grind break

this morning we completed the pokemon puzzle (including a few frustrating minutes hunting for the final piece that was resting, camouflaged, on top of the puzzle), i helped mr smear through the first page of his holiday homework, i did the dishes, and headed off to the office.

it was a weird work day, lots of syncing and strategizing, and keeping my nose out of the bunch of kids hijacking the office, and by the time i got to the important, urgent work that needed to be done i ran into some big issues that thoroughly blocked me. and then it was time to leave the office in order to be able to take mr smear to the swimming pool.

mr smear and i arrived at the pool in good time, only to learn that it was closed. the nice lady printed me out some sheets that are much easier to parse than their schedule boards, so now we have an idea of when we're welcome there...

the past hour or so has been all about helping gd in the kitchen (and being upset to learn - or relearn - that the hand blender we bought months ago never worked), and struggling to update the dell device drivers (i'm typing this on the same machine while i continue to struggle), and being frustrated because i decided earlier that i didn't want to go swimming any more, but now mr smear's all-in and he's never all-in so now i have to go.

*deep breaths*

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.

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