hopping from one foot to the other

 i think i slept alright last night, or at least better than the preceding nights. i woke up mid-dream, so i needed a few minutes to shake it off, and the day began with some mixed emotions over riddles and mr smear's breakfast habits.

i accompanied mr smear to school - i'd still rather be foolish than sorry (better silly than sorry?) - and continued on to the sleep clinic at the hospital. my appointment started on time at 7.30, and i walked out of there an hour later feeling pretty confident that the doctor had performed a thorough investigation into every relevant aspect of my potential narcolepsy (and potential rls, and possible anemia) and i felt very well understood.

i left with a recommendation to take iron supplements, keep a sleep journal, and exercise more.

by the time i closed in on the clinic, it was too close to my daily so i picked up a cup of coffee from "our" bakery, and tried to find a quiet spot for my meeting. unfortunately, something was blocking traffic and i ended up hiding out in a random building's parking muting constantly because multiple directions of cars were all honking furiously.

and, of course, our usual ten-minute meeting took half an hour.

from there i crossed the road and entered the clinic, where i was informed that i could only make the appointment by phone, so i dutifully informed the lady that i'd spent half an hour on the phone yesterday to be told it was an in-person only thing. so she said that it was probably an in-hospital thing only and not an in-clinic thing only, but that in any event the referring doctor had already requested permission and she had a response in hand: denied.

floored, i read the response and learned that they won't let gd do the recommended examination unless she's done a course of iron supplements too. i booked her a repeat visit to the same doctor, and the earliest appointment i could get was for july.

i left the clinic quite demoralized.

bus routes from the clinic are lacking, so i fast-walked home and arrived five minutes late for my quarterly roadmap meeting with my mentor. it was interesting, and while i was disappointed with myself for not achieving my goals, he was disappointed with me for being unnecessarily hard on myself considering what i've been through these past few months.

so that was encouraging, i guess.

i scarfed down a quick break, anxious that i hadn't yet called the plumber and clueless as to when would be an appropriate time for him to come over, when he called and asked me to take a video for him to assess. a few minutes later, his brother called to say he was on the way. i couldn't have planned the timing any better!

within two minutes the smell trap was installed, which was completely anti-climactic. the idea that there wasn't a smell trap installed before was and is blowing my mind!

gd, who had been struggling all morning* somehow had the presence of mind to ask him to check our hot-water cylinder, and we did, and it looks alright. then he left, and was just out of the building when gd had another bright idea, and we called him back to check under the kitchen sink.

* she suffered so much this morning that she was finally willing to try avoiding gluten to see if it would help.

he obliged. within two minutes, he'd found the source of the leak, and it wasn't the sink. we realized that there was a long gap at the back of the countertop, and water was splashing down the back of the cabinet 🤦‍♂️

(apparently, he'd warned me about this when we moved in. i don't recall this at all.)

between him and gd, and the special silicon we'd already bought to fix up the shower, the gap was sealed quickly and cleanly and i was able to grab my bag and head to the office.

what a day, so far!

[plugs in and turns on the fan for the first time this summer]

i got some work done, and then had to head out (again) to pick mr smear up from school. i managed to get there much faster than before by walking to the light rail, and that made it clear to me that the way back needed to be the same after losing a ridiculous amount of time to the bus ride yesterday. i got there early enough to catch up on instagram messages, and he came out pretty quickly for once, and i took him straight back to the office with me.

my desk-neighbor's dog was in the office. on the one hand? awesome! mr smear and him got along great ^_^

on the other? i've been feeling things (or imagining feeling things) since we got in, and i'm super-paranoid about fleas since the other night.

gods help me.

i barely had five minutes to work before everyone had to join a meeting about formalizing AI management, and mr smear came in with me and sat quietly in the corner reading. after an hour we adjourned to the main kitchen for happy hour, and there was delicious vegan ice cream! so that went well (mr smear has a penchant for coming to my work for good happy hours!).

i grabbed a beer and got some work done while mr smear put together a cool animation using flipaclip, then realized how late it had become and we packed up and walked home. walking across the bridge over the train tracks i pointed out an oncoming train, and the train driver tooted the horn and waved to mr smear, which was pretty cool! or, it was a pretty cool sentiment, at least, because mr smear didn't notice at all 🤣

i put in some more work while mr smear did or pretended to do his homework - i don't know if it's going to be complete by the weekend, and his weekend screen time depends on it - and then (finally) forced myself to file some of the stacks of papers that have been piling up.

over dinner, we watched the pilot macgyver episode, which was thoroughly enjoyed by all ^_^

(except for the kissing bits, which we all felt were inappropriate. but i kept dropping recently-learned trivia that made it even better)

it's been a pretty peaceful evening, and i think i'm going to be ready for bed soon. just one more cup of tea.

...

trendslop and mediocrity.

the unspark

 last night was rough, but in an unusual way. before writing my previous post, i tried to write poetry. what came out was... eye-opening. it was all about the trade-offs in my life - since my son was born - and how in spite of the easy prioritization of my family (i don't regret that at all), i've been mostly unable to finish any one thing before the urgency of a different thing pushes it out the way. and then i go around in circles, returning to tasks and leaving them.

i've achieved a heck of a lot in spite of that, but that's a constant nagging, gnawing anxiety and frustration that i've been living with for a very, very long time.

"builder's syndrome".

it's also preying on my mind that i'm a perpetual wage slave, and i honestly don't see a way out. or, at least, i see many ways out that i simply don't have the resources to take.

so it struck me, when i woke up a couple of hours after i went to bed, that i have a cousin i've recently become re-acquainted with who might actually be able to pull the levers to get a ball rolling. then this morning i met with my old british devops coworker for coffee after my daily, and learned that his brother's into impact investing... i'm hoping he'll make me an introduction.

work today was repetitive and annoying. every time i solved an issue a new one was created. at lunch time, i sat quietly chewing, feeling lost. then i left early again to pick up mr smear (neither of us are happy about the current arrangement), and we sat in traffic for a ridiculously long time.

two encounters on the way home: the first, some guy so impatient to get out of the light rail that he shoved his phone in front of mine, even though he didn't have space to get past me. i called him rude, and then he had the gall to complain that i'd been taking too long (i hadn't), and the next while on the bus saw me nursing violent thoughts.

then we arrived home at the same time as the crazy lady from downstairs, who, honestly, is legitimately bat-shit insane. she was complaining about gangsters and prostitutes and how she can't leave the building without seeing someone's genitals, and once again climbing into big data who wasn't there over things that didn't make any sense, and then she started yelling about how the highway we live next to wasn't supposed to be a highway. at that point i just couldn't take it any more.

i spent half an hour on the phone with the medical insurance to learn that i can only make an appointment in person (the doctor yesterday told us we couldn't make the appointment in person, only over the phone) and i finally managed to get my PR cleaned up. after mr smear had been messing around for an hour i blocked (once again) all the fun websites, and all this while freaking out about and trying to get a plumber in for a sudden, inexplicable repeat of the shower stink issue from a month ago.

i just received confirmation that the apartment downstairs has the same issue! so it's a building thing, thank god 🙏

0.8

 i guess the day worked out alright, all things considered. gd and i are celebrating the 12 anniversary of our first (and only) date [i just got lost down a rabbit-hole for a while].

i accompanied her to her appointment, which we almost missed because although we arrived on time, it was four floors from the reception and it's a really slow elevator. as we walked in i noticed the doctor had a french tinge to her accent, so i asked if french was okay and from that point (especially after the two of them strongly agreed about how awful celine dion is) she and gd communicated perfectly well and i was only able to catch the gist of things.

so gd feels heard and understood, and we have referrals to further testing and suggestions of what might be going on.

we returned home, and then i left for mr smear's school where i ordered a lemonade at a coffee shop and tried to get some work done while i waited for him.

that was where the AI really began to lead me astray; i hadn't read the project's installation instructions properly, and it hadn't read them at all, and it started "fixing" things that weren't actually broken, each fix breaking something else in a slow-motion chain reaction.

when school came out, mr smear called to ask if he could go to his friend's place instead. getting to my dermatologist appointment from there was going to be complicated, with or without him, so i agreed and then made my way to the clinic.

i arrived with some time to spare for some more work. or, i should say, more running on a virtual treadmill. between my lack of sleep and the sheer boredom of what i was doing, i was pretty sleepy by the time it was my turn.

the doctor was quick, and pleasant. he's not concerned by the lump on my neck, but he's referred me to an ultrasound and a removal, so i'll look into that tomorrow.

from there to the bus i was falling asleep on my feet. i did get a bit of rest on the first bus, but was still groggy when i got off at the prescribed stop only to realize that that app had steered me wrong and made me get off two stops earlier than i should have, so i had to walk an extra ten minutes to catch the next bus :/

i arrived at the mall, had a chat with my mom, then went to the bathroom before finding a spot at a coffee shop. i stood at the urinal next to another man with a shy bladder, and the next few minutes were very awkward for both of us. at least *i* eventually managed to pee :P

the next hour or two were the most productive of the day. about halfway through i finally realized what i'd been doing wrong, restarted the day's effort the right way, and finally had things making more sense.

mr smear really didn't want to leave his friend's place when it was time ("we were about to go to the park!"), but i eventually got him to come down and we had a good time together on the way home - aside from when an old lady fell hard while trying to get off the bus, poor thing was on a walker and dressed up (too much heel, too little skirt) and we all felt really bad for her. i hope she's okay.

the evening was pretty smooth. i completed the work i was doing, mr smear easily breezed through the homework he'd spent an hour staring at yesterday, we watched some more of ready player one (omg it's so good!), bedtime was smooth.

now [yawns] i think it's time for mine.

0.1

 i went to bed way later than i intended to last night.

i know i slept, but only because i had seriously weird dreams.

i woke up tired.

i hurt my back stretching (it's somewhat locked up right now).

i dropped mr smear off at school.

i returned home.

i ate breakfast.

now i need to figure out how to navigate yet another complicated day (gd's appointment, then mine).

finding out

 i think i had plans for tonight. like, real ones, i was excited. but after a really long day - accompanying mr smear to school while practicing the sign language for FAFO and singing nant's ingonyama bagithi baba, trying to console gd who's stomach's messed up again, investigating weird messages from my mobile provider, long hours working with AI*, a huge, delicious vegan lunch from an unfamiliar place, more hard work, picking up mr smear while "participating" in an hour and a half zoom workshop that i didn't need, lots more hard work, losing my temper trying to help mr smear with his homework (him claiming to not understand a thing after successfully doing pages of the same stuff), sitting down with big data (and then his family) over a utility app he wants to build, a great dinner and ready player one followed by the terrible mistake of trying to eat 99% chocolate (why TF does it exist?!) followed by a rather shit bedtime, followed by more hard work.

* and understanding that AI is really teaching us to be better mentors and instructors to juniors

oh, and i saw and killed a fucking flea this afternoon. we have no idea where it could have come from. fuck.

i mean, at least i managed to sleep a bit last night. i wonder if i'll be so lucky tonight.

the last opportunity?

 i went to bed late last night. i finished with the button a little after midnight, then climbed into bed and found myself entirely unable to sleep. i don't know why, but i was completely wired and spent the entire night miserably uncomfortable.

the 6.30am alarm was painful.

i accompanied mr smear to school - again, because i'm worried about when the war's going to resume - and we had a fun conversation about the drawing for our front door. on the way home, i stopped at the pharmacy to pick up something for gd, and had a chat with my mom about whether she'll be able to land here next week, and what we should do about her laptop (i'm thinking of giving her our windows machine).

i came home, and struggled to get started with work; primarily because in addition to exhaustion, my back and feet were really hurting. i eventually remembered our foot/back massager, though, and i have to say i'm quite grateful for it!

[turns it back on again]

i prepared a scary bit of work last week, and this morning i pulled the trigger. i nervously monitored the dashboards, but a half hour later i was convinced that a) the deployment had gone smoother than i'd hoped and b) i've discovered something quite bad (a memory leak) that's been causing disruptions, probably for years.

i also helped the team lead of my previous customer team navigate the airflow interface - that shit is hard!

in addition to working, i assisted gd with a wolt driver who couldn't figure out how to find our address on a map and was unable to follow directions. not only was he shockingly dumb and incompetent, but he had the nerve to tell me that we shouldn't be using our correct street address and should go for the (essentially) illegal one instead.

we also managed to figure out how to return a pair of shoes she bought online, and it was much easier (albeit much more expensive) than the other site.

in the afternoon i returned to the school to pick up mr smear, and managed to buy raisin brain (for the iron fortification) along the way. mr smear made me wait for a while, so i took off that same amount of screen time, but the journey home was mostly pleasant and once the timer began, he grabbed watchmen off the shelf and started getting into it.

i spent the next few hours drowning in a task that's heavy on the AI because i only vaguely understand what needs to be done. so while i'm constructing (hopefully) a mental model, i'm casting magic spells and praying they don't backfire...

and then mr smear had homework to do. fortunately, he worked through it pretty well, with only one short episode of me losing patience (he couldn't understand the problem, but wouldn't pay attention while i tried to help him), and he managed to score himself some game time before dinner.

dinner: delicious corn soup / corn on the cob combination, accompanied by the next part of ready player one. i've been avoiding spoiling the chest-burster scene from the alien movie because we're planning on watching it soon, so i was pretty bummed out by the disguise scene! at least i know mr smear won't be traumatized by it, though. he thought it was funny. (though he still hasn't plucked up the courage to continue with terminator 2, which he finds too intense)

we managed to get through shower and bedtime pretty smoothly. i didn't have energy to read to him (and it was late), but instead i recited the slam. the last time i recited something i received some pretty harsh feedback from him ("i HATE your poetry!"), but tonight? he was riveted, and actually praised it ^_^

...

i'm going to try to get to bed earlier tonight (ie. soon). it's clear that the "cease-fire" with iran is officially over, so if there's an attack we're moving mr smear back into our bedroom immediately.

gods, this is a really confusing time. strategically, it seems like the americans have really done an amazing job, but right now being in the moment and in the IRGC's crosshairs...

distractions

 well, the good news is that it wasn't our apartment, someone drove into a power line yesterday and the delayed effect was destabilizing the power for everyone on our block. fortunately, the electric company had everything back online by 9pm, though we did end up having to order food and eat it in the dark.

we started watching ready player one, though. so that was cool. and at least mr smear had showered already.

while i was starting to wind down for the evening, trying not to pay too much mind to mr smear not winding down (but at least making an effort, so it was much easier to be patient about it), big data asked me about using twilio to make an app with a button to open our parking gate. so instead of going to bed early, i'm busy playing with that...

avoidance and procrastination

 i'm probably iron deficient. or maybe just exhausted. or perhaps a combination of the two.

...

i kinda slept last night. with a few disturbances, i tried sleeping on my back - or, at least, lying on my back until desperately tired - and i think that helped.

i began the day with a coffee and booth's sonnets, but my brain was pretty much offline. i think it's safe to say that i spent most of my day playing slay the spire 2, but i did read the balatro creator's story while trying to understand what the good card games are backed with.

the first attempt to talk to mr smear about making plans for the day - after it had initially gone sour - turned into wrestling, which was fun until i had to call a time out for a nap. later, when i came to (with a sore neck), we began the arduous process of getting him out the door; of all the suggestions i'd made, he found one i hadn't thought of, and we ended up taking the basketball up to the courts.

worst experience of his life, he says. he doesn't like sharing a court, and he's really not a fan of any kind of physical exercise. his neck hurt from looking up at the net, his fingers hurt from the one time he caught the ball badly, he was convinced he'd split his lip when the ball *touched* his face, the sun was shining, and his skin was threatening to sweat. but for all that, he put in the time, and he clearly had some genuinely enjoyable moments while we practiced stealing the ball (he's such a cheat!), so as much as he suffered, at least it wasn't all bad.

the sun is setting, gd's making dinner, he's playing minecraft, and i'm just... being. that's gotta be okay.

...

nope. the stovetop's not drawing enough electricity, and i have to find an electrician now 🤦‍♂️

...

nope, the whole apartment's electricity is behaving badly. jesus 🤦‍♂️

dead battery

 winding down... i messed around, including playing balatro, until way later than i should have. i'm guessing i went to bed around 1.30am; i lay down, closed my eyes, and that was precisely when the air raid sirens sounded without the usual pre-warning (it turned out to be from lebanon) and i rushed to mr smear's room to drag him back into ours.

bearing in mind that i didn't get much sleep the night before, i got practically none last night. between him being in our bed, and a sore back, and needing to pee at least four times before daybreak, i was a wreck by the time our alarms went off. and then, after the night's excitement, i had to figure out whether mr smear was really expected to go to school or not.

surprisingly, it was a "normal" friday morning. i accompanied him to school (because wtf), then returned home for a brief cup of tea to wait for gd to decide whether she was able to come out with me or not. we then headed to south tel aviv to hunt for rocking chairs and beanbags. it was a beautiful morning, and we went up and down florentin looking at a wide variety of stuff, and ended up buying some really arbitrary things.

we didn't find anything to sit on, but we did enjoy the morning.

a little before we headed home, mr smear called from the school, which caused me to panic a bit before i realized that he'd been invited to a birthday party and wanted to know if that was cool. so we were excited to hear that he was invited in the first place, and that he was interested in going, but later were quite disheartened to learn that he'd decided that he wasn't interested in tempting himself with birthday foods so opted to come back home instead :(

gods help us.

after gd and i hashed out our differences regarding beanbag ideas and i'd ordered them online - seems the thing to do - we spent the next couple of hours putting up some more of our pictures. the apartment's definitely looking more homely :)

i put a couple of hours into looking into comic publishing, and it's looking like the right way to do this is to use KDP again.

my throat's feeling a bit scratchy.

gd made a delicious dinner, we chatted a long time with my mom while eating it, and then shower / bedtime took forever. i picked up slay the spire 2 today, and have been playing it along with a bit of baba is you, which is insanely challenging.

i think i'm going to go to bed soon. please god let tonight be quiet and let me get some damned rest.

complications

 last night was a bit rough. first, getting mr smear into bed at a reasonable hour didn't happen, after we finally did get him into bed i went to bed soon after, only to wake up a while later and find him out of bed. that led to some bad emotions, because we were already out of patience and we knew how difficult this morning was going to be.

we finally threatened him (one hour of screen time for any infractions) into bed, and i eventually managed to get back to sleep.

for a bit. but then i found myself awake again, sore lower back and hips, and indigestion. so i dragged myself out of bed and spent an hour or two playing balatro and listening to tousi making it clear that this ceasefire is bullshit.

i finally got a couple of hours' sleep before our alarms went off at 6.30am. getting out of bed was hard. my neck hurt.

to be fair, mr smear handled himself pretty well this morning. he got up, made his bed, brushed his teeth, and then sat down to do some of the homework. he made a good effort.

then i accompanied him to the school, early because i had two back-to-back meetings starting 45m before his first class. we arrived just in time for my first one, and he sat across from me reading on his kindle.

after my second one - by which stage he'd gone off to class - i made my way to a KSP to stand in line for half an hour for a couple of ethernet cables. then i picked up some groceries for gd, then i returned home.

i was at home for an hour and a half, struggling to get work done, then headed out once again to pick up mr smear, and then return home for another hour or so, before heading out with gd for her dental appointment.

in spite of the fact that her dental appointment turned out to be a few minutes - and that we didn't need to be there - i got an hour of real work in (jira tedium) and felt at least kind of okay about calling it a day by the time we started back home.

we stopped for an expensive visit to the grocer, then gd picked up more groceries, and then it was finally time to come home and unpack the other groceries that had been delivered.

so lots of groceries.

i had a good chat with sailor before dinner, over dinner we watched an episode of the littlest hobo (gd was bit upset that mr smear didn't love it, but i was impressed that he watched it through to the end without complaining), chatted with my mom, got through the evening stuff (including moving his bed back to his room!), and then i sat down to watch all the videos that were open on my work computer, set it up for the OS upgrade, and now i'm on my second cup of tea and winding down.

🎶 and i would walk 4 point 5 miles 🎶

 we walked up to the park, then across to the port, and we settled on babylon park even before either of us said anything. we had fun, though two of the games mr smear played (motorcycles and snowboard simulators) were remarkably unfair; if you win, you should get another go, no?

we looked for ice cream, but golda had removed their vegan indicators which was super suspicious. so we picked up a couple of drinks instead, and began our walk home. along the way, mr smear decided that he didn't want the traditional post-pesach pizza for dinner because he's watching his weight, which led to a lengthy discussion with gd over the phone because she was trying to be supportive and he... neither of us really understand what he was gunning for.

then, most of the way home, he decided he needed to stop by the candy store...

long story short, i "supported" him by not letting him go to the candy store, and we all thoroughly enjoyed the olive & mushroom pizza (with black salt, too, in my case). of course, gd ordered two pizzas when one would have done just fine :/

at least they were vegan. i'm never sure, and i *really* didn't feel like taking mr smear to the hospital this evening.

now to (hopefully) find out whether the kids are returning to school tomorrow or not.

wtf wednesday (ceasefire?)

 i really don't understand if there's really a ceasefire or not. or if it means anything or not. none of what's happening makes much sense.

...

yesterday:

we managed to get up at a reasonable time, and i woke up with an itch to reinstate public access to my comic pages and post an update to my patrons.

then i jumped on our daily call, and my manager reminded me that i was supposed to be on holiday.

i dragged mr smear along with me to the mall after learning that home center had not sent me the items i'd ordered. their in-store staff was just as useless. mr smear's friend met us there, and we paid a visit to the candy store, where i picked up a "hot mama" flavor of van holten's pickle-in-a-pouch, which still makes me giggle.

i dropped the kids off at home and continued on to the hardware store, but 100m out got trapped in a sudden heavy electric rainstorm. when it calmed down i jogged further on, arriving (wet) at a synagogue just as our missile alert system kicked in. i spent the next ten to fifteen minutes in their shelter, surrounded by people and animals with heavy smells, and i was half-asleep by the time we were able to leave.

i made my way to the hardware store, picked up a tape measure but not a garden hose, then paid a quick visit to a nature store to pick up a protein bar, passed one of my ex-bosses on the way to the grocery store (i didn't greet her, she didn't see me and i'm still sore about her and her co-founder back-stabbing me and not even having the decency to try to speak to me on my way out), picked up a bag of carrots and made my way home.

gd had let strangers into our mamad because she didn't know that it's safe enough for them to use the stairwell. weird people, apparently.

the kids had a great afternoon (mostly playing rayman: legends), we all tried the pickle (it wasn't that hot, but made for a great matzah sandwich) i had an emergency coffee and the put up two of our maps (a real world map, and our map of ankh morpork) in our office, and later i put up some clothing hooks too. and also managed to get our new sound system set up, and it's SO much better than our previous one!

i did, however, almost fall off the ladder doing that (i mis-stepped after forgetting i was on the top rung) and i managed to hurt my hip again, which had finally been feeling better :/

our upstairs friends came downstairs with wine, and we sat talking negligently late, which included some uncomfortable expressions by gd about some of their friends... not that she's entirely wrong, mind, but how one says stuff... :P

we had a nice dinner, chatted for most of it with my mom, and then watched the final episode of strip search. gd had had enough of the day (and parenting) by that stage, so i handled shower and tooth brushing, and i went to bed exhausted before mr smear had himself fallen asleep.

today (so far):

sleeping late, napping, reading and loving most of the importance of being earnest, eating a pretty good breakfast of matzah, peanut butter, banana, vegan nutella and tabasco. i tried watching jujutsu kaisen with mr smear but i passed out, and i woke up to spend a frustrating half hour or so trying to fix our microsoft / minecraft accounts so that i could reinstate his birthday present (the marketplace pass).

now we're heading out to try and make the most of what may or may not be a peaceful afternoon.

wtf monday

 wtf monday.

we all got up early (my hip's still locked, but not quite as badly as yesterday) so that we could accompany gd to her dental first aid appointment. we arrived on time. her dentist was running late. after we'd been there about an hour, gd decided she didn't really need to be there after all.

i raced to find an appropriate spot to join my team's daily, but realized too late that where we'd settled wasn't one. at least the coffee was good. i hope the little white bits falling all over the place weren't from dried bird poop.

we then caught a bus home, on the way doing a bit of hardware shopping.

once home, i was somehow dragged in to trying to diagnose an issue my teammates had been working on but abandoned due to their holidays. i spent the following hours trying to make sense of things - mostly asking AI to investigate a variety of things - and eventually i was able to suggest something that seemed reasonable.

only to be informed by the devops team that that's just what they'd been thinking. so why the hell didn't they do something about it without getting me involved?!

gd received her shoes, which cost half again as much due to customs.

i took a break to be assisted by big data, who began the work of installing proper ethernet outlets. it was very stressful, and i have no idea how he managed to get the clip wired up properly. finally, just before he had to run off, we discovered that one of the pieces i ordered was replaced by something incompatible :/

after closing up my work for the day, i headed out to the local store again, this time for a stack of dark chocolate, because apparently it's a good iron source. the more i try to do the math, though, the less sense that claim makes.

it gave me an opportunity to chat with my mom, though.

after returning home, it was time for dinner, two episodes of strip search (we're down to the last episode!), a family chat with my mom, shower and sketch time for mr smear, and now that he's in bed i'm posting this and getting my evening squared away before climbing into bed myself.

...

mr smear has seen some of the last halloween before, tonight i bought it and another book of abby's on kindle. i was a bit disappointed by the merch available, though. i wanted Stuff.

the square hip

 not so restful, but i did eventually manage to get my hip to stop bothering me enough to get some sleep. but then, when i was woken up by the third alarm for an all-hands event that had nothing to do with me, i got up to find that my hip was totally locked up, front and back.

i started my day on the carpet on the floor trying to stretch it out while sipping coffee and reading the importance of being ernest - i've owned my copy for years, how have i never opened it before?

i guess today was pretty constructive, all things considered. i think i've finally nailed down the upgrade of a service to the latest golang version (from 1.11), and i think i handled my RCA ticket being irrecoverably deleted by someone who didn't know what it was quite admirably.

i took mr smear with me to witness my very painful limp and call me a cripple pick up the internet cable outlet plates and return the comic books to the library, but arrived at the library to discover that they'd been closed for half an hour. because holidays. and war.

getting through the mall gauntlet was alright. there were a few cosplayers doing their thing, but i don't think mr smear noticed much.

after we got home and dropped off the box, we went to our new 24/7 to pick up a couple of things, then returned home for more work, to receive the new soundbar, and then to dive in to a dramatic homework session.

ultimately he did well, and he was pleased with himself, but the journey there was fraught with him doing everything he could to sabotage himself. i truly believe he can do anything he puts his mind to - and i don't believe that of many people. but omg getting him to put his mind to anything is nigh impossible.

dinner (and strip search) was great, gd rushed him through shower and toothbrush time surprisingly rapidly, he read while i showered and brushed my teeth, and then we said good night.

gd and i spoke for a little while - mostly she's feeling bad about stuff that's totally normal for all of us right now - and i tooled around (mushing my brain with trash) until posting this, and now i think i'm going to try to get some rest.

again. my hip's still acting up.

extra-innings

 we all slept late, though in my case "sleep" is an exaggeration. i slept poorly. again. lower back and such.

i woke up with a bee in my bonnet, and spent a day i needed to be full of downtime working hard herding AI agents to build me a game i concocted. i'm certainly not the first person to attempt combining scrabble and balatro, but as of a minute or two ago i'm at a point where it kinda feels like i've come up with a viable alternative.

we shall see.

otherwise, it was a pretty quiet (cluster bomb attacks notwithstanding) day, mr smear entertaining himself with a mixture of reading comics and watching solo leveling (he very kindly caught me up when i did sit down with him), and the biggest event of the day was us taking a walk to both stretch our legs and pick up snacks (and then eating a lot of said snacks, and then getting into trouble with gd because we're both bothering her with our weight sensitivies).

in unrelated news, gd managed to crack a temporary crown today, so tomorrow's going to be more interesting than planned :/

that seems to be all, hopefully tonight with be a little restful.

recovery

 today was nicer, though not by too much. i didn't feel nearly as shit and dysfunctional, but my neck's still sensitive and i spent a large chunk of the day either lying with my neck at stretched angles or avoiding screens (i found a pack of playing cards and played old-school solitaire).

otherwise the day was very much spent indoors, we watched the first half of terminator 2 and the first episode (TWO HOURS OF IT?!?!) of the second season of the live action one piece.

there was some arguing over privileges, but mostly the day went smoothly. after kiddush with my mom we had a nice dinner and watched an episode of strip search, and then after all the kids were in bed our upstairs friends paid us a visit, and just left a few minutes ago.

now i'm going to play a little more balatro (i've been vascillating between balatro and full throttle) and go to bed.

passover 2026

we're approaching midnight, and for the first time since this afternoon i'm feeling a little better, after spending most of the day with a neck issue causing a massive headache, nausea and dizziness. now i've showered, i've made myself a lavendar/chamomile tea, and i'm hoping to get some rest tonight.

...

i was so relieved to be on holiday and turn my brain off. feeling extremely ill and sore is not relaxing.

yesterday:

we didn't do so well when it came to coming up with april fool's pranks, but i did have a fun idea inventing an elevator that detects smells; if someone farts in the elevator alone, it emergency stops until the extractor fans clear the air. if there are multiple people in the elevator, it immediately lets them off on the next floor.

it was erev chag, so of course we had last-minute shopping to do. gd sent me and mr smear off to find stuff i've never bought before, and we ended up on a serious mission, tired, and frustrated by all the other last-minute shoppers as well as the shops themselves for largely being disappointingly crap.

we did manage to get everything by the end of the mission, though.

aside from helping gd out a little bit here and there, mr smear and i spent the afternoon resting or reading or playing games. nothing intelligent. gd, on the other hand, had a very dramatic afternoon and evening cooking for the pesach seder for her very first time.

as unhappy and stressed as she was during the cooking - not helping by a long series of rocket attacks timed perfectly to mess with everyone - she was as happy as we were with the results and the seder with our upstair friends - which included reading and singing in their shelter - was great. the kids were generally well-behaved and involved, we got through to the meal in pretty good time, and dinner was delicious.

today:

the first part of the day was perfect. i finished reading crumb's kafka, which unfortunately has a few too many inappropriate things for me to be able to suggest that mr smear reads it, but is thoroughly brilliant and engaging. we all enjoyed a huge leftover breakfast. mr smear and i walked to the gas station to pick up the new playstation controller and charger; neither are amazing, but they'll do.

that got us into resuming our latest replay of rayman: legends, and it went really well with some exciting invasion runs!

and then my day fell apart. everyone else seems to be doing okay. i managed to eat some dinner while we watched another strip search elimination, and then lay down on the couch stretch my neck and watching random shit until just after mr smear (finally) went to bed.

i hope tomorrow's nicer.

lackluster

 today was a weird one. not a bad one, mind. lots of it was comfortable and comforting.

i got up tired. i read a bit more of mairowitz and crumb's kafka (it's amazing, with a very interesting perspective of ghetto life), i worked, with shenanigans around code ownership, and i eventually ended the work day in the middle of making some progress but also ready to put everything down because i'm officially on leave for the next couple of days.

i left the house around noon to get to a blood donation site, but for the first time in my life was rejected because my hemoglobin count was too low. so there's that to stress me out now.

mr smear tried desperately to get as much screen time as he could even though he was under punishment from calling me a jerk yesterday. he did music homework - garageband, he's making cool stuff - and later we sat down on yesterday's human resource machine problem and had a positive experience.

i'm not sure if his "performance" of being sick just as we started training was real or not, but whatever. he's the one concerned about his weight.

actually, that's not entirely true. mine's been climbing a bit, too.

but he did join me for a very serious mission hunting down matzah meal and healthy snacks, which proved surprisingly difficult to find.

either way, we watched strip search over a delicious dinner, spoke to my mom, and then got through the evening rituals and a bit of the colour of magic before calling it a day.

...

i've engaged in three or four different, toxic arguments on facebook over the course of the past day. people are fucked. i've now watched a whole lot of random youtube videos (some news, some not), and now i'm going to play some more balatro and have one last cup of tea and then climb into bed.

the needle

[currently battling a mosquito and losing]

 well, i did sleep last night. i had horrible dreams, though. involving really gross public toilets, amongst other things.

i gave up on reading dragon ball. it's like a pre-teen fever dream. combined with dragon ball: rick & morty i'm now pretty confident i never missed anything important.

our subwoofer situation: i was so excited the past couple of days, because it looked like the subwoofer was finally stable for the first time since we bought it. but today? garbage. i finally bit the bullet and ordered a new one, which will hopefully hook in to the shelf in the same way 🤞

work ownership mystery: i asked my manager to investigate, and he managed to get someone to approve my pull request. but then we learned that they didn't have the authorization to merge, either. a bunch of us (virtually) ran around trying to find out who's in charge, and so far the answer appears to be "nobody".

in the afternoon, my employer team had to sign in to a presentation that went on about an hour longer than it should have. i had to turn my camera off halfway through so nobody would have to keep seeing me rubbing my eyes and yawning.

mr smear had a regression today, and homework turned into a massive, unpleasant thing that got him punished. as part of the cooldown, i took him to the park to use the exercise equipment (i was too pissed off with him to train him, and i'm pretty sure he wasn't in the mood either), and then we continued on to do some sweet shopping.

i'm not doing to well with my weight situation lately. something about war and lockdown and yada yada yada.

dinner (we were forced to order in because my employer doesn't let me use my food allowance to buy vouchers) was much calmer, getting mr smear showered and toothbrushed and into bed proved stressful and stretched our patience completely, and that was on top of two attacks launched in that exact window. and i still had a little more work to do after he went to sleep, so i was even more annoyed.

now i'm playing catch-up and calm-down, as i type this i realize it's already past midnight :/

...

gd's friend (the glassblower who made us massage tools and gifted us with some bitcoin a couple of years ago) has been contemplating suicide for a very long time, and gd's finally reached a point where she can no longer bring herself to keep trying to talk him out of it. she's upset about this, and she wants to be a good friend, and i told her to just make her feelings crystal clear and deal with whatever may come.

you can't help everyone.

limitations

 today was messy. we slept alright - mostly - but i woke up with a skew neck. i managed to get mr smear out of bed and brushing his teeth, but by the time i'd brushed my teeth he'd curled up under a blanket on the couch, and i couldn't argue with that so i followed suit.

then we accompanied gd to the mall (with some nasty lingering feelings on the way out the door) to get her eyes retested and order new glasses; which she did that, mr smear and i milled around. the moment we finally sat down and i opened my laptop, and fortunately just before i ordered coffee, gd called to shock me with the amount they were asking her for - more than half a month's rent.

so we scrambled on over there, and managed to reduce the price by a thousand shekels. it still came out about half a month's rent, though :(

we caught a bus home, where we split up so that they could try to get vegan eggs for the seder and i could get started with work.

in spite of everything, i feel like i made a bit of progress today, but i couldn't check in with my team because it's their weekend so i've held my updates back until tomorrow.

in the meanwhile, mr smear's friend came over for a few hours and the two of them had a great time.

my company sent us a holiday care package, which was very sweet but also contained dairy, so fortunately his friend took that part home with him and i reminded our office manager (for the manyth time already) that we're vegan and have a dairy-allergic child... 🙄

the half hour zoom all-hands with my employer was a bit awkward, but sweet. i came stone last in the company quiz, in no small part because it took me so long to read the questions that i ran out of time on half of them :/

mr smear got through his human resource machine homework really well (i love seeing him excited when he finally *gets* it, even if can be a struggle to get him to focus), and his music "homework" was tooling around with garageband and he managed to put something together that sounded surprisingly good.

i tried to put in some (formal, for my employer) learning time while he helped gd with the kitchen, but i don't think i was working on the right stuff. also, my brain's been largely offline most of today.

we had a huge dinner and watched strip search, then had a good chat with my mom, and got mr smear showered and in bed. i was on my way to shower when gd caught me for a very serious talk, which ended up being a very serious fight, and it took a long time to get ourselves resolved and in agreement with each other about how we move forward.

and to get the office dry, after somebody got sprayed with a hose. with time that part will probably seem funnier, i'm sure.

varying degrees of intensity

 mr smear's friend was supposed to come over today, but later on we learned that he'd only gone to bed at 5am. so that didn't happen.

in the meanwhile, we had a very special day: my son has watched the terminator, so i guess now he is a man? it was a bit rough watching it in daylight, even with the brightness settings way up, and i only figured out that placing the subwoofer differently vastly improves the experience after we finished watching, but a good time was had by all.

gd and i did a lot of tidying up and moving things around this afternoon, which included a scary encounter with the spider from the other day. now that i've killed it and seen it up close, i think it was a black widow. and it moved a lot faster and less predictably than i expected. in retrospect, i think it was coming for me.

[a quick search later: it might have been a "false black widow". either way.]

mr smear and i went out on a snack mission, going past the gas station (so i could point out to him, and myself, where we'll pick up the playstation peripherals i ordered today), and then on for a while to one of the new candy stores. we didn't find anything we wanted - mr smear's very excited by all the sweets, but he doesn't want to get fat - but i did pick up a roll of proper bubblegum and by the time we got home he was very excited that i'd finally managed to teach him how to blow bubbles ^_^

between arriving home and sitting down for dinner, which was less than half an hour, i used sticklight again to put together logic flow to teach mr smear about logic gates and boolean algebra. i think the idea needs some fine-tuning, but it feels like a great start!

we watched strip search's elimination #7. we all got quite involved because as much as we like her, she really crossed all the lines in such an unhealthy way.

even with mr smear's holiday bedtime being pushed back to 10pm, i still ended up "reading" with him until 11pm (he didn't want to continue with the color of magic, so we compromised and ended up doing brainteasers). after that, i sat down to get something done on my telephony side project, which took much longer to complete than anticipated, and now i've written this up and it's almost 1am and oh-god-tomorrow's-a-work-day-already-and-i-don't-feel-like-i've-rested-this-weekend-at-all*.

* it doesn't matter if that isn't exactly true

the masses move through the tent city

 the nights have been relatively quiet the past few days, but i've been sleeping worse. physical nerve discomfort, primarily, but also mental disquiet.

we got up yesterday morning at 10am, which felt wrong somehow. it was only in the evening that we learned that it was wrong, because daylight savings time. it took us a remarkably long time to get out the house, by which stage the weather had turned to cold and wet.

we were nervous about traveling across the city and getting caught in an attack while outside, but fortunately we were caught once while at the mall, and the second time while waiting for the bus home, so we had time to get down into the parking lot.

man, the tent city is an experience.

between the mobs of mall people, and mr smear being generally disagreeable, and a siren catching us before i managed to get myself a second coffee when i was already feeling twitchy desperate, i had zero patience by the time we left. but we had managed to get the two things we needed the most: a kettle cord* and a smaller (and less permeable) shower curtain.

* how the hell did we end up with one less than we have appliances that need them?!

and gd's hair-care products, and also a large container of cholent, which mr smear finally tried and liked ^_^

once we got home, i spoke to two cousins, declining the still-open invitation to a pesach seder because there's no way we're traveling far with the war still on.

big data's been doing a lot of work on the building these days, and in the afternoon he came over with his tools to give me a hand with putting up a shelf to tidy up our modem / router situation. not only was he a great help with getting the shelf up easily and neatly, but he had a brilliant idea of attaching our sound bar underneath it, and we now have the solution we should have had for the past four years - it's awesome!

unfortunately, while we did get the projector set up "well enough" (using polystyrene from the electric hob's box that we hadn't tossed yet), it's clear that it's seen better days and that at some point we're going to need to upgrade it :(

i mean, it's served us well for a decade already...

a bit later we went upstairs to join them for dinner. good food and plenty of it, and aside from some issues with mr smear we all had a very pleasant evening. it was very late by the time we finally went to bed**, but between the achievements of the day, the company, and a fair amount of alcohol, i went to bed feeling quite relaxed.

** after watching the first episode of rick and morty with gd so that she could be reminded of why mr smear shouldn't have seen it

so it would have been nice if i'd been able to sleep better.

...

it's been a peaceful morning so far. i sorted out the playstation in preparation for mr smear's friend coming over, and i've watched some random things, and maybe i'll do something productive now or maybe i won't.

getting out the house

 it's almost 1am as i begin writing this, and i'm sitting here with my usual sore lower back  / bum, and indigestion. i guess this is the price to pay for trying to go to bed earlier. or just for being me.

...

we had a quiet night last night; the day was full of attacks, but it was a quiet night last night. i started the day sitting on our couch with a cup of coffee and the first volume of dragon ball. and arguing with gd over which side of the living room the couch or projector or future television need to be. my primary concern is not being able to look out a window from the couch, and my eyes have been strained and my vision blurry for the last couple of days so that's kinda front of mind (just like my eyes).

...

if there's something that set the tone of the day, though, it was putting together a whole lot of my old jokes and scripts ideas just before we had to shelter from a strike, and while we waited out the attack i used notebooklm and gemini to put together a two-panel comic that came out really well!

...

my client / boss invited a few of us to the office for lunch and beers, and i decided it was worth it. gd packed me a sandwich and some salad, which turned out to be a good idea as the guys ordered vietnamese with zero vegan options on the menu, and i managed to get to and from the office without any alerts (i was a bit nervous crossing the massive bridge over the highway).

it was nice to be in an office with my coworkers, it was a good vibe and in theory it was more comfortable to work than from my home "office". but in practice, the moment i left the apartment i felt weird, a bit dizzy and "off", and my stomach was uncomfortable the entire time i was there. by the time i left, i was nursing a pretty serious headache and i needed to lie down.

while i lay down, my sister sent us messages informing us that she's finally got permanent residence in the UK! this is great news; even though she's nervous about what a shit-hole britain has become, it's a much better class of shit-hole than south africa.

we spoke for a bit until there was another attack; i'm beginning to lose my mind, because the last week or so there's been a problem with our shelter wifi. then i saw a message about the state of our garbage bins, and realized that a large part of it was from the couch guys yesterday... so i headed downstairs and literally got my hands dirty, so much so that i needed to jump in the shower immediately after returning to our apartment.

i had a chat with my mother, and then gd ordered dinner and i sat down with mr smear to help him through another level of human resource machine.

getting him to think through problems out loud, and guiding him without giving him answers, is tough. but i'm extremely pleased to report that he's doing it!

over rainbow burger dinner, we watched another couple of episodes of strip search, then it was shower time for mr smear, after which there was some drama (gd called the shower "condemned").

and then suddenly it was 10pm, and we apparently agreed that that was a valid pesach holiday bedtime for mr smear, so i read some more of the colour of magic from my bed (his bed has been next to mine for the last while) and then we both fell asleep.

...

i'm listening to the latest tousi tv report, the news is completely insane. i played a bit of balatro last night before going to bed, perhaps i'll do something similarly braindead now.

terror storm

ever since i was a child i've loved electric storms, and found lightning and thunder comforting. but last night's lightning strikes were so close that every single one sounded like an iranian attack had caught us by surprise and that there'd been another impact nearby.

thanks a bunch, mother nature.

so, ironically, during a night with no actual attacks i got a whole lot less sleep and a whole lot more anxiety. fuck you, headless chicken that remains of the IRGC.

 ...

so i was a bit rough around the edges today. in spite of that, i feel like i got *some* good work done, and i helped mr smear through his programming "homework" (human resource machine), and he did (with a little bit of shouted encouragement) do a reasonable amount of music practice, and we continued to use in-shelter time-outs to learn zoology with ze frank, and while we didn't train this evening, we did do some serious stretching.

we received two deliveries today: a small care package from my client, and a slightly bigger couch. we're happy with the care package, but we're particularly happy about the couch.

the post office saga was embarrassing, the guy who i'd sent it to had to go twice to the store to pick it up, and i'd had to have a real fight with the representative who eventually ended the call because she was upset that i was upset and taking it out on her. specifically, because she started saying "the next time you use our services" which i immediately cut off with a tirade of why i would never (voluntarily) be using their services again.

what's it called, when you pay for a service and they don't provide it to you? it's on the tip of my tongue...

slightly more reasonable snacking levels today, but a big, late leftover lunch after the couch was delivered, and gd made latkes for dinner (for the flax), and mr smear and i had vegan nutella on the last of the marshmallows.

we watched another strip search elimination, unfortunately mr smear loved the sex-adventure comic and "sass" a little too much and it was an ordeal to get him to not repeat it all to my mother 🤦‍♂️

omg it's really late again. we keep eating late, and mr smear's been going to bed really late, and it kind of throws off my clock.

when life gives you a permeable shower curtain...

 ... double up. as i begin this post mr smear is taking a turn after me, after we put in another one of the same on top of the one from yesterday. so far so good, and i'm enjoying him singing to himself and having a good time 🤞

today began with a boom - a building or three a few blocks away got hit with a missile, a few cars got hit as well, and the next hour or so was an orchestra of emergency service vehicles. but, miraculously, the building in question was evacuated a while ago for reconstruction or renovation, so while there was a lot of damage, there weren't any serious injuries 🙏

not-so-small mercies.

so the morning went straight in and hard on social media and news.

my work day was far better than yesterday, even if it ended on a droopy note with me listening to a recording of someone who mumbles monotonically with a difficult accent.

three call-outs for the day: losing the spider we weren't sure was venomous (we don't think it is now, but we weren't sure), and way too much snacking, and trying to find out where our new couch is, and losing my temper after learning that the package i paid to have delivered to a specific address in ramle was delivered to a store nearby and they want the addressee to pick it up.

from a mr smear point of view, the first day of holidays went quite well. i cancelled his matific subscription - he hasn't used it in months, and it's a great practice tool but not very good for learning - and his "homework" for today was to play human resource machine. (on gog, so i'll link that edition too).

[the shower experience was good and didn't wet the floor! score!]

i was so proud of him! especially of him being proud of himself whenever he figured stuff out ^_^

the evening training was mostly really good - checking and roundhouse kicks - but the biggest challenge was him not responding when told to stop responding. i honestly couldn't tell if he was trolling me, or literally couldn't control himself, but he eventually got a hold of himself and we had a constructive conversation about it while stretching.

overall, he's doing really well.

dinner was delicious. dinner was interrupted by an attack. dinner was extended to include an extra episode of strip search, and more of panda's dubai-style chocolate with vegan marshmallows. it's kinda like peanut butter and marshmallows, but even better!

i'm not making any plans for tonight, but i'm tired and sleepy and i think i might go lie down soon.

life is like a permeable shower curtain

 aren't shower curtains supposed to be impermeable? why can we not find plastic shower curtains anywhere?

1. getting up early was rough - i was still in dream-fugue for a while after our alarms sounded - but getting mr smear out of bed was even rougher. at least, after the initial shock and resentment, things were okay.

2. accompanying gd to the dentist for the second part of her root canal, and taking mr smear for breakfast. i tried to get some work done while he read. the vegan breakfast looked great, but was mediocre at best. i mean, at least he ate the "eggs", which were more curry than eggs, and he doesn't really like curry. but we both had too much of the pickled garlic. a tiny amount was too much, and haunted us both for quite a while after.

pg's folks walked in while i was in the middle of my team's daily, and didn't get the hint that i was in a meeting and couldn't say hi, which was amusingly awkward both for me and my teammates. i had a very nice chat with them afterwards, though.

then gd joined us, met pg's introduced herself to pg's parents. gd had walked into the coffee shop carrying a broom, and pg's mom asked her where she was flying 🤣

3. we caught a bus home, getting off early and paying the hardware store a visit. we picked up a shower curtain. then we stopped by a nature store, and mr smear found a bag of panda's dubai-style vegan chocolate. which i've been wanting to try for a while. i also needed something to calm the garlic-ness.

it was great. i wouldn't pay huge sums of money for it, but it was great.

4. mr smear joined his last two online classes until the end of the pesach break, i tried to work. "tried to work" is the theme of the day, because i - was - a - wreck. i was tired, unmotivated, and everything was a struggle.

also, physically uncomfortable. and i snacked constantly.

i did finish reading ghost in the shell during a lunch break. it's fascinating. it's very clever. it's got 80's israel and mossad references that are as amusing as they are darkly disquieting.

i made mr smear outline a map of israel and hunt down major cities. he did a disappointingly half-assed job of it.

5. after mr smear completed his chores - he's been helping gd a lot lately - we took out the recycling and took a short walk to see if we could find a bath mat. correction - we took a short skip. i introduced mr smear to sheng wang's bit about skipping a while back and he's taken it to heart. also, it's hard not to smile as i let him drag me into it, because otherwise he gets too far ahead of me >D

we first discovered that gd had somehow missed an entire row of frozen vegan dumplings at the store. then we went to a supermarket and found the garbage bags gd and i like (this is how we know we're getting older). mr smear and i tired and failed to find the watermelon ice-creams we love so much, even at a weird new commercial ice-cream store. i mean, an entire store devotes to the ice creams that are sold at various kiosks.

finally, we went in to a container store. i didn't have much in the way of expectations, but we found a nice bath mat!

6. we came back home just in time for dinner. we watched strip search's fifth elimination, and then mr smear decided that we should try having the dubai-style chocolate with marshmallow. i thought that sounded ridiculous, but i decided to give it a try anyway. i didn't want to overpower the chocolate, so i took a bite of chocolate and then nibbled the marshmallow until the proportions were right.

a short while later i came back to reality. i'm glad i gave it a chance.

7. i used the "new" shower first. i preferred the overall experience - it's more comfortable than the bath in the awkwardly triangular master bathroom - but the water pressure's not as good. then mr smear got in the shower.

just before he was done, i checked in on him and found a large puddle of water outside the shower. immediately panicking, i checked the sides and i checked above, and i couldn't see the source of all the water! and then it hit me - literally - the water was spraying straight through the polyester shower curtain.

gd called it - we now know precisely how the bottom of the wooden doorway rotted.

8. after gd and i had a chat with my mom* - lots of drama surrounding my sister and nephew and my niece - gd and i had a chat about gd's friend, who's life-long battle with reality has left him suicidal. gd's really upset, and i explained to her that she's not doing him any favors by pretending that she's okay with what he's doing or planning on doing.

* i'd called her earlier, and my godmother was with her. i was waving to my mom, and then suddenly she was in the frame, and i think we were both equally uncomfortable. thank god gd wasn't with me.

it's not early by any stretch of the imagination, but i'm just finishing up a cup of tea and then going to bed, with a feeling like it's early.

these are strange days. the politics of this war and the noises from all sides of the media are distracting, confusing, and messy. we're doing really well, considering, and we're doing much better than a lot of people here, but my gods these days are taking a psychological toll in a middle different ways.

a power day

 well, the next part of the day was pretty rough - but in a fun way, i guess? it certainly was an experience. 

firstly, mr smear is now full-on into counter-strike, and it's nice to see him not giving up and getting excited by his successes. so it was a cool tone to set before we head out to his regular allergist checkup.

but we headed out right in the heaviest part of a massive thunderstorm. fortunately, we both had our big-enough rain boots on, the water levels were high everywhere and my waterproof shoes would have been flooded from the top. and we had a time avoiding cars spraying water onto the sidewalks, and we got pelleted with hail (his first time outside in hail), and the walk from the bus to the hospital was just ridiculous - a real urban jungle adventure - and of course, the sun came out just as we arrived at our destination.

from that point on it became impossible to close my umbrella...

there was a bit of confusion (which was to be expected) at the reception, but we made it through the bureaucratic gauntlet and went upstairs to the allergy clinic. it was war-time very quiet and there were only two other kids there, surprisingly calm and extremely cute children, so off the bat it was a much less stressful time with mr smear. at that point my tiredness and lack of caffeine began catching up with me, but the allergist and her nurse were efficient and mr smear managed to distract himself from the prick-test itching with games on his phone, and pretty soon we were discussing the results.

it seems like, sadly, his allergy level is stabilizing rather than going away, we'll know better in the next year or two. but even so, the level it's stabilizing at is far less dramatic than before, so while he'll still need an epipen and to be careful not to consume dairy, we don't need to be so scared of accidental contact.

it's / it should be fine.

we went through the hospital mall, where i picked up an emergency coffee just as the attack warning sounded. considering the fact that the roof is made of glass, i get why the safe area was three floors below ground... there was nowhere comfortable to sit, so the two of us walked around the parking lot full of people occupying themselves on their phones and amused ourselves playing word association games.

then we returned to pick up a couple of things at the supermarket, and a couple of bottles of sublingual b12 at the pharmacy (while waiting in the uncomfortably crowded aisle for the self-service checkout, gd called twice while i was holding an umbrella that refused to stay closed, a cup of coffee, and two bottles of b12. i was not in my happy place.

mr smear and i took a bus home - to his chagrin, he always wants to walk these days to get some exercise - and he signed on to his remote classes while i finally got wednesday's code review approved and got started on the follow-up improvement. gd has managed to schedule me a haircut, so a short while late i headed out to catch a bus to sheinkin.

i had some time to spare, so i got a little more work done and drank a coffee that i must assume was soy milk (because they said so, and i honestly can't tell). i arrived just on time for my haircut appointment, and another attack warning. everyone headed across the road to a hotel shelter (the same hotel my cousin threw his farewell party in on mr smear's birthday), which was an interesting experience, and then we returned to get into it. i thought the coffee would keep me from nodding in the chair, but...

... i'm really happy with the haircut. gd's happy with it too. i'm very enthusiastically grateful that i'm no longer sporting my jew-fro / isro :P

it took a long time to get home (i shouldn't have gotten off the bus when i did), and while i waited for the connection mr smear had an accident while helping gd and the two of them had to deal with a smashed plate. so that happened.

the evening was me completing the work and studying a bit (data engineering), and mr smear playing more counter-strike, and then a pretty intensive training in which mr smear admirably demonstrated that he not only could STFU when being given instructions, but that he could redirect his anger and frustration energy into the drill we were doing (a liver shot combo) (even if he did feel the need to tell me that he was imagining that he was hitting me), into continuing the work through discomfort, into stepping into his first impact training (feather-light touch from me, but a big deal for him), into pushing himself through difficult post-training exercises (like planking, diamond push-ups, crunches and burpees), into taekwondo-style stretching.

all the while holding himself in check, even when it was clear he was emotionally at the edge. when we were done, his pride was quiet but visible, and he didn't argue with me the first couple of times i told him how proud i was (he did a bit later, though :P).

a great dinner (double yo-egg, both types as a very successful pre-pesach experiment), and everyone into the merch episode of strip search with lots of pausing to discuss. shower-time and tooth-brushing time were very positive (gd and i were loving him singing along to my playlist at the top of his voice), and his bedtime was earlier than it's been for a while and much more peaceful.

after saying good night, i went on a hunt for vitamin d resources that someone asked me for regarding testing / screening and dosage:

there're a lot of studies that discuss the unreliability of testing - this one's pretty clear - check out the "sources cited" button beneath this video (it's really worth watching). 

see also the "accuracy of screening tests" section of the US preventive services task force report.

and then i watched a whole lot of youtube videos (war news interspersed with random shit), and now this, and then... maybe i'll go to bed soon.

[attack warning]

the roughness

 i got a bit of sleep last night... between flare ups of the "usual" pain i've been suffering the past couple of years. i don't think it's my mattress - or, at least, i don't think my mattress is making it worse this time - but i do think it's might be related to exercising properly and then skipping a couple of days.

...

my news feed is filled with "europe finally understanding that israel and the US were right all along". better late than never? at least we didn't wait for them before doing the necessary.

making a molehill out of a mountain

i woke up around 10am this morning having slept a fair amount, and i woke up feeling a bit shocked and confused as a result.

today was a lot less nice than it should have been. it involved playing tekken 3 and counterstrike 1.6 with mr smear (no other versions run on the windows machine, and no versions run on a mac), and there were some glorious moments. but there were also lots of shitty emotions that came out - some borne of miscommunication, some of mr smear exhibiting a shitty attitude and me taking it more personally than i should have), and as a result the day was not full of joy.

on a different note, i spent a *lot* of time today - mostly between other things - finishing the work i started yesterday on my telephony side project.

i guess i feel a bit more productive, at least more than i've felt all week.

in war news, it was a pretty quiet day today, gd's stomach seems to be feeling a bit better than it has in months, and we had a massive electric storm this afternoon.

emulation

i wrestled quite a bit more with my side project before dinner (pausing to help out with the kitchen and the baking), and then it was dinner. which was delicious, and would have been far more pleasant if mr smear hadn't done a thing about the eggplant and his salad. kind brought the vibe down, but whatever...

after eventually getting him showered and into bed, and then myself showered - i was anticipating a cool shower, but it was plenty hot - i've spent the last couple of hours buggering about with retroarch and duckstation. i can play sunset riders! and i have tekken 3 set up!

there was a lot of irritating effort that went into that, but i'm quite happy with things right now. i should probably go to bed.

the rod of shower-destiny

 gods, i feel tired and worn out. we all slept late this morning, but although it was definitely better sleep than the past while, it wasn't good sleep. i feel like i'm going to fall apart at any moment.

i napped for an hour this afternoon, but even that wasn't comfortable and i had to get up eventually.

aside from trying to catch up on the world via youtube, and doing a lot of dealing with utterly retarded AI models that are kind of helping me with my telephony side project but also kind of getting in my way a lot, my biggest achievement today was going out with mr smear and acquiring a shower curtain rod and the very specific shape of metal required to put it up on an angled wall.

trying to explain what i needed to the poor guys working at the hardware store was impossible. i tried in a variety of ways, and they felt bad that they didn't "get" it. but *i* "got" it, and i got it, and we now have a shower rod that sits nicely 💪

priorities reversal

 today was all wrong. the hospital visit went no more awry than expected, and they were kind and understanding and unofficially rescheduled us for sunday morning, so that's good.

we caught the bus home, and the rest of the day was spent struggling very hard to be in any way productive. at some point it got so hard, that when disrupted by a siren i hid myself under a blanket and napped for about an hour.

but that didn't really help a lot. i woke up thinking i might be coming down with something. god, please don't. please, not now.

at the same time as i wasn't managing my own work, i seem to have done a pretty good job of managing mr smear's - i got him to do "geography homework" (mapping out the middle east countries), and i got him to come up with and draw a very cool little comic strip (inspiring him with a few samples of the far side).

then we watched *the* elimination episode of strip search, followed by a chat with my mom during which she informed us that the shower smell is most likely caused by us not using the shower (water in the u-bend prevents smells from coming out the pipes) and made a suggestion about putting mr smear's mattress in our bedroom now that there's space, which we did, and i think tonight's going to be easier for it.

he's certainly happy about it. but he also got to read until 11pm...

once he was (technically) in bed, i played with trivy for a while, which led to replacing mocha tests with jest in one of my projects, and eventually ended up cleaning up my phone control project's new interface, and now i'm very much in need of some rest.

rough edges

 rough night. still better than with the previous beds, but having mr smear in the bed with us is just uncomfortable enough to make the sleep... not good. there were only two or three attacks last night, but there's no way to know whether it's worth sending him back to his bed or not because we can't tell when the next attack is coming.

and what sleep i did get was filled with disturbing dreams. i can't describe them better than "commando prostitute". and from that i woke up to a message asking for donations for two families from mr smear's school who live near it, and lost their homes in one of the attacks during the first first week of the war.

i haven't sipped my coffee yet, but i just spent way too long moving my mouse around, patiently and sadly, waiting for my computer to wake up - but it wasn't plugged in yet.

in addition to everything else, mr smear and i had to get up early this morning because i'm taking him for the allergy test. i had the presence of mind to ask gd if he'd had any antihistamines these past few days, even if i hadn't had the presence of mind to set reminders for him not to take any.

he had one yesterday.

so now we're going to the hospital to meet with the doctor anyway, but we can't do any tests.

...

at least yesterday evening went well. we had a good mma / taekwondo session, and we both felt sufficiently exercised by the end of it. we enjoyed another episode of strip search, and when mr smear "went to bed" (reading) gd and i shared a local beer (a bit too blonde for my tastes, but not bad flavor) and i watched a really comedy set that i've seen before (it's kellen erksine, it must have been republished), and then went straight to bed.

destabilized

 i did go to bed, but i barely got much sleep. certainly nothing restful. mr smear stayed in our bed until morning, and then we all got up early ("in solidarity" according to gd), although i ended up lying down for an additional hour afterwards.

the day started off alright, though. i sat down with mr smear and my coffee and introduced him to mad magazine - issue #295, back to the future part ii - and it was really cool. i had to explain a whole lot of stuff to him, which led to some interesting moments. i think i blew his mind describing the difference by how we all dealt with the CFC / ozone hole crisis as a species, but allowed the oil and animal agriculture industries to divide us all on global warming.

i don't know how much "work" i got done today, certainly nothing significant. in addition to my brain feeling wrecked, gd was on a cleaning spree and discovered (what then became unavoidable) a sewer smell coming from the office bathroom next to my desk which we have no explanation for.

between meetings, mr smear and i walked to the hardware store to pick up draino, and did some tea shopping on the way back home. we sat down for a "salad pita" lunch while out, which was nice, and explored a local toy store's lego selection realizing that we never got mr smear a birthday present.

it's been a year. or two, or three.

i just got off a long call with horseman, most of it discussion the terrifying state of AI-fueled propaganda and the last fifty years building up to the west collapsing in on itself because its people have all been brainwashed to love their enemies more than themselves.

now to drag mr smear away from spore and get some exercise.

crackles and booms

 two people were just killed very close by after a cluster bomb (and all its parts) landed right around us.  it looks like one of the buildings in our old neighborhood is on fire after another struck there.

meanwhile, i was working on a side project in our shelter while my family slept behind me.

now to try to go to bed myself while emergency vehicle sirens blast all around us.

no offset

 last night was disruptive again. less than the night before, enough to make today a bit messy.

we all got up late again.

coffee and ghost in the shell - currently in the chapter which the central action of the movie is based on - and then most of the work day spent fighting an IDE not playing nicely with AI agents whose wheels are spinning but aren't going anywhere fast.

meanwhile, gd had a productive day unpacking and moving things around, and our apartment is starting to make a bit more sense. i mean, i still don't know what kind of furniture we'll need or how things will fit together, but it's definitely easier to begin using our imaginations.

zero exercise today, unless taking recycling downstairs counts. and now, after showering and brushing my teeth and making myself a cup of tea, i remember that i put a box of not-trash outside where the trash goes, and i probably need to go out and take it somewhere more likely to be enjoyed by random passers-by...

i had a short chat with one of our cousins earlier, it looks like we're not the only ones lacking confidence that a normal pesach seder is going to happen this year. my mom's re-booked her flights for next month, which i'm guessing will be more-or-less back to (a new) normal.

i feel... kind empty this evening. like i just don't have mental capacity to feel. but there's stuff i wanna do and it's bothering me that i'm not doing it, and that it's been days of not doing it...

the counter-routine

 another attack, second time this evening. it's late, and mr smear was just going to sleep... we have an agreement that we're going to start getting up early in the mornings to reestablish our routines.

...

today was a - i want to say a weird day, but every day in wartime is weird. i know i had weird dreams again last night, though i don't remember anything, and while it was a quieter night than before it was still quite disrupted.

i was pretty relaxed about work today, spending a fair amount of time on tangential stuff that i hope ends up shaving enough time off our CI that we can get a lot more of the real work done.

i surprised myself by participating more in today's (employer's) meeting than i would have expected considering i was mostly focused on the aforementioned tangential work, but i had a good idea about AI and game development and the others seemed to like it, so 🤷‍♂️

gd did a lot of cleaning and sorting today - i helped by moving a heavy piece of furniture - and our apartment feels considerably more together. so that's nice.

mr smear was mostly well-behaved today, somewhat helpful and contributed a bit to gd's efforts, and we had a really good mma session before dinner. daddy is very proud of his little boy's liver punches, and he kinda got the idea of a kickboxing roundhouse eventually.

i feel like the exercise we're getting is at least offsetting some of the excessive snacking that's been going on during the days.

we've gotten into the beginning of the strip search drama snowball. everyone's invested.

every day is (almost) exactly the same

 last night was rough. i wasn't woken up as much by the bombings because i had my phone off, so putting a stop to the horrible noises was exclusively gd's problem, but mr smear ended up sleeping most of the night in our bed and it's a bit crowded for my tastes.

i did have some mighty weird dreams, though. cthuloid ones, where creepy little humanoids were trying to eat my inexplicably long beard, and i got into a fight with the owner of the establishment who i somehow knew, and then had to escape some weird military-industrial warehouse, ending up climbing nets that had to be rearranged because whoever had put them up had done a really shit job.

an early meeting with my new coworker to introduce him to a new tool triggered a couple of hours putting together an article on it. i tried to get it published with my employer, but i've just withdrawn that application and applied to a publication with real reach, and where it's okay to make some money off it.

i had to "hold the fort" while gd rested this afternoon - she was having a rough day - and when one of his teachers was a no-show i managed to convince him to hook up the MIDI controller to garageband, which he really enjoyed. i don't know what he was doing, because at one point i had to put on headphones to block out the noise, but he seemed quite proud of himself.

in the evening i took a rather long walk (no sirens!) to stretch my legs and by a piece of equipment (a particular configuration of USB hub) that i discovered, on my return home, that i already owned.

i think i have a viable use for two of them, though.

i did another MMA session with mr smear, and every day we do this i feel better both physically and mentally. not only am i getting a little real exercise in, but i'm seeing my son develop the mindset and get comfortable not only in his body, but in his place in the world.

i've been trying on and off to do this since he was tiny, but better late than never. i guess he had to come to it on his own terms.

after reading him some more of the colour of magic at bedtime, and allegedly doing a breathing exercise to help him relax, he refused once again to go to sleep. gd let him read until almost 11pm, god knows what tomorrow morning's going to be like.

in the meanwhile, i went on a side quest with work stuff, and at the stroke of midnight sent a proposal to my team because the current CI configuration's driving me crazy with unnecessary wait times.

...

i have a feeling scrapper doesn't really want to talk politics with me, which is frustrating, but 🤷‍♂️

breathing easy

gd's making dinner (late, kind of as usual these days), but mr smear and i have already showered and i've managed to establish that the recent spate of wet floors was due to his showering and drying technique, not some plumbing issue.

while i wait, he's reading harry potter and i'm trying to convince AI agents to implement a new auth system i came up with this afternoon. and listening to drugs bunny on the sound bar i've set up at my feet.

i even napped today for a bit, after putting together a pretty cool fruit basket system we bought just when we moved in a month and a half ago.

...

i spoke to my mom at some point, and we agreed that it's not worth the trouble / potential trouble to try and force her way here for pesach. hopefully she'll be able to make it here a month or so later instead.

the world according to my son

1. i should be a personal trainer. he was very happy with this morning's training, in spite of the fact that there were tears and feelings along the way.

2. i've just been informed that i'm going to heaven. this is in response to me (AI-assisted) figuring out why his modrinth mod kept crashing and fixing it.

so i guess i've dadded well. today.

which reminds me of two things that were said between thursday and yesterday that i want to record for posterity:

• what do you call a postal worker who's tasked with removing envelopes from letters? a mail stripper.
• gd was being an asshole. i was trying to teach my son a word, and she cut me off with a new one that means "to do something in a sticky, spready way": syruptitiously.

where's the supreme leader?

what a time to be alive! where a random idea i had while falling asleep meets AI 👌👌 

less than minor disruptions

 so far today we've had two warnings of incoming attacks, one attack with a siren, and one without. but we got to go to south tel aviv, visit some furniture stores and find a couch we're excited about, order it, and learn that it *should* be here in time for pesach.

hopefully my mom will be too 🤞

gd wasn't feeling so good - it was pretty impressive that she managed to make the mission at all - so mr smear and i dropped her off at home, stopping for a siren warning and breakfast (we were both very hungry by that stage), and then took the (delayed due the war like all of them) bus to the apple store, where there regretfully informed me that gd's ipad is too old and too scratched to be worth much in trade :(

so i guess it's hail-mary time, we'll try to back it up and completely reset it in the hopes that we can ugrade its OS...

we had a very pleasant walk home, picking up liquor, running into an old colleague friend and his dog (abahd - a boy and his dog, referencing the movie he introduced me to when he learned i'm a fallout fan), and picking up a sorry-we're-at-war gift from my employer of half a kilo of ice cream for (theoretical) dinner tonight.

then, as promised - after a cup of coffee, of course - mr smear and i went into MMA mode and i taught him taekwondo side kicks. which he did surprisingly well for a first time!

he's also - in fits and bursts - getting used to the idea of discipline, shutting the fuck up and taking instructions whether he agrees with them or has something to say or not. and it's really help that the motivation to do the work is coming from him because he's fixated on losing weight and we don't want him dieting...

i'm developing a karate kid fantasy of teaching him to a point where i can take him to my old master and see him holding his own :)

we took turns showering, and then there was an unannounced attack - lots of booms but no sirens - and now we're busy making dinner plans. it seems like the challah-peño's going to be good tonight ^_^

and i'm listening to moby - for the nostalgia - and figuring out what to do with my brain.

less useless

 yesterday was - especially during this war - very strange.

i got up early* after a normal amount of disruptions**, and immediately set to writing a follow-up article on psychosis and trauma, and then jumped on a bus to the post office with my network appliance under my arm.

* a little later than normal alarm time when there's normal school

** it felt weird messaging mr smear's friend's parents to ask if they were all okay

i had to wait a while. half that time i spent scrolling on my phone, the other half trying to stare as far away as i could to relax my eyes. i got called up to the counter, got the package sent, and then caught the bus back home.

i was in a meeting when mr smear came home from his night out, and was distracted by him immediately fighting with gd because he felt like he desperately needed a shower when he was already late for class. it turned out that he and his friend had had a particularly late night, they'd watched duck soup and half of iron man 2, and he'd had a really unpleasant experience in their mamak because there'd been an attack and he'd had to lie down on a dirty mattress and cover himself with a dirty blanket and he was sure that he could feel things crawling all over him...

... i don't know how much of that was real, or imagined, but i know my little princess...

anyway, all reports were that he was very polite and well-behaved, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

my work day was more productive than the previous couple, though i did struggle with my back hurting from sitting down for too long. at least i felt like i contributed during a couple of our meetings, and i pushed a couple of code changes, and i fixed a couple of pipeline things...

in the evening mr smear and i accompanied gd to the pharmacy, and then we did a little snack shopping while she waited, and then rejoined her for moral support.

i don't know what's been going on with my stomach the past couple of weeks, but i think it's general anxiety and a less stable diet than usual. while we were out, i felt painfully bloated.

oh, and i've had a weird lump on the back of my neck the past couple of days. i hope it's nothing interesting... google says it's probably cancer.

my mother messaged me last night to inform me that her flight's been cancelled. she's scrambling to find another way to get here for pesach, if she can't this is going to be a real bummer :(

scrapper and i exchanged messages last night, and it looks like he's succumbed to the anti-israel / anti-trump narratives. i hope we get a chance to talk it out soon.

last night was a parenting-fail fight storm sandwiched between a good dinner and watching an episode of strip search, and hanging out in mr smear's room having a serious but often funny discussion about our abusive parents and his dealing with schoolyard bullying in his previous schools.

i went to bed right after saying good night to mr smear, emotionally exhausted more than anything else.

...

this morning we got up at our leisure, after a full night's sleep with no attacks. i started my day reading some more of ghost in the shell - now i *get* the intro sequence and why it's even more interesting after reading its parallel. there's a certain amount of fan service that's over-the-top, but i kinda get it in terms of a commentary on society... is in inappropriate for mr smear? i guess i'm on the fence.