gameis 2026

 the gameis conference was nothing short of inspirational. up until a couple of weeks ago i was convinced that the israeli gaming industry was all about gambling; i arrived a little before the crowds, and i was really impressed by the local games set up to play; extremely high quality, both the studio and the indie games.

a guy i served with sat down next to me during the opening talks, and we were both - like most of the people in the room - made very uncomfortable by the fifteen minutes of "saying the quiet part out loud" explaining how to take advantage of "whales". judging by the audience reactions to that and the marketing talk that followed, and the antithesis in the more sentimental talks that poked fun at the first ones, we weren't alone. the only other uncomfortable talk was by a hardcore liberal american jew, whose thesis regarding making games meaningful was excellent, but who couldn't stop himself from putting his TDS and anti-musk sentiments on display.

lunch was surprisingly good, really decent vegan options.

the rest of the talks i sat in on were interesting, enlightening, and motivated me to want to Make Stuff. i've captured a whole bunch more game ideas, and as soon as i'm done with integrating my auto-doc into my client's systems i'm going to focus on some of them.

there were some awkward moments during the day, but i had an interesting phone call with sailor and a couple of positive interactions (one with an old university buddy who used to be a part of ze germans). in general, i feel much better about the lay of the land. and, considering my current situation - and my anxiety over tomorrow's attempt to renegotiate my salary possibly going awry - i'm wondering if i shouldn't try to move in that direction.

during the day i learned - fortunately from mr smear first - that mr smear and his "friend" had had an incident this morning. i told his friend's mother about the on/off bullying that mr smear's been experiencing the past couple of months, and i think as parents we're all aligned and hoping for the best... but either way he really doesn't want to go back, he's been really disappointed by the summer day camp in spite of a bunch of positive experiences.

i spoke to an organizer a bit earlier, and it looks like they'll refund us if he stops now (which is in spite of their terms and conditions), so we'll ask him in the morning and take it from there. it'll certainly put us under less financial pressure for this month, even if it doesn't really affect the next ones so much...

mr smear and i did a quick grocery shop and then sat down for dinner. gd made home-made hamburgers that were delicious, but none of us was hungry. i ate all my food anyway, because it was delicious and i felt uncomfortable leaving it on the plate, and i kind of regret doing that.

we finished watching chocolat, and we all loved it, which is awesome.

at mr smear's bedtime gd and i had a fight that was triggered by an argument over whether she could be a receptionist in tel aviv if her hebrew isn't great, and it took a lot to get to a point where we both heard each other...

now it's late, and i really don't have energy to work on the auto-doc, so i'm going to chill and go to bed soon and try to get as much done in the morning to be ready for the demonstration 🤞

cross-ay-eyed

mr smear took the graphic novels back to the comics library yesterday, and i couldn't figure out what i wanted to read before my screen time and then... oh, yes, i wrote up my previous day's adventures, and got not-a-lot done before heading out (back) to the office.

i did not focus on my primary task today. i mean, i made some progress, but for the most part i was heavily invested in the distracting work of resurrecting a retired dependency so that i could fix a bug in it that i need to make the project i resurrected yesterday work properly.

and we had two important meetings yesterday. the first was an engineering all-hands that sounded eerily familiar, with zero irony. i had a little trouble with feeling sleepy, but i woke up to ask a question and had the VP come bouncing up to where i was sitting with the mic, and then very much not like my question about how metrics for velocity conflict with demanding accountability in terms of quality.

at least i managed to catch him for a positive chat immediately afterwards :P

i had a meeting in a fridge phone booth a few minutes later, and i realized just as i signed in that i couldn't find my hoodie. so, on the call but muted, i rushed around the office trying to find it, eventually guessing that it had fallen behind the stands where i'd been sitting, and managing (with enormous relief) to snatch it up and find a booth in time to follow everything.

my new manager is cool - i've worked with him before - but it's not clear how aligned we are on the mission so i had to be really careful to raise all my points in a way that didn't feel confrontational. i think i did alright, but i've now told everyone very clearly that i'm hoping to be able to start experimenting with integrating my hackathon solution by next week; both because it gives me a deadline i have to stick to, and because i'm nervously in a race against time to get *my* opinionated solution in before somebody comes and up with something irresponsible instead :P

when i left the office, i called gd back and we got into it about whether or not we can afford a dog, or will ever be able to afford a dog. that had to be put on hold while i travelled to my employer's office by light rail. there was a lot of tension, but we managed to move through it and had a heavy but important conversation about the challenges gd's been facing with language, community and work over the past few years, and how to approach them.

the meetup at the office was pretty good. not only were the talks not boring (i learned a few things about agentic ai and agentic memory), but i made small talk with a guy who turned out to be another ex-saffer (he went to school with one of my cousins' kids) and the conversation ended up going off the rails in our unique saffer way. it made the eavesdroppers (and there were a couple) a little happier about the hardships they're forced to endure :P

i had a good chat with the head of our group afterwards, though i said something in a clumsy way - i'm sure she doesn't remember, but it's bugging me - and then i bussed home just in time to say goodnight to mr smear and have a bit of a chat before he went to sleep, and watch most of another episode of ludwig with gd, and now...

... i dunno. i think i'm too tired to do anything productive, but also not tired enough to go to bed and actually sleep 🤷‍♂️

calm

i'm tired, i'm posting this and drinking my "good night" tea (chamomile and lavender) and then hopefully i'll be ready to get a full night's sleep.

thursday:

it was a relatively calm work day. one of my coworkers was particularly condescending to me and another guy, and i'm quite proud of how calmly i handled it.

lipgirl organized an insanely rich, delicious vegan cake for the happy hour and i ended up bringing most of it home. i've eaten too much cake over the course of the last three days.

i was inspired by some of mr smear's homework questions to try teaching him math from first principles. he was so excited by how much easier it is to understand what's going on!

yesterday:

yesterday was the first day in a long while that i've had bandwidth for stuff other than my day job. i installed the windsurf IDE - which i'm so far quite pleased with (it feels more comfortable than cursor, but i haven't got lots of experience with the important stuff yet) - and recalibrated myself with some of my side projects.

some of the morning was just spent doing nothing.

after mr smear came home from school, i took him to meet gd and urchin at the sarona market for lunch. overall it was great, although it would have been better had mexicana not screwed up my order and given me chicken when i'd asked for vegan. yecch.

by the time we left, our buses weren't running anymore and it was searing hot at the bus stop. fortunately, while we were waiting for a taxi to accept our fare, an unexpected bus arrived that worked for us and we got home without further stress.

the rest of the afternoon was pretty relaxed. i looked up an alternative synagogue - we don't like the politics of the one we've been going to - but the only one that's close by and checks all the boxes doesn't hold friday night services which i find really confusing.

gd experimented with yuba for dinner, which came out really nicely.

today:

i started the day by initializing a language learning project, and then by reading more of a canticle for leibowitz when out spare mouse turned out to be broken and mr smear demanded (begged) to use our main computer.

and then i rotated my rollerblade wheels (which i've been meaning to do for ages) and mr smear and i rode to the beach.

it was a glorious beach day. the rides there and back were good (minus a minor incident where i tried to give him a boost and accidentally pushed him over), we found a spot in the shade for our gear, and we spent plenty of time having fun in the water.

i did get slightly sunburned, but not painfully.

the afternoon was spent reading and napping, and in the evening (after doing a whole bunch of dishes) i walked to our friends to deliver the barmitzvah present two weeks late, and we were all very awkward about it.

it was a very pleasant evening.

i've just bought tickets to a family-friendly trance party next weekend in honor of shavuot. we're praying that gd can come with (she's got a nerve block procedure on tuesday), but even if it's just me and mr smear i think it's going to be awesome ^_^

,,,

tomorrow is towel day! which in my book is synonymous with DNA testing day.

שֶׁהֶחֱיָנוּ וְקִיְּמָנוּ וְהִגִּיעָנוּ לַזְּמַן הַזֶּה

the game

yesterday (thursday night's a blur):

i got up early and started configuring my company computer to be able to work on the job application (my ssh and git configurations were very specifically set up for work, and not compatible with personal stuff). that took a lot of effort.

once that was taken care of, i started following the instructions for getting set up with the exercise. of course i encountered hiccups along the way that took lots of time to resolve and had nothing to do with the exercise itself... and then i finally got everything looking like it was up and running, but it wasn't.

at that point i tried setting things up on my windows machine, but that was a complete wash. i think i'm going to try again in a docker container and see if that makes more sense.

i took a break to pick mr smear up from school with gd, then took a walk to the supermarket to pick up some healthy snacks for the weekend. then i did the dishes, and had a long chat with horseman that was mostly about ideology and narrative but concluded with a discussion about a game idea i've been brewing. by that point, i was pretty much all in on the weekend.

i took mr smear to the synagogue for the friday night service, which was a corrective experience for him - we both enjoyed the service itself, and none of the babies were screaming. the walks there and back were good, too.

the evening was pretty good in general, and after everyone else went to bed i settled in to try out the tribe must survive that nystire gifted me (thank you!!) - i played until my eyes refused to stay open, it feels very much like don't starve together, but i felt a lot less stressed playing it. i mean, it was a while ago that we tried the latter, so i now feel compelled to replay it so that i can make a fair comparison.

either way, the concept, artwork and atmosphere are great!

today:

i got up early (again) and put together a document for the game idea i spoke to horseman about that's been on the boil since thursday morning. it's a combination of a bunch of different ideas that have been simmering over the past couple of years, and i'm really excited to flesh it out!

personal wars trump big wars

yesterday:

rollercoaster continued. mr smear stayed home because of his cough again, and a ridiculous amount of the day was dedicated to gd's private response to the rabbi she'd yelled at the evening before.

it's amazing how much more anxiety we've been experiencing from the open letter i wrote and its fallout, than that for the new round of iranian threats.

by the time she finally sent it, it was pretty powerful. the response she got back did an excellent job of not addressing it and playing off our feelings as "an ideological disagreement", but the important thing (in my opinion, at any rate) is that she said what needed to be said.

aside from that, i don't recall much. we took mr smear to the doctor and got him some extra medication, and in the evening i accompanied them to the eye doctor, which ultimately i didn't need to. he's got a new prescription, and apparently it makes quite the difference.

oh! i actually managed to get to the minimum requirements on the ticket i was working on, which considering everything else, and the fact that it wasn't trivial stuff at all, feels quite miraculous.

someone from gd's conversion class got whatsapp hacked, and their hacker tried to take me too. what a freaking nightmare! she was so grateful that we called to check on her, i hope she's got her account back by now.

today(-ish):

i took mr smear to school, and while he wasn't happy about something (i "distracted" him while he was trying to count) and he really didn't feel that he needed to go, by the time we arrived he was in better spirits and we were cool.

i continued on the post office, arriving just in time to pick up gd's heavy shoes in addition to the 3D glasses i ordered.

the work day started off alright, but then i received a call from gd and learned she'd just cracked a tooth (in a particularly nasty way) that her dentist had warned her about, but that we couldn't afford to do anything about.

well, i guess we're going to have to find a way to afford it now.

she went off to first aid, and i was very excited to hear afterwards that she'd managed to get sorted with an actual appointment with a receptionist who couldn't speak a word of english! that's pretty big, so we were both rather proud of her ^_^

...

during the morning i received a disheartening message from mr smear's teacher that he'd been completely uncooperative the entire morning.

after a big lunch, i walked to the school (i don't know why i didn't take a bus), picked up mr smear and walked through to the dental clinic. on the way, i told him about the art school that we want to register him for, and explained to him that if he doesn't "turn the ship around" and be on his best behavior for the next two months, then his current school's report may well prevent us from being able to move him to the next school.

i'm pretty sure that it's true, and i'm also pretty confident that if anything's going to motivate him, this will do it.

so that's the carrot. the stick is no screen time until i get a good report from his teacher.

...

we waited for gd for a while, and it turned out to be a really good thing that i'd taken my boss's advice and joined her - she needed imaging done, pronto. so we all caught a bus to ichilov, picked a floor (there're three imaging centers in the building), and were surprised by how quick and painless it was.

someone i was on the community council with reached out to me to thank me for the open letter, which she said cited the exact reasons she gave up on them. the responses have all been very validating, and i haven't got the expression "shul capture" out of my head since i heard it on sunday.

we walked home, picking up a couple of onion bagels along the way, and mr smear dived in to his homework (including hebrew reading, which we were informed today can't be comics) while i did a little more work.

mr smear and i put his duvet in the duvet cover this evening. after wishing him a good night, i spent some time doing nothing until i was ready to pass out early.

...

and then woke up a couple of hours ago, restless and with a sore neck and shoulder, and i eventually got up to write this and try to entertain myself until i'm sleepy again. i've been watching a lot of youtube videos - we're praying that trump takes the US election, and we're waiting for iran's "imminent" attack - but i haven't been able to get into any games lately (although i did play through act's ii and iii of inscryption again last week). and i guess my reading streak is broken. maybe i'll try to get that going again.

exploding feelings

 holy shit.

today has been non-stop drama.

at least getting mr smear to school wasn't dramatic, so that's good.

but everything else?

...

it's been a day full of conversations and complications, some collaborative and some antogonistic, with members of group a telling a completely different story to members of group b, with our friend "called before the council" in an emergency meeting for an hour and a half of being interrogated and "nailed". and then, just as i began eating dinner, the rabbi i'd "named and shamed" called.

it was a tough conversation, and he asked me questions that i couldn't answer on the spot, but that after the call i realized i do have the answers to. i understand him feeling betrayed, but i know he won't appreciate just how much he's betrayed us. i agreed to remove his name from my open letter, but he tried to get me to remove my post entirely and that i refused.

in the middle of the call, gd came in, furious, needing to get something off her chest. what happened next, in the midst of me trying to be diplomatic with someone i know has done what he's done, was utterly mortifying to me, and if i had been watching it happen to someone else on a tv show i would've been cringing super hard and also laughing my ass off: she *yelled* at him, and said exactly how she felt, and threatened to shut him down for pushing interfaith islamic relations into the community while the muslim community in cape town is militantly antisemitic. it was mortifying, but also thrilling and cathartic at the same time. it's the kinda thing that both upsets me and makes me fiercely proud of her, even as i'm trying to encourage her to play smart, not hard.

i really do feel bad for hurting them personally, but before and after the call i spoke to a couple of different people who've confirmed that the real stuff we talked about was me being gaslighted. i'm going to go with the strategy i laid out to gd: i'm going to assume that's he's being honest, and that he wants to fix things. if things gets fixed - which they're now under real external pressure to do - then good. and if they don't, then he's hoisting himself on his own petard.

as much as i've betrayed my personal relationships in this matter, i feel a greater obligation to the community at large. and, as i told him directly, the leaders of the community are not serving the community.

it still feels awful, though. my anxiety and my mind are all over the place trying to make sense of how things are playing out, what was legitimate and what wasn't, and how things need to proceed.

...

i barely got any work done today, both because the work itself was messy, and because i was perpetually on edge and distracted. at least i managed to pick up gd's repaired shoes on the way home.

not as planned

yesterday evening:

we took a cab to tahoma's, and were absolutely blown away by the quality and attention to detail of their halloween decorations. they turned their little apartment into a legitimate haunted house, and it was so effective that mr smear - who's obsessed with making creepy and gory things and tries really hard to be scary himself - refused to even look at the rooms because they scared the shit out of him.

smh.

some of the evening before the party actually got started was awkward, but mostly it was cool and we met some really nice people. one guy convinced me to explain the word "trolling" to him, and by the second sentence i began to suspect he was trolling me but he was so convincing i just carried right on, and i was quite impressed with myself for describing it as clearly as i did :P

there was a hilarious moment when a guy was translating mr smear's english for his five year-old, and asked mr smear what he was dressed as. "a killer clown!", mr smear said with pride. "a scary clown," the man translated for his child. mr smear was shocked. 

"i said a KILLER clown!"

"i know what you said."

"a KILLER clown!"

"i KNOW what you said!"

at that point we were all in hysterics, and i took mr smear aside to explain what was happening 🤣

as more grownups arrived, we caught a ride home, made kiddush and ate insanely delicious challah and broccoli schitznel sandwiches. by the time mr smear climbed into bed it was probably around 11.30pm.

today:

i think i slept pretty well, but i woke up very early with enough anxiety to realize that i needed to get up and start writing an open letter. i wrote and i wrote until my family got up - not too late, either - and after running through it a couple of times with gd, i pulled the trigger and posted it publicly on facebook with my email address attached. in it, i called out the pro-palestinian rabbi and his wife by name, and after a lot of introduction that includes both a summarized history of the conflict and a brief history of our experiences with the congregation, i made the following statements:

• Stop listening to people who rely on your political ignorance to propagate malicious disinformation that is designed to harm you.
• Stop listening to anyone who tells you that you don’t have the right to live in the only land you’ve ever been indigenous to, the land in which you have historically been its indigenous people for thousands of years.
• Stop listening to anyone who tells you that there’s an occupation, or that there are “disputed territories”.
• Stop listening to anyone who tells you about the plight of the Palestinians in a way that suggests it’s anyone’s fault but the league of Arab nations and the UN.
• Stop listening to anyone who tells you that violence against Israel, or Jews in general, is justifiable.
• Stop listening to anyone who tells you that this is Netanyahu’s war.
• Stop listening to anyone who tells you that believing that Jews should live in the only land they’ve ever called home, the only land that promises them protection, the only land they’re free to be Jewish, is wrong.

my anxiety immediately switched from that of feeling frustrated and ashamed for not having said anything, to that of having said something so undiplomatic and confrontational that there's absolutely no going back. it was validating to receive messages of appreciation from members of the community, including gd's fellow graduates, and also from old schoolmates who've been involved in the battle but unable to affect change.

i don't know what's going to happen next - although i was disappointed that the executive blocked me on facebook and messaged me to make it clear that we could no longer talk - but i feel like i've discharged my duty, and if i have to have uncomfortable conversations i will do so. as much as we owe to the executive and the rabbis, and as grateful as we will always be for them helping gd with her conversion and us come home, our loyalties are first and foremost to the community as a whole.

we've put our own oxygen masks on, and played nice and diplomatic until they were secure. now it's time to help others.

...

while scrolling down my whatsapp messages i realized that swordschool had sent me an important message some time in june, and i hadn't responded 😱

so i called him up, and we synced for at least an hour. it's very comforting having someone like that in my corner. in addition to discussing his new dice mechanics and desolation jones, amongst a thousand other things, i was shocked and saddened to learn that before the tragic incidents he'd been through just prior to us reconnecting a few years back, he'd been through an even more tragic family disaster... i feel awful for him, and also exceedingly grateful for what i have.

...

in the afternoon i met up with sailor and we did a couple of rounds of coffees (well, first macha tea and then coffee) and a lunch (he ate, between my nerves and the confusing menu i was fine). he accompanied me home, and remained with gd while i took mr smear out for a walk. it was fine, at first, but he was in such a good mood that he vigorously skipped for a couple of blocks - with me skipping along right behind him - and ended up having a full-blown coughing fit / asthma attack. so i gave him his pump, and we slowly walked home around the circle.

aside from my reacting to a barista milk alternative (that i was told wasn't barista, but then later informed was) and the occasional open letter-related intrusion, we had a pretty good evening.

after all the anxiety and everything, i'm exhausted, and i feel like i skipped a day of weekend. i did a whole bunch of dishes, wrote all this, and now... i think i'm going to drink this new cup of tea and hit the hay.

...

oh! on-call. i forgot i was on-call today. and then i realized that the reason i was getting confusing alerts that made me forget what day it was is that with all the scheduling changes for the holidays, i've ended up with four days of on-call in a row :/

lhearning

i slept well, but not nearly enough. and i had some weird dreams.

it was a super-slow wakeup, after dropping mr smear off at school i didn't even stop at home before accompanying gd to the cobbler to get some of her shoes repaired. we caught a bus to dizengoff center, missed our stop, and arrived at the music store with half an hour to kill before they opened.

we took a walk up to dizengoff "square", where got a fine cup of coffee. we could have done without witnessing a dog owner just letting their little yapper go off at a bigger dog with the bigger dog's owner having to work hard to keep him calm...

we talked to the woman who originally sold us the keyboard, and she told us to speak to the guy in the dj section. that guys was super helpful, and instead of selling us a midi controller he advised us to go home and do some research first. now that i have a better idea of how instruments (specifically midi instruments) work, i'm particularly grateful for his advice: we're going to learn cubase first, and then we're going to experiment with cheap controllers, and then we're going to buy a good one. maybe.

we picked up some makeup for this evening's halloween party at tahoma's, which took a lot longer than it should have, then returned home, getting off the bus a little early because gd couldn't bear sitting behind a guy cleaning his disgustingly long and dirty fingernails with his teeth. i was grossed out too, but i found gd's reaction absolutely hilarious 🤣

we stopped to pick up a bottle of wine for the evening on the way home, and then i went to the school to pick up mr smear. he was talking to a friend, and i overheard him "making an exception" and showing his friend the passcode for his phone 🤦‍♂️

so we had to have a "conversation" and change his passcode.

we searched through his locker for the book he's lost, and it looks like we're going to have to order a new copy.

fuck.

anyway, the afternoon's been pretty chill so far, not counting a long chat with the head of the jewish community council. most of the discussion was about the pro-palestinians who have infiltrated and taken over, and in spite of my sharply-increased anxiety at the thought of it i've agreed to meet with some of the community leaders to strategize, but also with the terrorist sympathizers directly.

i don't really want to, but i do feel obligated.

the feelings

tuesday:

my boss didn't like my approach. we argued about it for a bit, after which he decided to put the work on hold while he thought about it. it's frustrating, but the fact that i've seen that one of my coworkers is working on fixing an underlying issue, the discovery of which was through my efforts and which i've been saying needs to be taken care of, is at least a little comforting.

our new sprint began, and almost all of my work is frontend. i'm strangely okay with that.

on tuesday evening i took mr smear with me when i went to the school to pick up his books for the next year. the summer holidays are almost over...

after putting him to bed, gd told me she'd been feeling really sad. i didn't know what to do with that information.

yesterday:

yesterday morning was going alright until gd said something that triggered a fight, a fight about how she's been dealing (or not dealing) with the past 11 months of war and trauma, but really a fight about how and when she communicates (or doesn't) with me about it.

so the day started off really shitty for both of us, but by the time i got to my office building i'd managed to transform my anger into something more constructive and we both found ourselves in a better place.

the work day was alright, which was a big deal considering how not alright it's been for week or two prior. everything was okay, everything was put on the table during the retrospective and the vibe was less tense in general.

when i got home, gd and i had a talk. a lot of the time, i say things and she says things and we talk past each other, but last night we not only heard each other, but i managed to put things to her in a way that she clearly heard, and not only did she immediately feel better about things but she's been doing a lot better over the course of today.

and even that is more than either of us expected.

i passed out on the couch immediately after putting mr smear to bed. nothing knocks me out faster than reading to him.

today:

around midnight, i was able to drag myself off the couch and get into bed. doing that, however, woke me up just enough to be too conscious of the stiffness around my hips to be able to get back to sleep, but i was also too tired to get up. even for a little bit. that went on for a few hours, and although i occasionally had the strength to get up and move around it would wear out within minutes and i'd need to lie down and suffer again.

i don't know how long it was before i finally fell asleep, but i'm guessing three of four hours of that.

my alarm clock woke me up at 7am, and i rushed everyone else up, grabbed a cup of coffee in a takeaway cup and walked to the post office. i arrived there just past eight, picked up gd's shoes, then walked back. it was hot, and i was pretty sweaty by the time i got home.

i didn't even take my shoes off, just gulped down a cup of water in the entrance and then we all went to the bus stop with gd's sewing machine to head down to the sewing machine repair shop. it was a long ride, with some very... interesting... people, and gd regretfully informed me that i need to start wearing deodorant 💀

we arrived at the shop just after 9am, and we were out of there in about ten minutes. i took a bus to work and they took a bus home.

the work day was - socially - good. all good. the work itself was difficult, parts of it quite unpleasant, really, and it was really hard to focus on it. but i eventually got it 98% completed, and my boss agrees that if i can't finish it within the first couple of hours on sunday then it'll be good enough as is.

i had a long chat with our cape town community director, and it was a huge relief to hear that by and large they've shifted (ideologically) to a stronger (and right) position vis-a-vis the war and zionism. gd still has reservations, but i'm glad that they didn't cater to the pro-palestinian nonsense.

i ate too much cake during our happy hour.

on the way home, i contacted urchin who informed me that she's finally signed a contract with a new employer! we're really excited for her, she's been miserable for ages and the new gig (on paper, at least) sounds way better in every respect :)

the evening was mostly good, although we had to stop watching harry potter during the scene in which bellatrix interrogates hermione because gd couldn't handle it. our national PTSD with the hostage situation is very real.

before and after putting mr smear to bed, my mother and i had a really heavy argument about her and aliyah and a lot of it was really unpleasant. at the very end, i feel like she at least heard me, but i don't know what good that'll do.

if she chooses to stay in south africa, or at least not prepare to make aliyah before the universe forces it on her, the most likely outcome is that we'll all be in big trouble. but she's a big girl and only she can make that call.

located

 my mother did manage to find the song! i'm not just impressed by her getting her hands on the books, and relieved that one of the books was the right one, but i'm also proud of her for reading through both of them well enough to find what i was looking for ^_^

it's called "אני מחכה לאחי החייל" and i've no idea who wrote it, but i definitely got the first verse right. i also didn't expect it to hit me right in the feels, i tried reading it to gd this morning, but at some point just couldn't speak through the sobs.

אני מחכה לאחי החייל

יש לי אח גדול,

בן עשרים אולי,

הוא יכול לעשות הכל,

וקוראים לו שי.

אחי שי הוא חייל,

הנה הוא פה בתמונה.

שי הוא חייל גיבור

ושומר על המדינה.

אם שי הולך למלחמה -

אמא נורא דואגת;

אבא שומע רדיו כל שעה

וכולם יושבים בשקט.

והנה בא מכתב

משי שלנו - הטוב;

"אני בריא וחזק

להתראות בקרוב-בקרוב".

אלוהים, לך אני מתפלל -

לגמור את המלחמה ודי.

תן שלום לישראל.

שיבוא מהר הבייתה שי.

...

tuesday:

i'm struggling to recall tuesday. i vaguely remember that there were at least a couple of points of interest, but i'm at a loss right now.

one thing i do remember, though, is that at bathtime i explained to mr smear how our ears downsample and we only hear about a third of what's said to us, and that we complete what we hear with context and expectations. with the implication being that we literally can't hear what other people are saying when we're upset.

yesterday:

yesterday started off scary: i woke up fine at 5am to go to the toilet, but on my way back to bed my back began to spasm. with some help from gd i miraculously managed to stave off the full spasm and by the time i got to the office i was more or less okay. i'm still nervous about it, though.

also, it looks like i might well have psoriasis.

it was a busy morning. gd and mr smear were both upset because gd, tired and in pain, spends forty five minutes every morning preparing breakfast and lunch and mr smear doesn't want to eat what she puts in front of him. the conversation that we'd had the night before came in handy: i asked mr smear if he could make himself calm enough to hear what we were saying, and he said "no". so i stopped trying, and on the way to school we managed to talk everything out.

this morning went much better.

i spoke to my mom, who informed me that uncle hate has shuffled off his mortal coil and that she was asked not to fly to montreal right now, which i guess is a bit of a relief. i sent my aunt and her kids condolences, glad that gd's supportive of me playing nice in spite of how they treated us.

i managed to get an authorization sorted out at the clinic, then picked up my favorite onion bagel, then went through to one of the clinics at the hospital to find out if and when gd had an appointment, and went on a side-quest to explain to management that their signage is insufficient. they were shocked, disbelieving, and i'm not 100% convinced they're going to do anything about it.

the work day went well, it was long but had some good moments.

the south african foreign ministry appears to be serious in threatening south africans who've served in the idf. assholes.

in the evening i watched another episode of unchained with gd, then tried to write an article i'm been stewing over for days, then crashing.

today:

mr smear was good today, breakfast went well. gd's on a mission to gather her thoughts about our cape town community, i'm going to help her put out an article (on whatever medium) in her own voice because she's really upset about how woke jews around the world are behaving when they have no clue what's going on over here.

thursday

 the day started pretty well. on the way to dropping mr smear off at school i recounted a story about a bunch of my officer's course platoon laughing in the bathroom, and i'm praying that i wrote down what initially triggered that laughter and that i'm able to find it. [was it this? that can't have been it, surely?]

the work day was very relaxed, my boss and coworker returned from their trip and had lots of stories to share. my yemenite coworker unwittingly putting loads of carolina reaper hot sauce on his food right after i started calming down from my own intense experience with it.

a video chat with our community rep and gd, and offering to meet with the rest of the leadership and the offending parties. just offering set off my anxiety, and i'm now writing this after getting up in the middle of the night - an hour or more ago - and tossing and turning while imagining addressing them.

the CEO forgetting me when ordering sweets for our "happy hour" and feeling really bad about it.

my nostrils hurting - both of them - because i can't clean them properly while working on repairing the tear. my stomach doing a number on me all day.

dropping my gear off at home after work and walking to mr smear's best friend's for a sushi night, which was both social and delicious. eventually getting home with a very full belly and getting mr smear into bed around 10.30pm...

the friday nap

omg i didn't update most of the week, i don't know where to begin (i only vaguely remember what i did).

post-coffee mistake: i don't remember the night, but i did wake up still buzzing and aside from a small turkish coffee after lunch, everything i consumed was decaf and i was fine.

it turns out the issue i had with downloading pdf professional suite was that i was signed in to the app store with a different account than the app store was showing me. good grief.

gd spoke to one of our community leaders on tuesday, and she was satisfied by what he had to say, and how receptive he was to her complaints. i'm very proud of her for calling them out.

work-wise, i dont remember much from tuesday but i do remember that it took me all of wednesday and thursday to bring one of my tickets to a conclusion. it turns out my first ticket was a proper mystery...

wednesday night was fighty, and resulted in me being responsible for feeding myself and mr smear. fortunately, there were good leftovers. even more fortunately, i managed to talk mr smear down and figure out a way for both of us to get resolve.

the hanukah homework (hebrew comprehension) turned out to be a very big story this week, and things didn't start off so well. but gd and mr smear made really good attempts while i was at work, and i sat with them yesterday morning to go over what they'd done and it was a very constructive exercise. for both of them.

yesterday lunch saw me walk over to the sarona market to pick up a bunch of saborito hot sauces, and we all did a taste test :)

the disability story generated a lot of anxiety, yesterday afternoon i managed to get in touch with two organizations who are supposed to help people navigate the process. the first informed me that they don't work with new immigrants, the second agreed to meet with us on sunday morning, so we're looking forward to that.

today began with a rush on the city market that's closing down on wednesday, by the time we got there most of their stock had gone. it's a bit of a bummer...

mr smear and i then had haircuts, then we picked up laffot for breakfast and joined gd at our favorite vegan coffee shop. it was a really good experience. then we returned, and we were almost home before we realized that we were supposed to be picking up gd's repaired shoes right next to the coffee shop, so we went all the way back and then came home. by which point i was completely exhausted.

i saw that chrono trigger is on sale, so i picked it up and played it until gd and mr smear were done with the haircut fix, then i washed my hair and tried to continue playing but suddenly fell apart and crashed for a couple of hours.

i struggled to get out of bed, but i did. i went through the entire list of hostages taken on october 7th, then took a deep breath and joined mr smear in watching response videos to alan becker's math and physics animations, and then we watched this playthrough of THE CORRIDOR.

then i took care of all the dishes that had piled up.

for most of this post, my son was sitting behind me playing human fall flat with the overclocked plaid muffins - delicious and moist on repeat... now that the game's crashed, i took the opportunity to purchase THE CORRIDOR and he's now very enthusiastically on it :)

you gotta learn how to lie better

 what a weird ending to a long-ass week. or couple of weeks. i'm feeling a bit burned out, i've been having a hard time concentrating. not sure what's exhaustion (emotional more than physical), and what's the dental situation / antibiotics.

we're all very excited that my mom's flying to visit us tomorrow, though ^_^

i'm pretty relieved that tomorrow's mr smear's last day of second grade, and i'm looking forward to him enjoying a long holiday and having an opportunity to reset.

yesterday:

i don't recall much from the morning, but it was just another day in the office. the work itself was frustrating. i left early, did a very quick grocery shopping, and got home in time to head to the beach to meet my aunt. as i was telling everything to get ready, i received a call informing me that our new mattress would be delivered within twenty minutes. WTF?!

so i sent a message to our building's whatsapp group and one of our neighbours offered to help, gd was completely taken aback by the very idea of this "neighborliness" and i was stumped when they told me to just give them my key and let them handle it. i did, but not without weirdness.

anyway, it took gd and mr smear so long to get ready that we were only about 100m away when the mattress arrived, so i rushed back to thank our neighbor profusely and take care of it myself :P

we caught a bus and met my aunt and her boyfriend on banana beach. mr smear just wanted to head into the waves (we went in a couple of times, it was relatively heavy and he loved it), and i'm very glad i didn't let peer pressure get the best of me because i couldn't remember why antibiotics + alcohol is bad, and when i looked it up after we got home i was reminded that it's because it renders the antibiotics less effective.

we had a lovely evening, but it was very, very late by the time we eventually got home and got mr smear and ourselves into bed.

today:

we've been having pretty consistently good mornings lately.

i started filling out the forms for gd's cannabis license, then got stuck because they insist on being honest and none of the options made any sense. they don't answer their phones, so i had to request a call-back.

i spent a chunk of my morning battling with python imports. python imports (in particular, relative imports) seem like the kind of thing that would happen if a disparate bunch of devs from all around the world decided to compete to make the worst solution ever, and they all won.

i was supposed to be in the office between 2 and 4 pm to hand over our old router to a courier, and the courier called me about two hours before then to ask if he could pick it up in five minutes. i told him no, i'm not there yet, but that he was welcome to come to me (that was certainly more convenient for me). just as he called, i got another call - of course, the call-back. so then i had to request another call-back.

fortunately, they got back to me pretty quickly, and i asked the nice lady what i needed to fill in. she laughed as she explained that they're a legal organization and cannot possibly advise me on what to do.

oh.

so i went back to the form and filled it out "as best i could", and now we wait and see.

the rest of my workday was progress in fits and bursts, mixed up with slight disorientation and stress-snacking. i kind of felt good about how the day ended, although that feeling would be tarnished somewhat by a message from my italian coworker, but **** 'em.

gd was really sore today, so i took mr smear to his therapy session by myself. we arrived just in time on a new bus line (even though it arrived a few minutes late), and i grabbed an iced tea and milled around for a bit. in an obscure section of the shuk i found french presses that gd and i have been looking for for ages! and just as i put the phone down, i heard someone call my name: krybabie's widow and her kids just happened to decided to spend a day in tel aviv - that's ridiculous!

we chatted until i had to pick mr smear up, then mr smear and i rushed to catch the bus home (i'd missed my antibiotic). on the bus, a bunch of saffers sat down next to us, which wouldn't have been odd except for the previous encounter in the shuk.

shower, dinner, bedtime, titans, and pretty soon my final antibiotic for the day and hopefully some rest.