abandoned beer

 well, i guess i was wrong. a minute after posting i received a message from one of the birthday moms, to say that they'd tried to get mr smear to stay...

i packed up, abandoned my beer ($#@%!) and stalked out the coffee shop, calling gd to update her (and vent). she quickly convinced me to avoid being reactionary and hold a family meeting when we got home. i was furious when i found him, i made sure to send him back to apologize and say goodbye, and we began the walk home.

it was good that we walked. not only were our public transport options limited - and i didn't want to pay for another taxi ride - but it gave us a lot of time to talk once i'd calmed down (fortunately, that only took a couple of minutes and i didn't say anything that i ended up regretting).

his behavior was less bad than i initially thought, though it definitely wasn't wise, and it seems like there was a lot more at play than just pop music and food smells. amongst other things we spoke about the importance of integration with whoever you're studying, working or serving with. during the family meeting gd and my mom both helped drive that home, and i feel like we got through to him 🤞

there were a bunch of other things, but that was the most important one. i'm pretty glad we handled it relatively calmly and constructively.

dinner was great (gluten-free-gd's getting good with daal), and although mr smear took a long time to get ready for bed, it gave my mom and i an opportunity for a really interesting discussion about pluralism, contrasting my experiences in japan and india with hers as a foreign exchange student in the 60s.

i'm not sure how functional i'm going to be right now, perhaps i should start moving towards going to bed.