the real puppetmasters

mr smear woke me up this morning with a surprisingly long talk about dealing with life, and school, and bullying. amazingly, he seemed genuinely open to what i was saying and appeared to appreciate how i tied it into how video games work*, even if he was a little confused at first :P

* that our emotions dictating our behavior make us like an NPC, and that he's been taking more and more control of his character's actions and learning how to navigate the world

mr smear woke up coughing again today, but we medicated him heavily and sent him off to school. i got a bunch of small things done, then arrived at the office with my biggest goal being to wait before tucking in to the breakfast. fasting is harder when the FOMO kicks in.

the day was an interesting, exciting, and sometimes confusing mix of tasks, but there was a common thread between a bunch of them and over the course of a few conversations we may have hit on a viable solution to something that's been gnawing at me for a while.

there was a little drama when i got pulled out of call by a notification that i couldn't make sense of, then pulled into a reference call for a candidate that i had nothing to contribute to, and then the next meeting ended with me trying to be calm and rational and end the call quickly because i suddenly and violently needed to pee.

i arrived at a plan of action in time to rush home and take mr smear out for a "walk"; literally just to the electronic recycling across the road as an excuse to talk about his day, but he derailed that plan with his favorite new game of trying to come up with dumb ideas. he liked my idea of "cold sauce", but i liked the idea of a digital broken telephone even more :P

we watched some more asterix & obelix - the big fight (it's really good!), and while mr smear got ready for bed i ordered the next two illustrated harry potter books (did they only publish up to book no. 5?), and once mr smear was in bed and i'd watched random shit and showered i sat down to do some work.

i was displeased to have to explain to a coworker how to extricate himself from a mess of his own device - well, a bunch of devs, but all of them doing stuff i've explicitly informed them is undesirable and dangerous - so it seems like we're going to have "a talk" tomorrow. but i was pleased to stumble (pretty quickly) on a solution to the most immediate issue that was much simpler than what i had in mind.

score!

the rest of the evening would have been very quiet had my mother not sent me and gd something politically triggering, and after the argument gd and i had yesterday i immediately called her to explain the situation... we're living in what feels like the end times, where being jewish is unsafe no matter where you are in the world, the jihadis have taken control of the media, and even patriotic israelis who should know better have become mouthpieces for jihadi propaganda.

plus, the south african situation is spinning faster out of control than ever.

i think i need to go to bed soon.

weekend unlocked

 the morning started well enough. i got mr smear to school with a good vibe, i withdrew cash so that we could pay the cleaner, and i finally got my personal project's backend upgrade almost-complete.

then i rollerbladed to work, and it was absolutely fine.

...

oh, right - there's a background to this whole week that i've barely mentioned: i'm finally, after years of not taking it seriously, decided to take being overweight seriously. i'm sticking to my fasting hours a lot more consistently, and i'm mostly avoiding my usual non-stop snacking or replacing the snacks with healthier options. i know it's going to take a while to see results, but i can no longer ignore what i've been ignoring for most of the past decade.

...

i barely worked on my ticket today. instead, my boss dropped a surprise thursday release on my lap (thursday is israel's friday). the initial production deployment went smoothly, but i happened to uncover a bug in production so it was followed by a hotfix. and then another one, during which i made a mistake that led to some drama.

we managed to sort it all out before our "happy hour", with no production downtime, and as soon as i was done shoveling a vegan knafeh down my throat i headed home to pick up mr smear and take him to the climbing wall.

...

i was feeling bloated and uncomfortable all afternoon, and so it wasn't the most comfortable experience. i introduced mr smear to the rollerskating rink next to the climb wall, and he enjoyed riding around in circles. he proceeded, begrudgingly, to have a pretty acceptable climbing session, although he wasn't pleased about the lack of treats at the end.

there was a little girl on the climbing wall who has a stump in place of her right hand. watching her trying to get up the wall was nothing short of inspirational.

it was also a good lesson for mr smear. he was initially very unsettled, and needed to take a break to get over himself, but we had an easy conversation about it and there was no stress, and a few minutes later he was back on the wall and quite focused.

he's riding his bike really confidently, it's simultaneously a source of pride and a huge relief.

...

the evening's been mostly good. getting mr smear to bed wasn't easy, but it was easier than last night, and i'm finally finished with the backend upgrade. now i'm going to either enjoy the rest of the evening, or fall asleep, or both.

breathing and sneezing

filing years of documents is dusty work.

also: wanna know how i've lost ten kilos in six months (almost exactly) with no exercise? intermittent fasting, combined with incredibly high stress levels.

this past week became more and more stressful and frustrating, both work-wise and bureaucratically, and i spent friday afternoon trying not to let me heart explode.

we have no control over our situation.

while the jewish agency has determined my family to be jewish enough to migrate, misrad hapnim is blocking us and there aren't any humans to talk to. after a long chat with the lawyer who appears to be the right one for us, she ended the conversion saying "you're going to go through all this whether you like it or not. you can do this 'in chill', or you can make yourself sick".

something i needed to hear, i guess.

this weekend has been BAKING hot. my brain was melting before the temperatures rose. i picked up cardboard boxes yesterday morning and got the car valeted, and we've spent a large chunk of the weekend sorting and triaging and packing. and trying to breathe. and even breathing a bit.

also, gd and i watched a lot of cobra kai last night and it's so well-written and cringy that i'm not sure i can handle any more of it. certainly not with all the other stuff going on in our lives.

lions, tiger and bear

 most of saturday was great. i got a haircut, and mr smear and i joined sailor for a good walk along the pipe track. unfortunately, mr smear was very busy acting out and the walk turned a bit sour, the evening did not end on a positive note.

most of sunday was fantastic. i got some side-project work done in the morning, as well as taking a couple of steps forward with the next pages of the graphic novel, then my mom picked us up and we drove out to the drakenstein lion park. it's a beautiful place where they give safe homes to abused lions (and a tiger, and a couple of caracals), and it was amazing being able to be outdoors in a large area with mr smear seeing the animals and feeling safe enough to tool around by himself. their rescue-chimpanzee park was also pretty cool.

we stopped by fairview to pick up coffee, see the goats (that reminds me - mr smear's first comment at the lion sanctuary: "i didn't know goats were real!"), visit our friends (gd made it clear that my godmother was not welcome to photos of our boy), play with the dogs and swap stories of bureaucratic insanity.

everything was great except that something wasn't, and gd and i had a blowout after mr smear went to bed that left us both with an ugly feeling (less angry than confused, communicating can be absurdly hard sometimes).

after watching veritasium's how to slow aging (and a week of feeling fat - the pics of my last tattoo shocked me - and finally slowing down on the processed food/snacks) i was inspired to give intermittent fasting a try. i'm now a day in on 16/8 and aside from realizing that i was doing it wrong (tea and coffee are mostly fine during fasting, but not with even a little bit of the soy milk) i'm finding it entirely manageable. i even got a good day's work in, and a good night's work as well.

 my only concern from today was with a team-lead who had been upset by an argument we had on friday. i feel like the conversation went pretty well, considering, but i really do need to be careful with our discussions...

*sigh*
1am. fine. g'nite already.