steps

 surprisingly, i went to bed pretty soon after posting and i slept relatively well. and we all survived getting up before dawn, and mr smear and i caught the bus on time.

bussing through bnei brak in the early morning was an anthropological experience full of teachable moments.

the surgeon inspected mr smear's toes, and made it abundantly clear what terrible parents we are for making him responsible for his own toenails. it was a relief to hear her say that they weren't bad enough (yet) to justify surgery, and that she wouldn't want to perform the surgery even if they were because that would require putting him under general anaesthetic.  she gave us a prescription, along with a list of instructions, and hopefully in the coming weeks we'll see some improvement 🤞

we walked to the light rail and i took him to school, then returned home for breakfast (and lots of responding to emails and messages) before leaving with gd on a shopping mission.

first stop: printing out her cannabis license and picking up acrylic markers for mr smear.

second stop: the shoe hunt. we went through a bunch of stores, on the way purchasing waterproof timberland shoes for myself*, and eventually ordered boots from katalina.

* expensive, but it's a much more professional-looking option than my humongous wellies, which i'll save for the more dramatic days

having (effectively) completed our mission, we walked to one of our favorite hummusiot and enjoyed a really nice lunch. and then - because for once gd was feeling up for it - we walked home, past a stationary store where we picking up a new school sketchbook for mr smear (he's filled the last one already).

i rested and read a little, and then took off again to go to the dentist, missing the bus and needing to hail a taxi. i arrived on time, but the dentist was super late... and then he had trouble with the scanning machine...

but the great news is that i didn't need to do an imprint! instead, there's a new optical scanning device. it's a lot less intrusive than an imprint, and when he eventually (half an hour later) managed to log into it i was blown away by how cleverly it's designed.

i came home, already having exceeded 20000 steps for the day. mr smear was very excitedly drawing deadpool with his new markers. the evening went smoothly (although gd's struggling with stomach issues due to some medication she's on), in spite of the fact that gd made me responsible for the post-soak toe treatment which freaked us all out.

i read the final chapter of the neverending story to mr smear. the entire chapter, so he ended up going to sleep really late, but it was totally worth it. what an insanely intellectual and entertaining story!

i didn't cry.

(i almost cried. i choked up a bit. but i didn't cry)

...

today was a good day. gd and i essentially got to go on a "date" this morning, i got a fair amount of stuff done and mr smear had a good day. additionally, i treated myself to a copy of blue prince, and i'm going to give that a go now before i go to bed.

two steps

yesterday:

the work day was pretty bland.

i joined my boss for a walk for our one-on-one, and i asked some tough questions about where we're at. we're going to have an all-hands tomorrow so he didn't want to say too much, but he did a pretty good job of assuring me that we're not in a bad place.

the interview in the evening went pretty well, although signing off was really awkward so i've no idea if i made a good impression or not.

watching the simpsons as a family is therapeutic. it's also highly relevant, as we saw the results of marge getting itchy and scratchy declawed and then this morning i saw the real-life results of a 21-day cellphone ban.

today:

the morning started off alright - three mornings in a row with mr smear responsible for getting himself organized before panic time, and three mornings that were much calmer than usual - and after dropping him off at school i continued on to the post office to pick up socks and a beard trimmer.

then i accompanied gd to her dental appointment, and found a nice coffee shop (lebowski, which used to be movie-ing) to wait for her at. her appointment turned out to be quite different / less dramatic than we'd been told, they just took an imprint for the tooth that's due to be extracted so she'll be able to wear a retainer with a temporary replacement while they prepare for the real work.

i got some decent work done today, ran into another cousin working in the building on the way out to lunch with my coworkers, and by and large it was quite a relaxed one. having said that, by the time i left the office i was feeling wiped out and i still had a parents' screentime workshop at the school at 8pm.

ugh.

so we had a nice, early dinner together before i left. the evening was... well, some of it was interesting, and some of it was inspiring, but a lot of it was a slog and by 9.15 i just wanted to get the hell out of there. when she pulled out cards for a "last activity" at 9.35 i fuck-that'd and noped on out.

gd and i had a conversation about all the things that came up, and we're both going to make an effort to modify our screen habits, particularly around mr smear. this is going to be an interesting experiment, but i don't think it's going to be hard - i just need to pick up an e-ink ebook reader as quickly as possible.

...

jason pargin's review of deadpool & wolverine just blew my mind.

not with a bang

it's a quiet afternoon on a beautiful autumn day, it feels like a good time to put down some thoughts.

thursday:

around the time i finished posting, mr smear went to his friend's to celebrate his birthday, which was a very welcome surprise invite. apparently they all had a good time.

gd and i took the opportunity to finish watching deadpool & wolverine, which we immensely enjoyed once we were awake enough to watch it!

in the late afternoon, i took mr smear out to play some basketball. just as we were leaving, we received confirmation that sinwar was killed, and while lots of people are excited and celebrating, i'm just relieved. not because it means anything real as far as the war is concerned, because until our hostages are brought home nothing has really changed, but because for a large part of the last year i've been holding my breath with anxiety, worrying that the fighting would stop prematurely and the world would see a photo of sinwar coming out of the tunnels showing a victory sign. at least now, whatever happens, any symbols like that would feel as hollow as they are.

...

mr smear and i had a good time at the courts, not only is his skill improving but his attitude, too.

we completed the third season of the x-men animated series over dinner. two more season to go...

yesterday:

we got up and went pretty early. unfortunately, i couldn't get a haircut, but i was able to book it for tomorrow instead. the day began with a ridiculously long mission to get change for the bread guy who'd insisted on giving me something a few days ago when i had no cash on me. we eventually got hold of a stack of disgusting, sticky coins, which we tried hard to clean with hand sanitizer and water. when we finally got back to the guy, we found him with plenty of coins which had made the whole, gross experience unnecessary :/

we took a bus to the top of dizengoff, then picked up coffee along the way to babylon park at the entrance to the port.

now, the games they have aren't exactly what we were looking for, but the operation is really slick - the app, and unlocking games with the app, in particular - and we all had a jolly good time. in particular, mr smear loved the motorcycle games, and he got to play real pinball machines for the first time ever!

we took a break to find some food, and ended up at the little food market... at first, we were shocked by how much our two tiny plastic containers of nothing cost us, but then we were shocked by how shit the quality of the alleged "food" actually was. i told the woman working there that if i was me, i wouldn't sell it to people. that's absolutely the last time we try to eat something there.

we returned to babylon park for a bit more, but it was starting to fill up, so we soon decided we were all ready to go home.

we'd initially planned on cleaning the floors in the afternoon, but we'd all had too much of an adventure for that :P

the afternoon was relaxed, but just as evening was approaching mr smear had a moment (he was playing human fall flat, but more than that i have no idea) that turned into a proper tantrum. gd and i both tried various ways to deescalate, ultimately having to shut it down undiplomatically and with everyone felt like shit.

miraculously, though, when i went in later to tell him to go shower, he was calm and compliant, which i guess is as much of an apology as one can expect from a nine year old.

...

while we were all stewing, i compulsively restarted playing inscryption. between the time until dinner (which was much later than planned), and the bit of time between getting mr smear into bed and discovering that gd's never seen demolition man, a couple of hours this morning and an hour or so this afternoon, i've played through it completely and, i must admit, once again enjoyed the experience, even if in a somewhat different way.

...

gd and i both passed out pretty early on in the movie :/

...

i didn't sleep well, but i did sleep. aside from inscryption, we went to our friends for brunch and enjoyed a very pleasant late morning / early afternoon with them.

...

this morning i saw this video compilation showing the anti-american (anti-west) organizations explicitly describing their goals and tactics, and for anyone who isn't familiar with it this is what israelis have been trying to warn the world about for a long time, but specifically over the course of the last year.

winding down

 it wasn't too bad a day. i rollerbladed to work, which was very quiet because i was the only one in the office. in spite of things getting a bit hectic at one point, i managed to complete the frontend work that's been upsetting me for the past couple of weeks and returned home for lunch before taking mr smear to his jiujitsu class.

while there, i did a little more work - but nothing too serious - and when his class was done we returned home. as we stepped off the bus, the sirens sounded and we scrambled through narrow stairways into a deep bomb shelter along with a large number of coffee shop patrons, most of whom were clumsily wielding their dairy-based drinks in a way that made it anxiety-inducing to navigate to a safe corner while keeping mr smear out of contact.

god damn.

anyway, it was unpleasant but we didn't have an incident, so that was a win.

we both showered quickly when we returned home, and there was time before dinner to fire up the vr.

gd and i agreed that we could afford to get him one of the vr games, and he decided on battlezone, then he discovered that i'd downloaded a bunch more vr demos, so instead of buying something we dug into those instead - and we had a really good time. there were two games in particular, which caused a bit of a fight at first because we didn't understand what was going on or why mr smear needed us to tell him what was happening, but once we did get it they were brilliant. and then i took a turn, and i was absolutely blown away by how good the vr experience was!

after dinner, mr smear went to bed, i posted my two books on gumroad, and then gd and i settled down to re-attempt deadpool & wolverine. we made it a bit further before we were both falling asleep. it's really fun, we're just really tired...

i haven't slept well in a while, and i know that going to sleep early will cause problems, so i carried on fine-tuning all my online offerings and i'm now pretty happy with how things look. i think i'm about ready for bed now. i hope i am.

i'm very excited that i'm going on vacation tomorrow evening.

day of atonement

friday:

aside from grocery shopping in the morning, we were pretty much at home all day. the biggest achievement of the day was finally (finally!) setting up the psvr system, only 2.5 years after the mongoose loaned it to us. the pad at the back of the headset is falling apart, but otherwise it's in good nick. unfortunately, the paddles won't hold a charge so we're limiting to games that work with the regular gamepad.

either way, mr smear is over the moon and we both thoroughly enjoyed the experience, and the biggest challenge is going to be finding good games that don't cost an arm and a leg and being solid about limiting time with the headset on.

...

gd prepared a feast pre-fast, and after dinner we put together a very basic 200 piece puzzle, and mr smear actually participated fully for the first time. afterwards, i managed to convince him to come out on his bike. we met up with his re-friend / her dad and brother for a little, but all the kids were being whiny, so we went off in different directions. mr smear decided he was done earlier than i'd hoped - but apparently that's because he needed the toilet and didn't want to go outside - but overall he got the yom kippur "vibe" and we had a pretty good experience.

yesterday:

i slept really, really badly. i barely slept - although i did sleep a little, because i remember having some weird dreams - but i got up in the morning almost as tired as when i'd gone to bed.

firstly, we're really impressed that yesterday went as smoothly as it did. not only did we not have issues with a day without screentime, but we had constructive conversations about what we were doing and why we were doing it.

secondly, i spent most of the day resting, or following the morning prayer service with gd, or reading. i was tired, and a bit dehydrated, but i didn't have the usual caffeine-withdrawal headache and i wasn't feeling hungry.

in the afternoon we went to a park to meet up with a new friend of his, by which stage i wasn't feeling too fresh. the kids were getting along great, which was a relief to witness, although at some point mr smear wanted to leave because he was being harrassed by mosquitoes. he ended up staying in spite of that, though, because he was having fun... right until he wasn't. his new friend's little brother accidentally bumped him off an installation, and he was hurt and angry.

the resulting outburst was thoroughly embarrassing. i made my apologies as i followed him out of the park, and about halfway home managed to get him to listen to reason (i'm sad that i needed to threaten privileges for that, but it is what it is). things escalated when we got home and i explained what had happened to gd, but refreshingly quickly he managed to figure out what we were trying to get him to figure out and the tone of everything changed.

i sent off messages to his friend's mom and hopefully there'll be more playdates...

we logged in to the prayer service for the ending of the fast + blowing of the shofar + havdala + singing of hatikva, then dug in to a big meal. mr smear decided that he'd rather vr than fantastic four, so we tried out some of the other demos and we both had a *really* good time. then it was bedtime, and bedtime went smoothly.

gd and i tried to watch deadpool & wolverine, but as much as i was enjoying it i started passing out quite early on.

...

so far, the day's begun well. i slept alright, woke up and did a lot of stretching (my hips and lower back are still really sore), and we've had a long a constructive conversation with mr smear that covered the plans for the holidays, and a big discussion about gambling and other addictions that ended up with all of us agreeing that if we had the money, we'd establish and run a doggy hotel.

now it's time for me to go to work. *i* still have a couple of schooldays to go before my vacation begins :P