chores and childhood

saturday:

i went to bed, got up a bit later to pee and caught mr smear on the computer... i warned him that that had lost him screen time, got him to go to bed, and then returned to bed myself.

i was in the middle of a dream when he woke me up to ask if his punishment time was over yet 🤦‍♂️

by the way, i have to note that he's been reading the wave and is really enjoying it.

when i eventually got up (i didn't get too much more sleep, unfortunately) we sat down to play some space quest v together, which was fun and got a lot of laughs until he decided he was getting bored 🤷‍♂️

i moved over to the playstation, and began playing nier automata. i managed to get through the first sequence, it was a lot of fun and the game world is gorgeous, but by the time i got to the save point i was feeling worn out...

mr smear's german friend came over for a few hours, while i played some more final fantasy vi.

in any event, the day was mostly spent quietly indoors. we were all exhausted.

yesterday:

after dropping mr smear off at school, gd and i took the bus to dizengoff center, then walked to the shuk. we enjoyed a cup of coffee on rambam street with no pressure, we picked her up a couple of bags (custom prints, she's happy with them) and a couple of nice t-shirts for me, i picked up some wired speakers for my windows machine, and then we checked out the book store looking for a gift for the mongoose's daughter (whose birthday we've missed, twice) and hit the jackpot - a large piglet plushy and a hebrew translation of winnie-the-pooh.

after we got home, gd went back out to meet up with urchin, so i had to pick mr smear up from school. i arrived there just as he was leaving the gate with a friend of his we've never heard of before, informing me that they were going to take the bus to his place and asking me to pick him up by 4pm.

so... that was a moment. i made sure i had the address, and that his friend knew that mr smear is vegan, and off they went, leaving me feeling a little bit anxious but very proud at the same time.

gd, however, didn't take mr smear's independence so well... to be fair, though, if we were in canada or south africa i definitely wouldn't have felt so safe about it.

i spent the next while setting up my new work accounts, and discovering that the cheap speakers i'd bought were terrible, and then gd and urchin arrived and we chatted for a while, and then gd and i left together to pick mr smear up from his friend.

he was fine, they'd had a nice afternoon. we took the bus home, picked up the gifts, then took the bus to the mongoose's. and discovered that his daughter already had the matching winnie-the-pooh plushy, but their copy of the book they had wasn't as nice so she'd been bored... on our way out i overheard them reading to her and they later sent an adorable picture of her hugging her new friend.

all good ^_^

from there we went to market vegan for dinner. i had the hand-made couscous, which i really didn't enjoy the texture of, and they shared kebabs which were delicious, but there was an embarrassing incident with mr smear trying to spit out a mouthful of food because he didn't like the peanut butter sauce 🤦‍♂️

we got home pretty late, had a struggle to get him to do some of his homework, and then just before bedtime he decided he was hungry again.

ay carumba.

today:

another difficult day getting mr smear ready for school. while saying goodbye, some guy walked his kid past me and the child wet-coughed openly into my face. i was literally stunned, and i really wish i'd said something because i spent my entire walk back fighting with the shitty parent in my mind :/

i took the speakers back for a refund, then ended up meandering until i found myself at a nice coffee shop on ibn gvirol, where i stopped and took care of a bunch of chores.

it feels good crossing things off my list.

it didn't feel good learning that mr smear had absolutely refused to cooperate with his teacher until the third lesson of the day :(

then i walked home via the mall, where i picked up some urgent groceries and found a pretty decent bluetooth speaker that was on sale for even less money than the cheap ones i'd returned. they work well, although the windows machine itself is pretty shitty so they're not as good as they could be...

mr smear had left school with a friend of his who was performing in a piano recital at the conservatory. i was told that he would be ready to be picked up around 3.30pm, but on my way there i saw that his phone was on the other side of the city, and when i checked in with his friend's parents i was told that the recital was only scheduled to begin at 5pm, and that they'd have mr smear home by 6pm.

color me frustrated.

i'd been in the middle of a meeting with horseman, who was trying very hard to explain a complex crypto scheme of his, and i took the opportunity to make myself a coffee and reset my brain a little. in total we must have sat for about two hours on his presentation, arguing non-stop about how all the mechanisms work together, but by the end of it i think we had a good handle on the design and we'd also both learned a some things about crypto that we hadn't fully understood before.

mr smear eventually came home around 7pm, just while i was talking to our kibbutz cousin for the first time in ages, and we dived into dinner because he hadn't eaten anything all afternoon. he apparently had a really good time, though :)

we had a long good-night chat with my mom, some of which was stressful (regarding aliyah), and now that mr smear's in bed and i've knocked this post out, i think i'm going to start winding down for the evening.