been contacted by a company i interviewed for before taking my current (now-last) job.

it's been a day, so far. it's been a day.