trying to remember to breathe

 ooooomgomgomgomg

i slept kind of alright last night. gd barely slept at all - she was completely devastated. convinced that we couldn't have a pet in the new apartment, and convinced that the new apartment is a must-have, she was torn and deeply unhappy.

at one point i said to her that if we couldn't convince him otherwise, we should probably move on.

so i sent him a carefully-worded message first thing, and we then spent the next two hours fretting anxiously because it didn't make sense to take any further action without an answer. we were discussing the situation with my mom when he finally called back.

i told him that the clause was deeply problematic for us, after a brief preamble, and he immediately cut me off to make it clear that the clause was a mistake, and that he has absolutely no issue with animals.

*phew*

also, that he wants to do the contract for a year and a half, not half a year, which i'd completely misunderstood.

*also phew*

so i put together messages for our current landlords (who got back to us complaining how their son was sick, and that they needed to think about how to screw things up for us and themselves), and for our neighbors, and had breakfast quickly, and then left to the shops, where i once again failed to get a refund for a bunch of useless bowls we bought - it took a long time to not get the service i thought we'd been promised - and pick up a gorgeous gift for the mongoose's daughter's third birthday, and then we returned home, dropped off the things we needed to drop off, and headed out again to take a bus to meet with mr smear.

by that stage, the city had warmed up and wearing a sweater or a coat proved to be a mistake.

he met us at the light rail station and we continued on to allenby, but i received a call from the movers and we missed our stop, ending up at elifelet - just perfect :/

fortunately, our experience there was much smoother than my last one, and we managed to get on a train back within ten minutes. we then walked to the mattress store for a reunion, and after a lot of lying down decided that we both wanted the same mattress - the one mr smear has - but we're still ordering them as singles (that are supposed to fit on the queen-sized base we currently have) and if one of us is unhappy that doesn't need to affect the other.

we walked a bit and caught a bus to the mongoose's, getting off early in the hopes of finding some food. we happened to go past and into the very expensive, very touristy cafexoho, which is fortunately quite vegan-friendly.

mr smear was still hungry when we left, so i let him have some of my really good sesame bagel. mr smear has always had a thing about sesame seeds - he can't stand the texture - and he loved it.

[a pause to deal with the discovery that mr smear picked his scabs again after we just had a whole thing about not doing that, and he has a proper wound on his hand again]

we arrived at the mongoose's, and met up with his parents for the first time since we've been in israel. of course, i fumbled his mom's name (i was close, but it was embarrassing). anyway, we had a really nice afternoon, the gift seems to have been well-received, and we all talked a lot.

then suddenly it was time to go. we ended up walking home, stopping for ice-cream along the way (way more sugar than any of us needed), picked up a bottle of wine and some tubs of ice-cream for tonight, came home, and began preparing the challah-peño. we used a lot of jalapeño, the dough ended up really wet, i hope it comes out well.

...

the stress of the previous weeks combined with the stress of the coming weeks is overwhelming. absolutely overwhelming.