liminality

 mr smear told us earlier that today was the first day he remembers enjoying school.

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a mostly sane wake-up, dishes, ping pong (i'm just more than halfway through), and after mr smear left for school it was dealing with pension / insurance stuff, and beginning a response to my boss/client who finally replied to my first update with a whole list of questions.

i arrived at work a minute late for my first meeting (this is becoming a thing, i have to be more careful in the mornings), and it was another long, very busy day. some of it productive, but not visibly so, by me having conversations with the stakeholders that triggered some very serious "debates" between them. i'm going to have to be very attentive and careful to not step on anyone's toes... which is literally a part of the job description.

i joined a few people on a lunch mission, which ended up being to a shuwarma place - fortunately, they had a plate full of side-dishes on the menu which was vegan and delicious. on the way out everyone was shocked to discover i'm vegan, which triggered some very serious discussions. the woman who came with us - a mother of two - literally cried when i told her what mr smear had had to contend with in his previous school regarding his dairy allergies and bullying.

we had to stop talking about nutrition and food safety over lunch because the guy in the team i'm embedded in started losing his appetite :P

...

i left a bit early to meet gd and mr smear at our friends' neighbor's apartment to take a look. we were there for a while, the disabled landlord seems genuinely decent and the apartment looks great, but he's putting us under enormous pressure to take it from february 1st, ostensibly because he has another potential tenant and he's giving us a chance as a favor to our friends.

it's a little further away from where we want to be than we are already, but it's on a corner with bus stops that work for us. and it's closer to another street we're happy shopping on, and the park. it's potentially a lot noisier than where we are, but the windows seem built for it. and winter. it's a big space with one more room than we're used to, but there's a poorly-conceived wall that divides what would otherwise be a wonderful open-plan kitchen and living area. there are multiple bathrooms, though each one has minor problems. not serious ones. it has an in-apartment bomb shelter. it's a little more expensive than our current apartment, but it's still very reasonable.

mr smear's very enthusiastic about it, and i made gd try and find faults but she's generally feeling positive about it. i walked out feeling very pressured, which i really don't like.

on the one hand, i don't want to make a decision under pressure - real or artificial - and this is a big decision. aside from the risks you take with any move to a new apartment, this is potentially burning two months' rent if we don't find someone to replace us. but at the same time, there's no guarantee we'll get a better deal than this if we don't take it. in fact, based on the past couple of days of looking, i'd be very surprised if we find something else even close to this good for us.

but there's no oracle we can consult, no human being on the planet who can guess whether we should take it or pass. there's no right or wrong answer.

i rushed through some of the dishes when we got home, then headed out to meet tahoma, and we went to rainbow for their sensational burgers. afterwards we took a long stroll looking for a dessert, and then i took my leave to get home in time to handle mr smear's toenails and put him to bed.

between discussing things with tahoma, and discussing them with my mother, i got most of the way home still very much undecided about what to do.

but then, just before i arrived home, i realized something important: if we don't take this apartment, there's a very good chance we'll have to use a real estate agent. and real estate agents - even though it's illegal - take an additional month's rent from the tenant as fees. which means that us taking this apartment is effectively only a loss of a single month (more than we would have lost anyway), and there's still a chance to reclaim some of that loss if we can find a replacement tenant quickly.

so now we have a plan. a scary plan, but a plan.

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i read a bit of the beginning of sophocles i to mr smear at bedtime. he's into bits of it, but i don't think he's really ready.