priorities reversal

 today was all wrong. the hospital visit went no more awry than expected, and they were kind and understanding and unofficially rescheduled us for sunday morning, so that's good.

we caught the bus home, and the rest of the day was spent struggling very hard to be in any way productive. at some point it got so hard, that when disrupted by a siren i hid myself under a blanket and napped for about an hour.

but that didn't really help a lot. i woke up thinking i might be coming down with something. god, please don't. please, not now.

at the same time as i wasn't managing my own work, i seem to have done a pretty good job of managing mr smear's - i got him to do "geography homework" (mapping out the middle east countries), and i got him to come up with and draw a very cool little comic strip (inspiring him with a few samples of the far side).

then we watched *the* elimination episode of strip search, followed by a chat with my mom during which she informed us that the shower smell is most likely caused by us not using the shower (water in the u-bend prevents smells from coming out the pipes) and made a suggestion about putting mr smear's mattress in our bedroom now that there's space, which we did, and i think tonight's going to be easier for it.

he's certainly happy about it. but he also got to read until 11pm...

once he was (technically) in bed, i played with trivy for a while, which led to replacing mocha tests with jest in one of my projects, and eventually ended up cleaning up my phone control project's new interface, and now i'm very much in need of some rest.

delicacy

 night has fallen, the candles are lit, the challah-peño dough is rising. i have a shot glass of rum i'm slowly sipping, and tool's lateralus album is playing, and mr smear is on the couch behind me reading moon knight after having finished the hebrew translation of lightfall.

nobody knows what's happening with iran and china tonight, or tomorrow night, or next week, but we're happy and grateful to have a calm moment right here, right now.

...

mr smear struggled last night and all day with a stuffy nose, but we had a really nice morning together and he was well enough to go to school. then someone came to look at the apartment and decided she wanted to proceed - coming in on the 1st was a problem, but gd and i talked it over and we agreed that the 15th was acceptable. not only does it mean someone taking over our obligations, but it gives us a couple of weeks' breathing room which is meaningful.

gd and i took a bus to the school, which was packed with families milling around appreciating all the artwork. mr smear guided us through his grade's stuff, he only had two pieces on display but they were really good, and we were amazed by a lot of what we saw - there're a lot of really talented kids there.

aside from the awkward horror of watching one of his friends' train-wreck family in action, and a couple of awkward moments with some other parents as well, it was a very good experience for all.

and then i managed to corner mr smear's teacher for an impromptu parent-teacher discussion, and confirmed that she's noticed and is appreciative of mr smear's efforts to sort himself out over the past week or two 🙏

mr smear got gd to point and laugh just as a bunch of his classmates were told "NO" when they were trying to leave early without adult supervision, and it was awkward for everyone.

we took the light rail to the hospital complex on the way home, stumbling upon an actual spar along the way and buying delicious candy-like dried strawberries, amongst other things, and then it was time for pharmacy and shopping. the pharmacy took a ridiculously long time, but mr smear set himself up in the food court and worked on his new comic idea.

once gd and i were done, we had lunch (i'd been passing out from exhaustion, but i managed to scarf down 

[pause mid-sentence to fight with my wife over "letting" mr smear read moon knight - he just asked me what "evisceration" means - after i explained that i already told him i haven't read it and i don't approve of him reading it. i can't force him. gd just asked if there's any sex stuff in it, and he said no, so she just raised her hands and gave up]

a really good falafel pita (mr smear had a "salad pita", gd sampled the rice with peas and dill she bought for the weekend) and then we walked home.

the rest of the afternoon had been pretty relaxed, and hopefully the shabbat will be too 🤞🙏

...

right, those dried strawberries aren't going to eat themselves.

not enough drama!

 it's late, and i was already tired a while ago, but i've spent the past couple of hours putting together messages for our current and future landlords and i'll send them in the morning.

...

last night would have been far less stressful if i hadn't seen the response from our current landlords to my earlier message, which was offensively stupid. i wish i hadn't seen it then, and i wish i hadn't read it to gd, because we were both shocked and furious. we rushed to get to our friends (soon-to-be neighbors) with the freshly baked challah-peño (it was a bit of a flop - great challah texture but unexciting taste), realized when we finally got there that we'd left the ice cream at home, so i rushed back to grab it and chatted with my mom along the way.

the evening was great, largely cathartic, dinner was excellent and i drank just enough wine for my nervous system to calm down a bit. mr smear had a great time with the kids, all was well.

we got home late, and sleepy, and everyone went to bed pretty quickly.

today:

this morning i got up early-ish, pretty much finished ping-pong (it's great) and got most of the dishes done. gd and i were both surprised when mr smear woke up and informed me that he wanted to go to the swimming pool. NOT by bike.

so i had a quick breakfast, grabbed my second coffee and off we went. it was a very nice walk there, through a park we weren't familiar with, and we spent about an hour and a half in the pool, mostly just splashing about. before we left the pool to brave the cold air between the pool area and the locker room in order to shower, mr smear told me he might be willing to go back to jiujitsu training if he doesn't have to do mma.

i'll take it.

the showers there are great. once we were done mr smear decided that he really wanted a laffa for lunch (breakfast, really), and the only place open was the shuwarma place by the port.

it was a loooong but entertaining walk to the port, and then we had two huge laffot, preceded by mr smear eating pickled carrots without complaining  (he usually hates carrots) and even about half of a really hot hot pepper.

[omg my hands are so freaking dry, my skin's cracking all over]

halfway through my laffa i had a suspicion that i may have overpayed - google pay doesn't show you the amount when it verifies - and after an only-slightly uncomfortable back-and-forth we determined that he'd charged me 200 shekels for an 80 shekel meal... at least i caught it while still there.

we both enjoyed the meal, but mr smear really shouldn't have forced himself to finish his. we had a long walk home (with a couple of minor incidents of being rained on), most of which was him complaining about a sore stomach...

gd prepared the bath before we arrived, and he warmed up and soaked for a long while. then scrapper's niece came by to pick up his bass guitar and amp, which i'm sad to say i've barely touched since he left it with me, and after sorting out mr smear's toenails scrapper called, and we both had a lot to talk about (during which time, i later realized, mr smear was sitting in his room, drawing and listening to tool on his phone). then it was dishes time, during which time we discovered a really gross mold situation that needed a lot of cleaning, and then i cleaned the area where the guitar had been sitting for ages and accidentally pulled out one of the hooks for the fibre cable.

neither mr smear nor i really needed dinner, so we ate some fruit and the three of us played pictionary for a while before he had to go to bed.

another really good saturday together, he said ^_^

now it's my turn. tomorrow's scaring me, hopefully i'll get some rest before it begins.

...

the situation in iran is horrifying. the fact that nobody's swooping in to help the persians is horrifying.

waiting for news...

 today was a weird day. mr smear woke up from a nightmare in the early morning, and his yelling woke me up from my own nightmare, from which i didn't get back to sleep.

one achievement was getting mr smear to agree to post his cartoon from yesterday, and after frustratedly trying a bunch of apps i ended up using gimp to crop it correctly. at least i had gimp.

it took a while, but i managed to get an answer regarding my unemployment, and i've put in a request to the employment office to submit my status to social security like they were supposed to...

i don't remember why i ended up having to rush to get to the office (my employer's office, not my client's), but i arrived *just* in time for a call with an insurance agent. after that, i found a desk and got to work.

it was a very quiet morning, but i did have a chat with a coworker who i learned is on contract with the company i was interviewing with when i signed my contract, which was interesting.

i went to sumsum for lunch, which was an opportunity to have a proper sync with my mom about mr smear's situation and warm up in the sun.

in the afternoon, we had the third session for our AI workflow course, and i was a lot more focused than the previous one. we ended a bit early, which gave me time to get home in time for my phone appointment with mr smear's doctor, who's apparently written me the referrals i asked for.

apparently mr smear had a good day, meaning he didn't get into big trouble.

...

after a long, long time using brave, i've finally reinstalled chrome and copied everything back over. there's so much good about brave, especially the vertical tabs, but i've finally lost patience with not having address history, and the syncing doesn't work as well...

...

aside from a fight with gd over musical tastes (it's a long, decade-old story), the evening was smooth, dinner was good and - oh, yeah. mr smear only went to bed around 9pm because he still had a whole lot of studying to do for his greek history test tomorrow.

oh! mr smear spoke to me in hebrew this evening, entirely of his own volition.

now i'm watching revolution updates from tousi tv and being devastated to have learned tonight that cory doctorow is jewish and has fallen hook, line and sinker for the palestinian genocide lie, and we're praying that we don't need to enter the bomb shelters tonight (or at all) because gd can't breathe down there...

the persian people have to win this. their bravery is incredible.

extra steps

 after getting home soaked yesterday, we took turns showering, after which i recall very little of the afternoon. i'm pretty sure i napped under layers of blankets, i read a bit of taiyo matsumoto's ping pong, and i helped gd prepare the challah-peño taking our neighborhood baker's advice.

it came out much better quality in terms of the challah itself, but it didn't taste quite as good (intense) as it smelled :(

dinner was really nice, and the late night was mostly due to watching iran revolution-related stuff and tool / a perfect circle reactions.

i slept alright.

this morning was a lot of reading, and watching stuff, and then mr smear woke up (late) and we got into breakfast time. did i nap before we went out, or afterwards? i don't know. but we did go out for a nice walk (we were going to join nystire and co. but they got rained in) without argument, during which i convinced mr smear to draw a comic he's been thinking of.

he did that when we got back - oh! that's when i napped - and the outcome was excellent (and funny) but he doesn't want it published and he won't tell me why... *pouts*

i finally sat down to work on reviewing a whole bunch of the AI-generated code in my side project, uncovering really strange hallucinations (eg. a nonce that's generated immediately before being checked within the same function) and fixing a few actual bugs, and then suddenly it was 3pm and mr smear and i geared up, grabbed the vegan hot dogs gd had prepared for us, and walked to my new employer's office for his friend's laser tag birthday party.

most of the parents dropped their kids off, but i'd walked so i hung around for the almost three hours chatting with mr smear's friend's parents (good talks) and at one point putting in a few minutes of productive work on my side project. i didn't actually go into my office, though, because i felt very uncomfortable figuring out the alarm system over a weekend when i had no real justification for using the office :P

it was a long walk there, and a long walk back, but those were two long walks with good father-son talks, and we both had an enjoyable day overall. also, it helped that it didn't rain on us.

we got home pretty late, which meant that after all the shower/toenail stuff mr smear got to bed very late, and i'm already feeling like i'm going to crash soon even though i know i've got tons of stuff to do and i haven't been doing any of it...

...

"the revolution is being streamed, not televised" - tousi tv, "pahlavi announces plan to return to iran - declares final battle"

firstly, "media" outlets like the BBC are exposing themselves clearer than ever as nothing more than propaganda shills for oppressive, tyrannical, anti-west* regimes like iran, qatar, russia, and china.

(also anti-semitic)

secondly, anyone notice how the iranian people, resisting after fifty years of REAL occupation and REAL oppression, aren't raping women or murdering children?

jalapeño-powered

 my knees are threatening every time i get up, and my lower back's sore, and my neck's been giving me trouble on and off today. hello, mid-forties.

...

i'm very excited to report that before leaving the apartment this morning, i was able to complete the work on my side project's auth flows, and i'm hoping to have the whole thing essentially ready to roll out before i begin my new job on monday!

our first stop was dropping off the first challah-peño at the bakery. we're looking forward to hearing their review, it seemed like the wife thought it was good :)

gd and i walked to the light rail and made our way to the school, where mr smear was waiting, alone, playing with one of the school cats.

i thought he was allergic to cats? i don't know anymore.

we walked to our cousins, with gd stopping by the pharmacy on the way and mr smear and i sitting down at a coffee shop so that i could have a coffee and he could eat his lunch, then show me some really funny drawings he's been working on.

lunch was long, and mostly really nice. our cousin appeared to be more restrained that usual regarding overriding our parenting, and i think a lot of what we said and did really pressed her buttons... but all-in-all it was a pleasant afternoon.

unfortunately, gd had been getting more and more uncomfortable because of the cold, so the beginning of our walk home (we couldn't catch a cab) was a bit rough until she warmed up a bit. mr smear and i discovered jalapeño pretzels on the way home, which are really good.

after we got home, it was time to bake another challah-peño for ourselves (that's a lot of carbs for one day), and while we waited for them i caught up with the class whatsapp group which had gone a bit off the rails over the course of the day, which led to some important-yet-fun family conversations.

over dinner and after, we watched most of the first episode of the a-team, which we apparently tried to watch with mr smear before (but i can't look up "a-team" on my blog) - mr smear was skeptical at first, but once it got going he was all in :)

after everyone else went to bed (around 11pm), i completed my (relative) speed run through botopia, and now i'm sitting with my chamomile getting ready for bed.

constructive behavior and eating out

on monday night, i balatro'd for more than a bit. i went to bed late, but having understood just why it's such a big deal - it's as intricate and unhinged as inscryption, only without the story.

i mean, i love the story of inscryption as much as i love the card game(s), but they're both really intriguing once you get deep enough.

...

yesterday:

mr smear didn't have an easier night, but we realized in the morning that his workshop wasn't yesterday after all, it was today. so that was a relief.

the first thing that happened was a conversation about the previous evening's drama, and for the most part it was pleasant and constructive.

the main part of my day was preparing for a work meeting, and then the work meeting itself. and in the evening, another conversation with my lead/mentor about a different contract, where he made it clear to me that it's entirely on me to pick contracts that i want.

i still have to wrap my head around this.

in the afternoon, gd and i took mr smear to get his chest x-rayed. the x-ray was quick, but the wait was kinda long and in spite of his not feeling great mr smear and i had fun wrestling a bit :P

on the way home, we stopped at donattelo's for surprisingly good vegan pizza, and a generally good experience during the break in the rain.

we watched most of equilibrium last night, which was really fun. oh! and our taster's box of hot peppers arrived ^_^

i read another chapter of the ocean at the end of the lane to mr smear, putting myself to sleep as much as him. i almost woke up completely between saying goodnight to mr smear and brushing my teeth, but in spite of it being relatively early i did fall asleep after a short while, and i did sleep through most of the night.

today:

i woke up from a long, convoluted dream that ended with me and tahoma chanting enthusiastically at some kind of work event.

i opened the first of my sunglass lens replacements to arrive, the photochromic ones. i'm convinced they're a scam, because they seem to change tiny slightly in the sun but they don't seem to be protecting my eyes from anything.

we weren't quite sure about sending mr smear to the manga workshop until about an hour before, by which stage we'd decided he was fine to go and he still seemed to want to go - which is surprising, considering his track record of nope-ing any activity outside of the house.

while he did that (with one of his friends), i sat upstairs and spent a couple of hours working on helper scripts for one of my projects. one of my now-ex co-workers came over to say hi, which was nice, and i find it interesting that he chooses the library when he needs quiet time during the workday.

mr smear seemed to have had a good time, even if the two of them had found the workshop a bit "childish". it took some effort to drag him out of the comic library (and lose the argument about him reading chainsaw man), and we did some urgent grocery shopping on the way home (most importantly, for gloves to handle the peppers).

and stop for a quick chat with the bakery owner, who's been getting into south african documentaries and was surprised to learn that chris hani's murder was such a big deal for all of us. and to hear confirmation of what he thought were exaggerations of the load-shedding and the crime.

and stop for a quick chat with ze irish german's wife; turns out they're all the same kind of sick as we've been (with the parents seeming to just have colds, and the children being knocked out of commission entirely).

mr smear and i had lunch and watched a king's quest playthrough together, and then a short while later we all headed out again to gd's check-up, from where we walked together to the dentist so i could pick up my new mouth guard (which fits!). we wanted to try a vegan place next door for dinner, but they only had QR code menus and the QR code wasn't readable, so in frustration we gave up and continued to lebowski, where we enjoyed a really nice dining experience.

mr smear got to taste shakshouka (not amazing, but decent), and gd's shuwarma (apparently great), and although my curry wasn't as intense as i would have liked, the experience overall was solid.

we just got home, mr smear's showered and soaked his feet and i've sorted out his toes for the night, and now we're going to light the candles and get ready for bed.

breathe in

 i finally dived back in to shadowrun: hong kong. i ended up climbing into bed around 2.30am.

i woke up around 8.30am, enjoyed a cup of coffee and more shadowrun, and then took a pleasant, quiet walk to the pharmacy and back to get gd's meds. it was a beautiful morning for it.

a classmate of mr smear's arrived, with a foul-mouth and some interesting inherited opinions (when i said we're vegan, he unabashedly responded "cringe!"), and the two of them seemed to have a good time.

and then a weird thing happened - mr smear's friend convinced him to try watching forrest gump. in spite of the initial protests, we continued watching after his friend's mom picked him up and we all loved it (and i occasionally sobbed uncontrollably, at one point mr smear misread it as laughing).

i did some of the dishes, then took mr smear out for a very pleasant walk to and through the park, and we got home in time for dinner and futurama, followed by showering / brushing teeth / doing the rest of the dishes while mr smear entertains himself and gd reading trivia and garfield out loud.

half an hour to his herpes-meds bedtime.

...

i'm sad that mr smear has decided to stop doing the inktober challenge, but he got through a third of it, and he did so brilliantly.

challenges

don't count your hostages before they've been safely returned. i'm hoping against hope, but god knows if any of what's supposed to be happening right now is real.

...

in addition to everything else, gd's eye's been giving her trouble, and today things got serious. so we began the day accompanying her to the clinic, and then i walked them most of the way home before heading to the office.

the work day was okay, calm but a bit messy. highlights included terminating our contract with a guy who's been on retainer for months but who's been occupying himself with stuff we never asked for, probably out of boredom.

i consumed far too many calories during happy hour.

the game hacking session never happened, but me hanging around did present an opportunity for a wild AI conversation.

• AI Slop Is Destroying The Internet
• It Begins: An AI Literally Attempted Murder To Avoid Shutdown
• Using AI Makes Your Brain Lazy, Even After You Stop Using It, New Study Shows
• and it's especially creepy hearing an AI describing how we're using AI wrong: Replacing Humans with AI Has Gone Terribly Wrong | Geoffrey Hinton Explains

i came home, we had dinner (and watched an episode of futurama), and i managed to convince mr smear to draw the amazing inktober concept he'd come up with in the morning. unfortunately, we didn't get to publish it because by the time he finished inking it - and he refuses to post it without color - it was already 11pm. and then getting him to go to sleep was a whole other story...

...

tomorrow's the day we go to the circus, but also a friday that gd needs to go to the emergency clinic. oh! and i got a call from the hospital today, mr smear can do his dairy challenge next week 🤞

rest day

the rest of the day was good. mr smear finished a really good inktober entry, we've pretty much completed the pokemon puzzle, i read quite a bit and napped a bit, and we had a good ride to the park.

also, we're loving futurama together.

waiting quietly

 we did very little yesterday (aside from cleaning the floor). we did the puzzle (we're mostly done at this point), read / napped / played (mr smear was overjoyed to discover that subnautica runs better on my m2 macbook than on our shitty dell xps), we made challah-peño again - which was an amazing success, again - and after kiddush we ate a simple dinner and watched a couple more episodes of futurama (even gd's getting won over).

this morning has been pretty chilled so far, but i just had a realization about mr smear's screentime/downtime protocol: it's been bothering me for ages that he sets an alarm to the end of his downtime, and it bumps him out of whatever he's doing. he was just making fantastic progress on his day 4 inktober entry, and his alarm went off and he just tossed it aside to go look for a screen.

so no more downtime alarms, only screentime alarms.

we learn.

...

in political news, i've read the hamas response to trump's peace proposal and it doesn't seem like they're going to do what's being demanded of them. which isn't surprising. but i'm nervous, because if they return the hostages, we don't know what they'll do to the hostages pre- or during delivery, everything they've done has been calculated to maximize psychological harm to israel. but if all they do is mess around, at least we have clearance to go in and get the job done.

slow and steady

 the fast itself wasn't hard, but on a normal rest day with caffeine i'm tired and need lots of naps, so yesterday i was tired. 

mr smear wasn't feeling well (he still isn't), so instead of taking him to meet his classmates for a bike ride in the evening we all stayed at home and had a very quiet night. in the morning i went to a service close by that i've been meaning to check out for ages, and i arrived just in time to make a minyan for shacharit. it was a pleasant service, with a bit of a wishy-washy sermon, but by the time one of the leaders said "it's not mandatory to leave for yizkor" i - along with half the congregation - got up and left.

my back was sore, my vision was doubling and i was starting to fall asleep.

we spent the afternoon alternating between reading the story of jonah, napping, putting together an awesome pokemon puzzle (we're more than a quarter of the way through the 1000 piece puzzle), and encouraging mr smear for his day 2 inktober entry.

in the evening, i took mr smear to hear the final shofar blow. it took us a bit too long to leave the apartment - we passed the service in the kikar just before they finished, arrived too late for the other service, and then returned past the kikar service after they'd finished too :/

i broke my fast on pancakes and some healthy leftovers, while we watched and enjoyed futurama. then it was a bit of a struggle to get mr smear into bed (no particular reason), and then it was time to pass out myself.

today so far:

my first coffee was accompanied by a long nap. so far today we've started cleaning our talitot, and mr smear's alternating between finishing up yesterday's drawing and helping us with the puzzle.

aside from cleaning the floor (post-cleaning lady) i'm feeling particularly lazy. i keep fantasizing about picking up a new speaker and possibly a gaming computer, but i'm honestly not confident it's the right timing for the latter.

failure

 we had a blowout at the fair. he wanted to sign up for animation again - even though last time he made everyone miserable until we took him out - but he steadfastly refused to even try the drum kit. we had a long conversation during which it sounded like he understood what i was trying to tell him (the usual mix of "you only fail if you don't try" and that one has to get out of one's comfort zone if one wants to grow, along with a helping of "i wish i had had such an awesome opportunity because you can't just buy drums and try them at home"), but after our conversation was over he reverted straight back to "just, no".

we walked to the bus stop and caught one to the shuk. around the middle of the shuk we found some vests, a grenadilla slushie and some coffee - i agreed to let him taste it, and he hated it 🤘 - and we proceeded to walk down allenby, up levontin, and then around to yuka monsters. the entire trip from bus there was really pleasant, it was a beautiful and quiet day and mr smear was being very cool.

we got lost in the store, and then gd finished her class and decided to join us, following my live location and walking down some dodgy streets. after she called, panicked, we left the store and met her halfway, then returned, where mr smear and i played some arcade tetris and gd and i went through all the books mr smear and i had been fawning over.

it's all incredible stuff, but very expensive and we wanted all of it.

from there we headed out in search of lunch. we weren't interested in meshek barzilay (not for a midday breakfast, at any rate) and we had trouble finding anything else, which is the point at which gd discovered that mr smear hadn't had breakfast and started freaking out. i picked him up a vegan onigiri from oomai, and we eventually made our way to cafe barzilay, which turned out to be a really good idea.

the two meals we went for turned out to be plenty of great food and an overall cool afternoon experience. then we took the light rail home, and the rest of the afternoon has been chilling, punctuated only by cleaning all the fans, and gd injuring her toe again (in the same way as before) that's finally been healing.

good grief.

so now i'm having a rum and hoping the rest of the weekend won't be dramatic.

...

watching mrbiscuitspeaks reactions to tool (starting with lateralus) is fascinating.

opportunity

 well, my shoulder's hurting this morning, but my eyes are feeling slightly less irritated and my teeth are feeling slightly less sensitive, so overall i guess i'm doing okay.

i'm feeling quite offended right now that putting money into mr smear and my shared compound account costs far more than we'll earn in compound interest over the next few years. i'm offended because crypto's been a big thing for so long already and it still doesn't make any sense for small players. and our physical banks don't have any incentive to compete.

mr smear just freaked out and dumped a really cool animation he made in flipaclip (after much struggling to determine that bluestacks still sucks and that flipaclip's pricing is extortion), but i got him to reattempt and learn what he should have done and he did. so at least one parenting win for the morning, not including him playing or singing iron maiden's two minutes to midnight every time he thinks something's going to be in two minutes :P

...

i walked into the office yesterday and sat down for a while with bigtalk to help him strategize. that was followed by a morning full of random shit, mostly frustrating, and i felt like my brain was melting (like i was maybe coming down with something, but in retrospect i think i was just tired and depressed).

the biggest downer was learning that bigtalk's definition of "fine-tuning" is completely out of sync with mine. he's been promising to deliver the Big Important Thing "today or tomorrow" since last week already and i'm just getting more and more frustrated.

the company retro was interesting, and i felt useful and needed. which makes me feel a bit weird about my position in the new org chart, where i'm just a devops and my "coach" is someone with less experience than me...

happy hour turning into an opportunity for a conversation about determining company culture (documentation and being remote-first), but that conversation led to someone even more important which was me determining the root cause for our algo team's difficulties and getting buy-in for my proposed solution from our de-facto tech chief.

and then i came home, without any issues with protestors (thankfully i don't have a car), and the evening was pleasant and we all went to bed pretty early. fortunately i was the only person who was awoken by the protestors flooding our neighborhood...

history unfolding

 not gonna lie, it's hard trying to figure out what all this means, but a lot of it seems amazing and is almost too good to be true! at the same time, i'm not not to think of the casualties so far, a few residential buildings brought down and while relatively low numbers of dead and wounded so far, still a whole lot more than we're okay with :(

spending lots of time in the shelter hasn't been too terrible, though gd seems to be developing an allergy to something down there :/ and there's a really loud autistic kid. but for the most part, we're just doing our thing, singing along when the kids sing and mr smear has taken to pulling out his sketchbook and doing cool stuff.

...

it wasn't clear whether our pharmacies would be open this morning, so it was a relief when we got to both of them. i was a bit pressured for time, and ended up taking a taxi and then running to get to my neurologist appointment (for the insomnia), which turned out to be the appointment that i'd moved to the end of july 🤦‍♂️

anyway, getting there early worked out well. the procedure (removing something from my cheek) was quick and only incredibly painful for a moment, but it didn't stop bleeding for a long while (they wanted to avoid using stitches) and my hand went numb from pressing onto the wound.

anyway.

mr smear apparently behaved well during his zoom class, and aside from one dramatic homework moment (which really wasn't as bad as the previous times) he was cooperative and did what he had to do.

for me, it was a difficult work day to get into, but i did put in a few hours and by the end of the day did get the main job done.

...

i also had a productive conversation about my mother's aliyah with an ex-saffer who works in the absorption ministry, as well as sending off a request for assistance from yad l'olim. the more i think about my closing paragraph, the more pleased with myself i become:

Any assistance you're able to provide will be greatly appreciated, we have been deeply distressed for years now that she is unable to come home. As someone who is financially secure, I am happy to provide any guarantees she may require to satisfy the authorities that her aliyah will be successful. As an officer of the IDF and who is currently working in our defense industry, I am happy to provide any guarantees she may require that she is not an undesirable immigrant.

...

i'm now very tired (i mean, i haven't stopped being tired since friday), and i'm a little nervous about sleeping with the wound not yet healed, and i'm a lot nervous about being woken in the middle of the night by more rocket attacks... but on the whole, our army and intelligence are doing us proud to an unimaginable degree and it looks like the future i've been fantasizing about since last year may actually be coming to pass right before our eyes.

it's very hard not to get stuck into the news loop. i'm trying and failing to tear my eyes away, but we're literally watching history unfold.

narc-olepsy and hydra-tion 1

[part 1 / 2 because of the label limitations]

i spent longer on my cdktf repo last night than intended, but i hit the hay with a sense of accomplishment. i managed about two sentences of of mice and men before realizing that i was too tired to understand anything, and promptly went to sleep.

mr smear woke up coughing this morning, he was doing a bit better but definitely wasn't ready to return to school. instead, he pulled maus off the shelf and started reading it, and he appears to be really getting into it, both in content and in style.

i was sad to learn that art spiegelman has been turned by pro-palestinian propaganda, and - like gabor maté - i suspect their trauma has made them hypersensitive and vulnerable to our enemies' cries of "genocide".

while he read that, i read the first chapter of of mice and men. so far, highly enjoyable.

it was bitterly cold this morning, and i was dressed in a double layer with gloves and my hoodies up for my walk to the post office to pick up gd's new purse.

i asked mr smear to "fix" my water bottle that he did a number on the other day. i'm not sure he followed any of my requests / instructions, but the overall effect is cool so i took to it work anyway :)

i messaged mr smear's hebrew tutor and told her we were taking a break, he's doing well enough now and it's a huge amount of money that we can't really afford...

on the way to work i stopped by the clinic, almost getting run over again by a taxi at the same intersection. after yelling and chasing down the driver - who actually apologized - i decided that instead of filing another complaint about him personally, i need to take this up with the municipality. so now i'm being bounced between departments trying to get them to do something to make the intersection safer.

i had a good meeting with my boss today. he wants me to go on-site sometime soon, so i warned gd and tried to reassure her that i'll be safe...

static electricity and spontaneously bleeding hands: i actually had to run off to find hand lotion for the office, i've never experienced that before.

speaking of surprises, i spoke to our landlord who offered to send a handyman to help us with the flaky sink, which is quite something!

[continued...]

next steps

 "work from home". today, noooot so much.

i did catch up on a little sleep last night, with some epic dreams that slipped away pretty much the moment i opened my eyes. i was still quite tired, though. the morning started off alright, i got mr smear to school in good spirits*, and was planning on heading to the clinic to support gd at her doctor's appointment when my phone reminded me that i had an upcoming interview.

* on the way, mr smear informed me that he doesn't like his singing voice so much (he has a great singing voice!), so he decided he wanted to play beethoven's 9th symphony at the school's chanukah ceremony in two weeks' time and could i please print the sheet music for him. while i was picking my jaw up off the floor and making a note to myself to take care of the printing, i stepped on a small, squishy piece of dog poo.

the interview went pretty well, i think, and i'm a lot more interested in what they're doing than i thought i would be. at the same time, the company i interviewed with poorly yesterday evening scheduled an in-person interview for next week, so 🤞

i also managed to sort out the payment for gd's cannabis license, but only after realizing that they didn't send a broken link, rather that my relay software splits form data on the equals signs and breaks links. so i'm going to have to fix that, and fast...

i tried to get some work done, but i was tired and distracted. just as i was trying to rest my eyes for a few minutes before leaving, gd began another coughing fit. a little less rough than we're used to, but still rough, and so far *tfu tfu* it looks like the new meds and saline nebulizing are helping.

i picked mr smear up and took him to his hebrew tutor, got a bit of work done, and brought him back home, to both of our excitement discovering along the way that tapuchips are making salt and vinegar flavor now ^_^

while i did get some work done during the afternoon, it was rather a messy mixture of work, random distractions and helping gd herd mr smear - he spent most of it on his keyboard, which was great but not conducive to high levels of concentration on my side of the table.

the new, uhhh, play therapist? showed up in the evening, she's very sweet. we all introduced ourselves and talked for a bit while mr smear got over his shyness, then we had a very serious drawing competition, and then i got a final bit of work done before evacuating the living room and helping gd with the dishes.

good dinner and the simpsons, a rushed bedtime ritual but not unpleasant, and when gd went to bed i played through another section of shadowrun returns. oh! i finished count zero yesterday**, and i'm now taking a break from the sprawl trilogy to check out the honest truth about dishonesty. so far, so good.

** what was particularly interesting about the re-read was just how relevant it remains in spite of some of its anachronisms, and just how much it has influenced so much other literature (including video games) that i've loved. count zero still holds up, it's a brilliant story executed exquisitely. i felt that the tying up of loose ends felt a bit rushed, but the ideas were exciting and i really enjoyed the adventure alongside the characters.

oh! it's quite late. i guess i should probably go to bed.

some peace?

 i mean, i'm feeling thoroughly cooked but i have another meeting with gco and sailor at 9pm.

today began alright, until just before leaving to take mr smear to school when i got into a ridiculous and very intense argument with gco. that set the tone and drained my energy for the day before it had even begun, even if we did resolve it (apparently) amicably.

[my thumbnail's got split skin that's bleeding and hurting and driving me crazy. i suspect it's from it being dry skin season]

i had another first encounter with a different company this morning, and it went *much* better than yesterday's.

gd and i were all good this morning, although she's still suffering intensely. i had to leave work at noon to pick mr smear up from school because she couldn't handle it. not only did that work out because i remembered that he had geometry (actual geometry :P) homework, and i also got to see today's artwork which was very cool (especially his stick figure renditions of one piece characters).

the work day went well, overall, and i managed to leave with a surprisingly strong sense of satisfaction.

now for dinner and a meeting :P

doing, and not doing

 i slept pretty well last night, but not enough. after taking mr smear to school, i continued on to the post office to pick up the palm rest sticker for my dell laptop. it was a beautiful morning, and i would have appreciated it had gd and i not been fighting over whether mr smear had lice or not 😣

anyway, we got through it quickly, at least.

i applied some more spackle on a spot i'd missed yesterday, and made some good progress with the silicone tube in spite of the fact that it's designed for one of those gun thingies and now the skin on my hand's peeling as a consequence :P

i called the number of the organization that's supposed to take over gd's cannabis licensing, which was just like a canadian government organization: a whole bunch of telephone menus, only to be directed to their website instead. anyway, i uploaded everything and i hope it's good enough.

i discovered that the sticker i'd bought was the wrong one, the ali express format confused me and i ended up purchasing a similar-but-different product. fortunately, i managed to cut out what i needed and it fits pretty well, and i don't really care if it's incomplete - it does the job.

work-wise, i think it's safe to say that i got practically nothing of value done this morning. i was quite hungry and i snacked a lot. i did do quite a bit while waiting for mr smear's hebrew lesson - oh! he drew a pretty cool pixel art hand today, we're quite proud ^_^

we're also extremely proud, and literally amazed, that he figured out part of wolfmother - pyramid by himself on the keyboard, entirely from memory because we haven't heard any wolfmother in aaaaaages 🤯

i did a fair amount of work in the afternoon, kinda making up for the slow morning, and then received a suspicious-looking message that i had a package waiting for me at a postal point in dizengoff center that i'd never heard of. i tried calling, but the number wasn't connected, and the message had come with a warning that they'd only hold the package for two business days, so on the off-chance that it was real (no way i was clicking on the url-shortened link) i decided to head down and see what was going on.

it was raining. i noped the fuck back home and waited until things looked dryer, getting some more work done in the meanwhile.

when it was dark already, i tried again. i made it there without a hitch (although something in the bus made my skin crawl), and i found the postal store. i explained my issues to the woman at the desk, who promptly disappeared. i struggled to find my package, and ask for assistance. the only person working at that point was a sharp-faced woman who assured me she'd help me in just a minute. then two teenagers came in, and she turned to them.

i asked her why i wasn't being helped. she told me, "they're kids". i was utterly dumbstruck for a moment, then tried to get her to explain why they get priority, but zero fucks were given on her side and on mine, i had to keep it together to not lose my goddamned mind. it was a while after i left the store before i started to cool off.

jesus.

anyway, i picked up a new pixel art sketch book (just a nice sketch book with squares) for mr smear now that he understands what i was trying to achieve the last time (when gd tried to inspire him with some examples, and he decided her drawings were cooler than his so he refused to use it), so that's cool.

i tried to come home but it was raining again, i then spent twenty minutes or so hunting for an umbrella that didn't suck and also didn't cost too much money. i ended up leaving without finding one, and fortunately made it home during a break in the clouds.

we watched about half of pixels during dinner, some of which is awkward, but most of it is hilarious, especially for a nine year-old...

and now it's bedtime. i'm a bit disappointed that mr smear didn't want to continue reading the magic pudding tonight, and then gd wasn't interested in it either :/

cut

yesterday:

well, mr smear wasn't completely done with his shenanigans... he'd promised to come ride with me in the late afternoon, and when the time came he decided he hadn't. it took a lot of emotionally-draining work to get him out the door and onto his bike, and that was followed by an emotionally-draining ride to the park during which i don't recall if he took even a moment to stop whining about how much he wanted to go home.

it was in the park itself that we just about had an incident, but i managed to get him to confess that he just doesn't like going outside in general. i explained to him that it's important to be outside and surrounded by nature both for physical health, and mental health, and that the bicycle he detests so much (because it's neither easy nor perfect) is actually his ticket to freedom and independence and he needs to regard it as such.

the next ten to fifteen minutes of riding around and then home were pleasant enough that i was happy to treat him to an ice-cream on the way home.

sailor arrived just after we began eating, and he hung around for a while. mr smear enjoyed him being over as much as we did, and they had a "drawing competition" a la strip search, which was fun.

i was so tired at one point that i had to lie down, and aside from getting up to say goodbye i was stuck on the couch until the middle of the night, and my lower back was sore. then i moved to the bed and suffered there for a while, until i stretched a bit and managed to calm it down enough to get some sleep.

today:

i wanted to have a slow day, but i had to pick up gd's wellies from the post office and soon after getting home i left again for a haircut. i was tired. the hairdresser was awkwardly quiet. for most of the haircut, i was either closing my eyes and trying to not lose consciousness, or watching him suspiciously because his style is kind of like tetris, or chess, where the whole haircut doesn't make sense at all until it all comes together at the end.

gd and i are pretty satisfied with the cut, surprisingly, so even though the experience was unnervingly uncomfortable and the haircut was way more expensive than standard, i might well go back again.

it's been a chilled afternoon so far, and in a couple of minutes i'm taking mr smear to his mma class.