like a dream

 in the middle of the night, the pre-pre-alarms went off, and i jumped out of bed still in a dream-state and automatically woke everyone up before realizing that there was no point. three or four hours later, anothe pre-pre-alarm, only that one turned into a pre-alarm and we spent the next while in the shelter with no internet hearing lots of loud explosions.

mr smear did some fantastic drawing while i tried to stop one of the neighbors from enthusiastically pointing out all the flaws in the shelter and dreaming up awful ways we might die.

i don't know when the right time is to discuss urgent safety issues with the bomb shelter is, but i am  pretty confident it's not when you're all stuck in the bomb shelter in the middle of a massive wave of rocket attacks...

we did all get back to sleep, but when the 7am alarm went off along with a reminder that mr smear had a hygienist appointment, we painfully dragged ourselves out of our beds (i was the slowest and the groggiest) to get ready to go. i did try to find out if the appointment had been cancelled, but all avenues pointed to "go", and mr smear and i scrambled out the door and just made it to the bus stop on time and i just finished my take-away cup of coffee in time to get to the dental clinic on time to find it closed.

on the plus side, it was an easy, quiet ride there and back and mr smear and i both enjoyed the conversation immensely (kerbal space program has inspired him to want to be an astronaut).

...

when we returned home, i called the dental service to complain, and the woman who answered was disagreeable right from the get-go, which pissed me off, and although i continued to try to explain to her that the clinics should be cancelling appointments if they're not going to honor them, by the time i got through her gaslighting and dismissing i totally lost my shit and i yelled and swore at her.

then i spent a furious little while navigating making a complaint, the process of which honestly made me even madder.

someone called me back a while later, and i explained what happened and told her to listen to the recording. i was satisfied when she took me off hold to agree to handle the complaint with that asshole's manager.

...

we had an interesting all-hands today, our company's in massive demand and things are heating up. this is good. but it's also exhausting right now specifically :P

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my cheek seems to be healing alright, but it's still very fresh and i'm nervous about it. i'm grateful i didn't bleed on my pillow.

...

while i managed to get some work done today, i'm not satisfied and in spite of my current desperation to return to bed there's a chance i might try to dig in some more.

mr smear was pretty good about doing his homework, with only one emotional outburst that he turned around on so quickly that i'm still feeling really proud of him. he also helped me do the dishes this afternoon, and we actually had a good time of it. he's definitely growing up.

...

both of the people i communicated with yesterday regarding my mother's aliyah got back to me positively. i hope they can help me. i just wrote myself a reminder to contact whoever i contacted last year.

...

there's so much news happening right now. i was actually in a media briefing earlier, though i didn't hear anything new i was pleased that the people involved aren't missing the point of what's happening. and from the looks of things...

holy fuck, it looks like our forces are doing what they're now used to - going from suburb to suburb cleaning up, but there's no actual army to fight. just lots of terrorist cells with missile launchers (my thoughts after watching this tousi tv video about khamenei trying to flee to russia. what remains of the IRGC is absolutely psychotic)

... holy shit. this was only day four. in october last year, i wrote:

i've been fantasizing about us going all out against tehran for months, i keep thinking about how the US went into iraq in 2003 and how everyone was expecting it to be a serious war, and then the americans walked right through them. i have a feeling that if we hit tehran directly, we could be looking at a post-ayatollah iran which would immediately change the face of the entire region... so that's what i'm praying for.

 just sayin'.