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.

intensity

> there were some minor incidents, but according to him he handled them well.

he did not handle them well. i woke up this morning to a message from the girl's mother and learned that mr smear had handled the incident particularly poorly. horribly, in fact. so most of the morning was invested in dealing with that.

the irony: he prepared himself to apologize to her, but he didn't recall what she looked like so his super-shy self awkwardly approached every single girl in his class to ask "are you <insert name here>?"

at least, from my brief talk with her, the girl's mother seems cool.

...

shit start to the day aside...

i didn't sleep well, but i definitely slept better.

it was a long work day. with some very intense feelings during meetings. with some badly-handled interruptions. with some success, but not enough success.

i lost my temper with gd last night because she's injured and insists on doing things that interfere with her recovering, on pretext of not wanting to make my life difficult.

i've spent a good chunk of the last couple of hours of restlessness worrying about mr smear's expectations regarding the survivalist activity this afternoon.

spinning

 it's the middle of the night and i'm having trouble sleeping, but i did sleep a bit and - surprisingly - without the mattress topper i'm hurting less.

i woke up a short while ago, and have been lying in bed with my mind in a spin about mr smear's new school, and the sonnet comics, and spoken word...

...

i accompanied mr smear to the school in the morning, he insisted on taking the light rail. it takes a lot longer than the bus, but he much prefers it... i dropped him off, dropped off a form with the secretary, and on my way out the building bumped into an old friend whose daughter's in the same school! i only found out in the evening it was his birthday, but that served as a good excuse to determine that i still had his phone number :P

from there i went to the allergy clinic, and almost cried when they told me the next possible date for mr smear's dairy challenge is mid-december.

from there i headed to the office. i had an interesting and positive chat with our tech ops manager, and then got into work early.

i can say that my two primary objectives for the day were, for the most part, achieved. the first was supporting my coworker and getting my own part of the work done, the second was shutting out anything that wasn't the first part. i wasn't 100% successful on that score, but i was pretty successful nonetheless.

...

around lunchtime i realized that i needed a face-to-face with the school councillor, who refuses to communicate over anything other than email. so i ducked out and went to the school, and lurked around her office until she (luckily) appeared. we had a quick chat, put faces to our names, and she introduced me to the principle who laughed at me for being around so much this week :P

unfortunately, it doesn't look like mr smear will be able to get into the music track unless he's a student of a particular music school; and it's not clear to me how much that's going to cost nor precisely which music school that is because there're apparently a number of the with the same name (O_o)

...

i'd asked mr smear to wait for me because i was already at the school, but he was champing at the bit to get himself home on his own. i took the opportunity to interrogate him about his day; there were some minor incidents, but according to him he handled them well. i guess we'll see ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

additionally, i spoke to the woman in charge of the self-sufficiency group that's an alternative to the scouts, it sounds amazing but i'm not sure how gd will handle their approach.

...

by the time i left the office, my coworker had almost made good on his delivery that he'd assured everyone in the morning would be ready before lunch. and i'd managed to lay the groundwork for some big changes coming in. i arrived home absolutely exhausted, just in time to help mr smear and his friend make actual plans. gd - in spite of her neck still being in a horrible condition - made delicious vegan pizzas and his friend joined us for dinner.

it was relatively late by the time mr smear got to bed, and gd and i followed suit soon after.

no sleep for you

 i ripped off the mattress topper in the middle of the night, i think it's causing more harm than good.

and i'm deeply resentful of not having been able to have a good night's sleep in years.

my back hurts.

i'm tired.

...

the insect turned out to be a gigantic moth.

doing it wrong

 i barely slept last night, (and) my lower back's messed up. gd's in an even worse state.

we got up at 6am in order to get mr smear to his new classroom by 7.30am. gd forgot that his dairy challenge was scheduled for wednesday, and gave him an antihistamine, so now we have to postpone that and it's usually months before there's a slot available.

gd wasn't able to come with to his first day in the new school.

he was very awkward, but the general vibe and other parents were cool, the school is (as is to be expected) completely different in every way. but some of the adjustments are hard. and me having to handle the admin side of things, and then walk into the office only to realize someone cruelly scheduled an interview on the first morning of the school year, broke me.

it didn't help that there was little oxygen in the room - i really don't handle the meeting rooms well at all.

i left the hour and a half interview and went straight back to the school to pick up mr smear, and then spend more than half an hour waiting in line for his books. then i taught him how to open his locker (i'm sure it'll be a struggle for a while, it's an old-school combination lock) and we went to the light rail together.

and then i got off at my stop and let him go the rest of the way home by himself for the very first time. that wasn't stressful at all.

the next couple of hours was mostly spent getting the team aligned with our new priorities, and then i went into another interview. more interesting than the first, but i still had trouble staying awake by the end of it.

the last hour was torture. and i think i made one of the new guys feel bad. i'm pretty sure i'm making a bad impression on everyone lately, because i'm just burned out and every interruption has become a thing and i'm finding it really hard to display a positive attitude.

i'm fucking tired.

but i'm also tired because i have to handle all the new-school shit on my own, which includes the parent groups as well as figuring out how to get mr smear into the music track, which until today we had no idea required a history of formal lessons.

godsdammit.

anyway, at least mr smear is happy so far. on the other hand, our friend's daughter / his classmate decided not to leave the school, and is apparently deeply regretting it.

just before dinner, i managed to get in touch with someone in his old school who didn't register for their book program, so he took over mr smear's books and i'm grateful that it didn't cost us double.

...

there's some huge insect or something that was flying around our living room earlier, but it hasn't shown itself since. i'm going to bed now. i hope those two statements don't clash at any point.