fucking tuesday

 well... i was about to go to bed, i was falling asleep on my feet, when we realized that one of the key accomplishments of the day was for nothing - we lost a bag of t-shirts that we bought at the shuk this morning.

so now i've played some more inscryption, and i'm writing this up, and then hopefully i'll manage to get some actual sleep. last night i ended up playing final fantasy vi for about an hour after posting...

...

firstly, my cold / flu / whatever has been slightly better today, but still not great. it was rain weather, but fortunately not boot weather. after dropping mr smear off at school - with him having had a pretty good morning, and repeating his affirmation without hesitation, and being much more healthily social with his friends on the way to school than usual - gd and i headed to azrieli. we went through all the major clothing stores, and found nothing of interest, so we hopped on a bus to the shuk via dizengoff center (to pick up an emergency umbrella) and began the hunt.

we actually found what we were looking for pretty quickly. shirts for mr smear, shirts for me (now lost), and three pairs of decent, i-can-go-to-work-in-these cargo pants (that i had quite a time trying on in their open-air fitting room), and then we picked up a cauliflower meal from the frena place and sat down for coffee, enjoying a nice chat with an elderly couple that was in mixed hebrew and english, and which gd managed to follow and participate in quite nicely!

on the way to the bus i realized that my payment for the cauliflower hadn't gone through, so i returned to have my card declined a number of times before discovering that i had (rather unusually) some cash in my wallet. the ride home was consumed by me on the phone to my credit card company, learning that - once again - i blew straight past my limit by a lot and now i'm blocked for the next few days.

i really don't understand the point of the limit if they're only going to shut down my card way after i've spent too much money.

i mean, i kind of get it, but it's wrong and gross.

anyway.

i picked up mr smear from school, and on the way home we were treated to the sight of a jackal jumping out of the hedges at the park and racing right past us. which reminds me - one of the jackals by our apartment tried to start a howl in the middle of the night, and all the other jackals just ignored him so he dropped it 😂

we spent the next couple of hours doing his homework, which was at least a better experience than yesterday's attempt. slow going, though, and gd and i were horrified to discover that he doesn't know the order of the letters in the hebrew alphabet or the names of the months in the hebrew calendar.

WTAF.

after his "play therapist" arrived, i took a bus to the barber shop, chatting with one of ze germans about a project he wants me in on (which i can't be in on, officially). the haircut experience was pretty good, overall, although it had its awkward points: my "usual" barber had been the person i'd made the appointment with over the phone, so he knew that my first pick was someone else, the guy who did my hair did a pretty good job, though i ended up covered in hair and i had to ask him to fix something rather obvious, and my card was declined so i had to mission to find an ATM.

i waited so long for the bus home that i ended up walking instead, and i arrived home in time to shower and sit down to eat and watch the simpsons.

inspired by a chat with my mom, mr smear went to bed reading the hobbit graphic novel, which is very  exciting!

...

i started the day posting the following:

gaza-lighting: when you try to wipe out the jews in their own homeland, but after you've been defeated you occupy their territory and culturally appropriate their entire history in order to turn it against them, while raising your children as "martyrs" to complete your initial attempt to destroy them, claiming that *you're* indigenous and occupied and under threat of genocide.

("palestinians" are egyptians, jordanians and syrians who were abandoned in israel by their countries in order to use them as pawns in their long game of destroying israel. just to be clear, i'm very happy living with and alongside non-jewish israelis who accept our sovereignty and democratic rule of law. i don't feel the same about anyone who refuses that.)

what's happening with trump and netanyahu aligning to give hamas an ultimatum on returning the hostages on saturday is extremely exciting. this feels like what we should have been feeling the entire war - like america knows what's up and which side they're on - and while it may be too late to help most of the hostages it seems like it's on time to turn this whole ship around.