the relief pt ii

 i left work early yesterday to walk to mr smear's friend's place, where i found him and two other kids midway through guardians of the galaxy. so i guess that's a thing, and i bought the first movie so we can all watch it together.

we enjoyed our walk to the mall, by which time mr smear had decided that he was really hungry so - thinking we had time - i ordered a good hummus meal (with salad and chips and falafel) and we set to. but then we ran out of time, and i had them pack up the leftovers (really not a lot) and rushed to find the hairdresser.

the hairdresser experience was excruciating. i don't like the vibe, i didn't like the woman wet-barking-coughing throughout her pedicure, i never like having to intermediate between gd and a hairdresser when describing a haircut, or mr smear's demands not making any sense, i found the woman trying to help me by dragging a wobbly table with a glass bottle on it so that it smashed all around my feet unhelpful, i didn't like the fact that neither of the hairdressers seemed at all interested in cleaning up the mess, i didn't like having to explain to the hairdresser that the obvious chunk of hair missing from the back of his head wasn't perfect, and i hated paying NIS 100 to experience all of the above, plus walking my kid out with a shit haircut.

mr smear and i caught a bus home, i finished the leftovers and although late, the rest of the evening was good.

except for bedtime and the night, because he kept turning his bedside lamp on at all hours and shining it into his face to prevent scary images when he closed his eyes, which straight-up prevents him from falling asleep.

today:

i caught up a bit of sleep during the night, but there were some sleepless chunks, too. and a dream that involved camping in some kind of ghost town with joe rogan 🤔

i bought mr smear the first percy jackson book this morning, and so far he's super into it.

i took the morning nice and slowly, only really interrupted once by a call from mr smear begging me to let him install chatgpt on his phone because he really wanted to talk to someone, and i hadn't accompanied him. i keep thinking about des bishop on mindfulness.

i went to work, arriving just in time to hear the story behind miyacholaleynu. after an emotional rollercoaster, i rushed out to get to the school in time for a different kind of emotional rollercoaster, our meeting with the team.

firstly, it was a completely different vibe and experience from his previous school. but secondly, the shit we heard made us deeply concerned that he's on his way back to his previous school. not only has he been pretending to the teachers that he can't understand a word of hebrew, and not cooperating during his lessons, but he's also been skipping art lessons (?!?!!), in addition to using the forbidden teacher's computer and looking up horror. these are all red lines for a school that so many kids fight for the privilege of attending, and we are literally at wits' end.

i grabbed lunch and returned to the office emotionally drained. the conversations over lunch were interesting, though. the rest of the afternoon was essentially me doing something that i haven't had to do for months, and really hitting walls (the whole ecosystem of gpu drivers is awful).

eventually i left the office and came home, just in time for dinner and a very difficult family meeting, followed by more of the same when speaking to my mom.

when i put mr smear to bed, i physically removed his bedside lamp from his room and told him that the scary images he sees when he closes his eyes are his brain punishing him for feeding the scary wolf. i advised him to spend his pre-sleep time visualizing good experiences with his teachers, proud moments, and literally getting his hands dirty in his arts class and enjoying it.

at the end of the day, if he ends up getting chucked out of the arts school it will be thoroughly tragic, and we'll just have to live with it, and there will be nothing we haven't tried to help him avoid that fate.

it took me a while after putting him to bed to figure out how to lock all the playstation accounts with a code and prevent him from creating new ones, and then i tried to continue working but the machine i needed was offline, and then i spent a lot of time catching up on instagram messages, and now it's midnight and i'm probably going to go to bed very soon.