the jackals are howling again - they've been a lot more brazen the past few days, and they've been going at it at all hours. also, very confrontational with dogs being walked even during daylight (O_o)
should we be worried about mr smear?
yesterday:
yesterday began with a fight - kind of the usual - between gd and mr smear about getting out of bed. and then mr smear stayed home again, i tried to take him to school but he threw up just outside the gate (ewww!) and so we turned around and walked back home, stopping on a bench for a good talk.
oh, yeah - and a handyman came in to clean up the underside of our kitchen sink, which entailed us clearing out, cleaning and repacking everything while simultaneously getting mr smear ready for school. the fun part was using sealant on a lifted edge of the sink :P
i started my word day cleaning the dust off everything after the workers were supposed to be done, but within a very short while it was clear that they were far from done, and all of our belongings and our lungs were coated with yet another layer of dust that i'm praying doesn't include asbestos.
it was a frustrating day of tweaking kubernetes installations and annoying the guy i'm reporting to, who was working remotely which made it feel worse. but i was also involved in some product discussions and i feel like i contributed.
eventually i hit partial success, just in time to interview another coworker and dig in to the all-hands / happy hour treats.
i didn't have another "nap attack" episode yesterday, but i did make an appointment to discuss them with my doctor.
as has become standard practice, i came home and sat with mr smear for his maths and reading. unfortunately, he got frustrated with how i explained a word to him and gd - who'd been holding on to the morning's grievance, amongst other things - completely lost it.
the day ended with a different kind of fight, or family meeting, or family meeting with lots of yelling, but it feels like we got through to mr smear and gd expressed some stuff that's obviously been hurting her for a long time. as she said - sometimes it's only when you start to heal from something that you really begin to realize the depths of the trauma.
anyway, it wasn't a fun experience for anyone but i feel like we all were in a better place by the time mr smear left the table to brush his teeth and climb into bed.
...
i passed out watching monk, dragged myself to bed when gd went, and slept fitfully through the night, dreaming a lot of very realistic dreams about returning to the army.
today:
this time mr smear actually went to school, and i went in after him to find someone to help me understand why it was so hard for him to get to his friday juggling classes. eventually i got some hints, and i sent them to mr smear on whatsapp, and i returned home.
gd went to her sewing class, and i spent much of my morning trying to do something constructive* while my stomache did flips for no apparent reason. or maybe it's related to the fact that i seem to be coming down with something - i don't think my sinuses and throat are going haywire just from the dust exposure.
* i surprised myself by actually succeeding, i published an article about apt-key being deprecated
until i received a phone call from mr smear, telling me that he'd been in a classroom by himself (he hadn't seen / had chosen not to see my messages) and was accosted by two of the bullies in his class. understanding the worst, i managed to get him to go to his juggling class in spite of how furious i was with him for giving anyone an opportunity to hurt him (not as furious as i was with the bullies, and not that i was blaming him, which i explained to him later), and on my way to the school to pick him up i consulted with my mom about whether it makes sense to go to the police when the school's clearly not willing or able to protect our children.
i think that's exactly what i'm going to do from now on.
fortunately, when i sat him down and got the details out of him it turned out that the bullying was only harassment, not assault, which was a huge relief. and aside from that incident it appears that he actually had a pretty good day.
we walked home, and the two bullies were walking across the road from us. i awkwardly gave them angry side-eye, which they noticed, with my tongue between my teeth. in retrospect, i handled that wrong and i should have been giving them an evil smile instead.
next time.
mr smear switched bags* and we caught a bus to azrieli to meet up with gd and buy underwear. and snacks. oh! on the way back from dropping mr smear off at school this morning i picked up a couple of things, one of which being pistachio-covered cashews. which seems ridiculous, but even more ridiculous is how much like cookies it tastes.
* one day, we pray, he's not going to need to carry an epipen around with him wherever he goes
the rest of the afternoon has been pretty quiet, only slightly interrupted by a call with ze german who i've been trying to help... it's not that i don't want to help him, but i'm completely out of bandwidth while he doesn't really have anyone else for what i'm assisting him with.
...
i've spent a lot of time these past couple of weeks trying to get my head around what i'm doing for work, who i'm working with, what the expectations are. it's been a difficult time personally, but i feel like i'm going to need to start opening the throttle and doing a lot more than my nine-to-five. it's also been made clear that i'm expected to go on-site occasionally, which i've assured gd won't be unsafe even though i'm not entirely confident that that's true.
...
politically it was a difficult week, or couple of weeks. between the stories (and eulogy) from the recently released hostages to the amount of disinformation online - specifically mastodon and vimeo, which make it impossible to report.
