the beginning of week two

 yesterday:

the day began with a massive strike on us (hitting a hospital ward, fortunately already evacuated), so that was a way to wake up in the morning. then we headed to gd's pain clinic appointment, picking up a last-minute insurance authorization on the way (whew!), and coming home just in time for my first meeting.

the first few hours of my work day were occupied with sorting out other people's problems (we have a couple of devops joining us next week, so i might be able to actually work on my own tasks).

around lunchtime, a taxi showed up with a "care package", which made everyone's day (mr smear couldn't contain his excitement over an unexpected haul of vegan treats) and [this evening] gd and i did shots of the really nice vodka to usher in the shabbat, though sadly it appears she's not a fan 🤷

i got stuck into an unnecessarily difficult problem with one of our external devs, and i had just resolved it when i received an urgent call from my boss instructing me to drop everything and head off to our test site. so - after gd assured me that they'd be okay* - another taxi showed up, i hopped in, and after picking up a package from one of my coworkers we headed out.

* that's a big deal, that she was able to accept it so quickly under the current circumstances

about an hour later, we arrived. an hour spent worrying about what we'd do if there were sirens, working on my laptop in the back seat or staring out the window feeling sorry for myself for not having had my afternoon coffee yet.

fortunately, as soon as we arrived i found that we had the facilities to make turkish coffee, so after a brief introduction to the site and preparing a cup i went outside to talk to one of my coworkers. i'd been on-site a total of maybe five or ten minutes when we looked up and saw an iron dome missile fire - i've never seen that with my own eyes before - and moments later the siren sounded.

i'm still amused that the last guy into the shelter brought in a sixpack of beers. genius. 😂

it took a lot more time to prepare a station than i would have liked, but the entire site is full army vibes and aside from learning new and interesting things, it was fun. the first part of my work went pretty smoothly, but then i ran into unexpected issues with my coworker from tuesday's code, and it took forever to find a solution. and not even a good solution. but i pushed on, and eventually managed to get things to a point where i could continue to work on it remotely so that i could stop holding back my coworker who'd offered to give me a ride back to tel aviv.

the ride home was entertaining, but also scary. not only was it made clear to me that we weren't going to stop for any sirens, but my driver was an absolute cowboy and i had to work hard to keep from visibly slamming on the passenger brakes :P

i arrived home pretty late, showered and ate (effectively all i'd consumed since breakfast were two bags of crisps and an energy bar), and then jumped back in to figure out how to continue the work (i'd left knowing it was possible, theoretically).

it was about half past midnight when i finally succeeded, and it wouldn't have been possible without the deep dive i'd done earlier in the day for the external dev 🤘

today:

it was weird waking up in the morning without having been jumped by a siren. the day began well, with a very excited and grateful mr smear getting his minecraft account resurrected.

i did get a little work done in the morning, but i was mostly distracted by random things and the news cycle. then we headed down to the mall (which has taken a fair bit of damage from some of the strikes), where mr smear and i milled around waiting for gd and he badgered me until i purchased death note black edition, vol. 1, which he subsequently completed reading by dinner time; so now we're all watching the anime series together :P

i was feeling very tired by the time we got home. my mother's had some potential success with her aliyah story; she found familysearch.org, and located some really interesting documents which might prove useful.

we helped gd with some cleaning today (mr smear and i cleaned standing fans together, and he helped with the vacuuming too), and aside from two big missile barrages it's been relatively calm.

...

it's 4.30am now, and i started writing this before dinner. but then i was too tired to stay up, but had really bad insomnia for the first time in a little while, and when i finally did fall asleep we were woken by the second missile strike :/

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.

doing the thing (overeating)

mr smear helped me clean the window poop this morning. i sorted out a phone bill this morning. i booked mr smear for a dairy allergy challenge in september, and gd for a pain clinic consultation next week. i listened to some more of american gods.

i complained about the company breakfast, which was anti-vegan for the second time this week. then i ate four slices of bread, right before being reminded that we were being taken to an expensive lunch before they pitched us their services*. i ate a lot of really good food.

* we were pleasantly surprised and impressed by the expert recommending a competitor's solutions when he realized theirs wouldn't cut it

overall, it was a successful work day, but it included us making a decision that might well see us losing quite a bit of sleep in the coming week.

i got home in time to listen to mr smear practice on the keyboard, and do a good hebrew reading, and verify that he knew where to look in the book for his upcoming open-book science test.

it looks like we're dealing with dust mites :( gd and i have both gone over a lot of surfaces, hopefully we've gotten through the worst of it.

after shower / bedtime / lots of talk about mr smear's new/renewed interest in 3d modelling and game design (and me installing ableton live because the cubase trial is already over), i settled down to work on the language project and have been jumping between that (making good progress) and youtube/minesweeper since.

now it's after midnight, it's probably a good idea for me to head to bed soon.

namaste

i went to bed late, but i got up way earlier than i wanted to. the day started off well, i spent the pre-school morning coaching mr smear through some last minute exam prep - he did really well! - and then rushed through an online grocery shopping so i could leave on time to get to our yoga class.

no buses for a while, i ended up arriving *just* in time.

it was a good class, not easy, with some highly amusing moments. i didn't hurt myself.

we got a good company breakfast and i showered before settling in to work; getting in and out of the shower wasn't amazing, but the shower itself is worth it!

it was a pretty successful day. but the most successful part wasn't me: i asked mr smear how his day went and i could hear how pleased he was with himself, because he's pretty confident he aced the test. i am too, but i'm more excited about him not only getting a handle on the math, but feeling good about it too ^_^

i left early to meet gd and mr smear at the pain clinic for her nerve block, but we arrived there to discover that we hadn't sorted out authorization and it costs thousands of shekels, so we rebooked, did some shopping and went home.

i got mr smear to work on cubase for a while, but to be fair a lot of the actual work was done by me. *we* put together a pretty cool beat, and i hope he learned as much as he claims he did :P

then he read a couple of pages of hebrew harry potter - well - we had an early dinner and a pleasant evening. i spent a couple of hours ironing out issues with the language project, where user registration and authentication is now good enough to move on to the interesting stuff.

it's late again. hopefully i'll sleep.

an unexpected delivery

today was wednesday. yesterday was tuesday.

yesterday:

it was a relaxed morning (in spite of some trouble getting mr smear up and at 'em), but it was still a very long, busy day with lots of interruptions and headaches.

you know when you take leave, and get sick because you finally have time to be sick? i got to the office yesterday morning and i crashed.

in the evening, when i finally got around to taking care of the top item on my to-do list, it went south and made me leave the office an hour later than i'd planned*. and then, after getting mr smear into bed, i had to continue working on it until eventually realizing that i literally couldn't resolve it without accessing the problem device in person.

* i complained about mr smear reading instead of spending some time with me, and then the sirens went off and we had a few minutes playing a game together in the bomb shelter :P

i was falling on my nose by the time i went to bed. and i slept right until the 6.3 magnitude earthquake in crete woke me up with our building moving around in circles. nobody else woke up, but i couldn't get back to sleep.

today:

oh, yeah - my neck and back have been moving issues around for days now.

this morning started calmer than yesterday, and after dropping mr smear off at school i met up with gd at the hospital to track down the clinic for her toenail issue. i was expecting to get bounced around a bit, but were sent directly to the right place and were immensely relieved and grateful to get an appointment that's relatively soon. and then we walked to our clinic and immediately received authorization for that appointment, so that's awesome ^_^

...

i had one mission today, and i barely touched it. i arrived at the office in time for a meeting with a third party, and we came up with a workaround strategy but his issues really didn't make sense. then i got sidetracked by our security consultant investigating a weird incident of my computer behaving weirdly in the middle of the night when it was supposed to be sleeping.

on my way to pick up lunch, i checked in with gd about an unexpected delivery i'd received a call about, and it turned out to be a beautiful care package from my company to say thank you for all the extra effort since our coworker passed away.

that was really touching!

over lunch, i came up with a weirdly compelling trump / bibi conspiracy but i now cannot for the life of me remember what it was :/

a new employee also has lots of tattoos, which set of a funny lunch discussion. then we interviewed a really interesting candidate, who's surprisingly knowledgeable and compelling for his relatively short experience.

in the afternoon, one of my coworkers approached me to ask me for some help with third parties, and in an exciting turn of events we managed to resolve his issues in a way that might help me with those of the morning. i've got some more testing to do, but if this works we'll have learned something that'll save us a ton of heartache going forward!

...

in the meanwhile, it was mr smear's last play therapy session and it apparently went well. i feel bad for her because mr smear was her final project, i hope us bailing on her doesn't affect her too badly.

...

i came home relatively early for a pleasant evening (in spite of a work issue that exploded at suppertime but that someone else ended up taking care of).

...

after showering, i was clipping my toenails when i noticed that one of them didn't look right. thinking that it was dirty or that i was developing something funky, i tried scraping it, and to my horror most of it almost came right off then and there 😱

it looks like when i recently smashed my toe into a table leg, it did a lot more damage than i thought...

...

at bedtime, gd came out laughing because mr smear had wished her a good night and asked her to never commit suicide. i immediately quipped that i'd bet he wouldn't wish me that... and i was right.

but while i was busy being hurt, gd informed me that mr smear's almost done reading maus, and he's obviously affected by art spiegelman's mother committing suicide. so i feel a little less bad.

i thought i'd get work done tonight, but i'm done. g'nite.

context switching

it's late and i want to play a little more slay the spire before bed, so i'm being relatively lazy about posting.

yesterday:

i didn't sleep very well at all.

yesterday was ridiculous.

it began with a massive fight over screen time in the mornings, which eventually - and with a lot of big feelings on all sides - was resolved in a reasonably satisfactory manner.

our parental guidance meeting took an unexpected turn; i thought we'd be talking about what we'd been fighting about - which primarily covered our approaches and failures regarding teaching mr smear how to appropriately deal with authority - but focused entirely on the play therapist that gd's (and mr smear, apparently) been losing patience with...

my work day was insane. i was pulled in so many directions and forced to context switch so much that for a while i literally couldn't keep track of what i was doing or trying to do. meanwhile, the two main things i was supposed to be doing feel by the wayside, and i ended up needing to continue the work from home.

i'm very grateful that one of my coworkers tried out their pesach gift massage kit next to me, which inspired me to take it home. i think it made my family appreciate me more.

then i got home, did All The Things, and by the time i was ready to work i was so tired that i had to lie down.

the only time i got up was when i couldn't sleep and my neck was feeling stiff, so i lay down on the massager for a while before returning to bed.

today:

eating a couple of pieces of caffeine-laced chocolate after dinner - along with a heck of a lot more sugar than i'm comfortable admitting - did not help me sleep well. not only didn't i get much sleep, but mr smear woke up twice in the night and was too afraid to go back to sleep by himself, so while i'm grateful that gd took care of it, i was still affected somewhat.

getting some of the work done

my back locking up after returning home from walking mr smear to school

seeing a plastic surgeon after a couple of months' waiting, to be given a referral for an actual surgery (very minor) in another couple of months' time (and then discovering that i have a conflicting appointment when it was too late to change it)

black salt and hot sauces on the way to work, and a surprisingly excellent UX upgrade from the hop-on app (i could select my bus stop from a map)

broken glass jar due to the cap not being screwed on, and it's unlikely but possible that i'm the one responsible.

less intense work day but still very busy, some good moments and some bad.

trying to leave and getting caught up in an important conversation, then being hounded by a company partner before i had my bag packed.

a bit of a screen-time fight when i got home, but i think i handled it well

mr's smear's first dad joke (i only tweaked it a little):

"why did the boy throw away his day-old dessert? because it was off-pudding"

* black mirror: common people is hard to watch. the overall story is brilliantly awful, but *SPOILER ALERT* it also deeply upset me that at no point did they consider taking anyone to court and there was an obvious better ending available *END SPOILER ALERT*

* natasha hausdorff facing off against dolores umbridge is an absolute master-class in maintaing composure

days off

i'm currently waiting for mr smear with a cup of coffee and my laptop, so i figure this is as good a time as any.

yesterday:

yesterday was absolutely brilliant. we started the day in good spirits, and left roughly when we intended to get the car and drive up to the kibbutz. gd's on meds that require drinking plenty of water and stopping frequently to pee, but we only really needed two stops and one of them involved the acquisition of a quantity of snacks.

the weather wasn't hot yesterday, it was a bit cloudy, which for the current season and mission meant it was perfect. we arrived at my cousin's place, chatted for a short while, and then walked to her car and headed out to an entirely vegan hummus 90 on the way to the kinneret.

the food was absolutely delightful, as was the vibe. we definitely ate too much and enjoyed every morsel ^_^

we then drove on to beit gabriel, which is an absolutely gorgeous place to sit and chat over a coffee while enjoying the view of the kinneret. our initial impression was solid as we walked into a really nice photo exhibit, but my brain wondered "do i smell popcorn?" and i was confused because i'd forgotten that we'd been told there was a cinema inside.

the stunning view of the kinneret on a perfect day with almost nobody else around was wonderful, only marred by the massive screen facing the entrance and showing the trailer for the a minecraft movie movie trailer. i was a bit disappointed that mr smear literally didn't notice the lake because he was so excited by the screen :/

at least - once the trailer was over - i was able to drag him outside, and he pulled out his kindle (to read minecraft books), which is as close to just enjoying being in nature as most children get these days.

from there we drove back past har tavor (mount tabor), and gd was really excited to see another location made famous by the bible. unfortunately, on the drive back gd's back began to hurt... we also got to witness just how little patience our cousin has for the ultra-orthodox :P

we got to see one of our kibbutz cousin's kids and family and spent a few minutes chatting with them, but by then sunset was approaching and we were starting to feel the pressure to hit the road.

it was dark by the time we left, and the drive back home was mostly gd suffering from discomfort and pain and waze leading us in a round-about way (which i believe was the best way, but it was completely unfamiliar) while crazy drivers bobbed and weaved amidst other crazy drivers.

we made it back to the parking spot with ten minutes to spare, very grateful that gd was (relatively) in one piece and hadn't needed a pit-stop. we all ended up going to bed very late, but by and large everyone had had an amazing day out, mr smear had been really cool for its entirety and we were all glad to have spent such good time with our kibbutz cousin and seen new things.

today (so far):

i didn't sleep particularly well, but i did sleep. in the morning, i finished reading of mice and men, and although i generally enjoyed it from the start, the end really blew me away.

i was disappointed to learn that mr smear gave the original dune book a try, and found it boring :(

...

after getting a few things squared away, i accompanied gd to the hospital to try and organize an appointment for her to get her foot seen to. after waiting our turn, the receptionist informed us that there was no point to speaking to her and that we needed to contact their offices.

when i told the woman who answered the phone what gd had been going through, she immediately became bizarrely defensive, and there was a mix of yelling at her and trying to reason with her before she agreed to book gd for an appointment that was only in a month's time (as opposed to a half a year's time that she'd threatened).

i then spent about twenty minutes on the phone trying to arrange a private consultation, eventually giving up (the phone menu system is rigged) and heading to our clinic, where we were fortunate to receive a personal recommendation from one of the receptionists.

so she has an appoint for three weeks' time, instead of a month. it's better than nothing.

...

herding our cat of a son to working on his hebrew class' holiday project was exhausting, so i piled some blankets over my on the couch and enjoyed a beautiful nap, which i was wrenched out of to bring him to his therapist. and now it appears to be time to go and pick him up and see what the rest of the day brings.

sleep deficit

i certainly could have used some more sleep. i say that, but it's approaching midnight again... one of my bosses asked this afternoon if not sleeping could be making him stupid. i suggested that not getting sufficient REM sleep prevents our brains from processing information.

"so... you're saying i am stupid?"

aside from getting mr smear up and to school in good spirits (and reading my kindle instead of looking at screens), i managed to get some work done and have a meeting with my (direct) boss before gd and i headed out for our meeting.

the meeting went pretty well. gd had a couple of emotional moments, one positive (the new principal gave her a hug) and one negative (the old principal got a lambasting in absentia, with gd comparing her to a "hair on a soup"). we learned that mr smear's chief bully is on the spectrum and mr smear takes it personally when he makes faces and noises that - allegedly - are him self-regulating 🤦

we've agreed that mr smear's current shit class is probably the best place for him, primarily because they made the other classes sound even worse. i'm not sure how i feel about that.

i walked gd home, then continued on to work, completely forgetting to help her prepare to cut mr smear's hair after school. which in retrospect must have been a good thing, because the washing machine technician arrived a day early to examine it and decide that gd had simply been using too much soap 🤣

most of the work day - the bits that i was in the office for - were straightforward and productive, though i am a bit unsure as to whether what i'm doing really qualifies as meeting my deadlines. and i received my first full payslip today, which was less than i was expecting. i had to go over it earlier this evening and i'm hoping my insurance broker will agree with my assessment...

between my morning chat with my boss and an afternoon chat with our (unofficial) head of communications, i feel like that was the most productive part of my day.

i left the office early to meet gd at the orthopaedist's offices. we arrived early enough to buy new pillows and get a few groceries, and eventually found the clinic itself. the examination was brief, and now we're on to the next specialist (the one we knew from the beginning she needed to see).

we got home just as the play therapist was leaving, and after unpacking the groceries that had been delivered i sat down with mr smear to continue The Homework. but that took longer than anticipated, mainly because we had a couple of in-depth talks about All The Things.

the simpsons over dinner - gd's experiment with making vegan chopped liver for passover was a complete success - and then a fairly relaxed bedtime / finishing john wick (it's a well-executed 80's-style action film) / run on kaycee's mod / and now this before going to bed.

entering overtime (again)

 it took me a while to get to bed last night, and i think i slept alright. my wakeup, however, was startling.

mr smear got up early, brushed his teeth, and made himself breakfast.

i literally had to bite my lip to keep from saying "who are you and what have you done with my son?", gd woke up in even worse shape than before and he really made our morning so much easier.

i knew that rewarding him with screen time was the right thing to do, and he appreciated it, but i also know that that's a slippery slope...

... meanwhile, he installed something all by himself and it was a panicky few minutes making sure it wasn't malware :/

i walked him to school, then returned home, and barely had time for anything before gd and i joined our scheduled parental guidance session.

considering how wild the previous week had been, we had a lot to talk about. some of the conversation was tough, but i feel like we both got a lot out of it.

i then immediately left to pick mr smear up from school and take him to the doctor. i managed to get some work done while waiting, mainly because the doctor was running about half an hour late. she took one look at his eye and told me we need to carry on the treatment... i don't think we really needed an appointment for that.

i dropped him off at home, had a quick breakfast, then hopped on a bus to work. most of the bus ride was spent breathing into my arm and staying as far away as possible from the smelly homeless guy who was arguing with himself.

the work day was... not bad, i guess. but i've got urgent stuff to catch up on tonight, and it's 11pm already :(

homework time wasn't perfect, but we got through it. dinner was nice. watching most of the first episode of slow horses while trying to help gd with her back was fantastic. listening to these two videos of eric weinstein while doing the dishes was.. comforting. people are understanding.

* eric weinstein sees something in hamas’s strategy no one else sees

* you’re in a war (and you don’t even know it

and now that i've typed this all out, back to wrestling with cdktf.

blowin' in the wind

thursday:

i was right about thursday morning being intense, but we didn't expect it to begin at 4am with another rocket attack.

i spent a good chunk of my morning trying to get midjourney to make me a picture like this one, but with the right number of toes so i could do this:

my favorite failure of the bunch:

i took mr smear to school, and then accompanied gd to misrad hapnim to apply for her new passport. at least the coffee was good... we arrived on time, waited a short while, and then discovered that i'd made a big mistake by not checking what we needed to bring. we didn't have gd's expired passport with us.

she had a doctor's appointment right after that, and we both understood from the clerk assisting us that i could just come back later with the passport itself, so i made sure she got on the right bus and i stopped off at home, picked up mr smear's meds, rushed to the school gate, administered the meds, rushed back home, scarfed down a bowl of muesli, and headed back to that counter with gd's passport.

i may not have had to make an appointment, but i did have to wait about half an hour for the clerk to finish with the previous couple, by which point i was way later for work than i thought i'd be. and then, to make things even better, the clerk looked at me in astonishment when he realized that gd wasn't with me.

...

so we have to go back again one of these mornings 🤦

...

the work day was crazy. it began with an all-hands with a lot of interesting news, not least of which being that i'm going to need to go through a polygraph experience again. on the one hand, i'm okay with that. on the other hand, i'm not okay with that. this is going to be... an experience. but i guess it's best to get into it and over it as quickly as possible.

...

i completed the thing i'd been working on, and moved on to other stuff, beginning to work "organized" for the first time in ages - not only getting into the new ticketing system (notion-based, it's kinda weird but not bad) but starting to track my hours like i did when i last worked as a contractor. really more for me to understand what i've been doing and how much time i've spent doing it,.

i don't know if it was wise to drink a beer at happy hour, but i definitely felt it and my lead's comment about reviewing code after a beer seemed less funny when i was actually doing that :/

[i don't recall much about the evening]

yesterday:

i spent a good chunk of yesterday updating an old encryption package i maintain, most of the effort being rewriting code "the right way" only to discover that that's still unsupported by modern browsers and needing to revert it :P

gd and i took mr smear to the doctor in the morning, which got weird because i couldn't make heads or tails of what the doctor was trying to tell us and she laughed at my confusion. gd seems to understand what was happening, at least. we did some shopping and came home, and we were all in the mood to not get up again for the rest of the day.

but then i learned that mr smear hadn't brought his homework books home, so we ended up having to walk to the school to pick them up. we ended up having a massive fight, which started because he didn't want to do any homework in the first place but ended up getting really ugly. i ended up walking out of the school without him, but i called gd and she talked me down and i returned to give him another chance.

it took a little while for us to get through things - we were both feeling hurt and angry - but we did, and the rest of the afternoon was quiet. and we even had a positive experience with the homework.

gd has been having trouble with her back lately (i mean she's always have trouble, it's just been worse than usual) and we ended up ordering dinner, which is very complicated on a friday night. it worked out alright, though.

afterwards, everybody crashed.

today:

the weather wasn't nice at all today, so we all stayed in. i got some stuff done in the morning, and the big event of the day was us watching the original karate kid movie. and boy, did i feel dumb: i haven't seen the movie itself in decades, and at some point after the bro mitzvah, i guess i started believing the troll about larusso being the movie's villain.

anyway, not only did mr smear really enjoy it, but there are strong parallels between larusso's experiences and his own, and i think that might prove helpful.

over dinner we began rewatching the fifth harry potter movie. the last few hours have mostly been me trying to build a set of scripts for work, stopping when i felt too tired to carry on, finishing a run of kaycee's mod that i began recently (water tribe, with a mighty ouroboros with double-strike), posting this, and now going to bed praying that we don't have to run for the shelter tonight.

quieter

 i definitely slept better last night. it was weird, though - i got a phone call earlier with the results, and aside from a recommendation to visit an ENT for my snoring i was informed that my sleep was just fine. but i slept horribly. so i don't know what to make of that.

this morning went pretty smoothly in spite of mr smear's failed attempts to stay home. dropping him off at school was pleasant - lately i'm making a point of taking him because it's the best opportunity for us to just talk - and i managed to fix up one of my side projects that i'd neglected.

and then... take care of the massive crow turd on the external air-conditioning unit outside mr smear's window. and it's neighbor, the windowsill turd we hadn't noticed before. gd was gagging, and i was upset: there's a massive difference between cleaning up one's child, or picking up after one's pet, than doing the same for somebody else's. or somebody else. or something else.

i felt violated. it was about the size of a border collie poop and i had to scrape it off in multiple attempts 🤮

...

it was a bit cooler today (and it was quite rainy this evening), so i regretted not wearing a sweater to and from the office. the office vibe was totally different today, as most of the org was either in the field or working from home, and at peak there were four of us in a large open space. it was strange, but not unpleasant. very quiet.

at lunch time - while scarfing down a mixture of leftovers that gd had put together that worked out surprisingly well - i ended up talking about our aliyah experience and about the state of south africa. i don't recall how the conversation got there, but i really brought the guys down and every time i tried to spin into something positive i managed to make it somehow worse :/

i couldn't stop snacking all day. most of it was the fruit platter that i effectively had all to myself :P

work-wise, i left after getting really good results that i'm very pleased with ^_^ (although i literally couldn't believe it when i finally got everything green!)

...

i came home a bit earlier than usual, hurrying to avoid the rain, and there was just enough time before dinner to do some of mr smear's hebrew reading with him and a page of his geometry homework. he did it all without the usual battle, and it was actually a good experience for both of us!

so that was cool.

we watched a disturbing episode of delicious in dungeon over dinner (episode 23 - griffin soup), and we had a smooth shower / bedtime. gd and i watched an episode of two of seinfeld after i saw a relatively recent interview with michael richards - the standup bits aren't funny, but the stories are great - during which i passed out on the couch and woke up to her watching a show in which a kid gets arrested on suspicion of murder.

i've been watching random stuff, and drinking tea, and i think i'm going to crash soon. tomorrow morning's going to be intense - gd's applying for her proper israeli passport, after which i have to go to the school to administer mr smear's meds (he's having another outbreak around his eye) because she's got a doctor's appointment - hopefully it'll go smoothly.

...

this is jd vance saying something brilliant and obviously true: outsourcing manufacturing has hurt the west immeasurably.

and here's boston dynamics showing off a robot that's more athletic than an australian breakdancer

dreams and nightmares

 i slept horribly last night. like, way worse than usual. i was wired and restless, physically uncomfortable, and the entire experience sucked. i even got up in the middle of the night and faffed around for an hour or two, but the remaining hours of the morning before getting up weren't much better for it.

i vaguely recall the morning going alright. [gets to the end of the post and remembers that the ceasefire ended this morning. i'm grateful we got some of the hostages back, but we always knew that this was just a ploy by hamas to stall and survive and mess with us some more]

i walked mr smear to school, returned home, and then all of a sudden it was later than i thought and i had to rush to get to the sleep lab to return the equipment.

fortunately, i was only a few minutes late. i dropped off the gear, then hopped on an unfamiliar bus to work. it worked out fine.

...

my work day was intense, but overall great. it started awkwardly with me trying to help the new guy get his computer sorted out and not understanding that he was calling a thumb drive "DOK", proceeded with me starting to execute a plan my lead and i had come up with together, and before lunch we were treated to a surprise visit and talk by one of our customers. it was eye-opening.

after lunch, i finally got hold of one of the guys whose name everyone knows and we sat down to chat. his story was riveting, as is his job. mind-blowingly cool.

i got good work done in the afternoon, and was getting ready to go home when one of my coworkers caught me for a five minute conversation that turned into an hour-long intense discussion. although i was very eager to get out of there (which was duly noted), i feel like it was a really good discussion and that i managed to bridge two decidedly different approaches and attitudes.

...

i raced home, way too late for dinner, and scarfed down some of the leftovers. mr smear told me about some bullying that happened - on top of the fact that his best friend refused to go to school today because he's being bullied too - so that was that first bit of a shit feeling to bring me down from my work-high. then mr smear was a bit rude to my mom during their good-night chat, and another bullying incident surfaced that he'd handled poorly, which brought me down a bit more.

and then we discovered that he's having another herpes outbreak - it's been a year and four days since the first proper one - and that just brought the house down.

...

after saying good night to him i complained about how the evening had turned out, which gd misinterpreted, and then we had a fight. it took a while to get out of the fight, a part of which was gd remembering how distraught she's been since the morning news about the war resuming. we had a good talk about where we are and how the world looks right now, which turned to spirituality and religion.

and then a conversation about how the day went. and now... it's past 11pm and i don't know if i'm going to be able to sleep or not, but i'm pretty confident i'm not feeling like doing anything constructive right now. i kinda wanted to go to the purim (post-purim) rollerblade, but between all the emotions and the slight chance of rain i just couldn't.

and, of course, my eyes are feeling itchy now.

stealth mode off

 i slept fitfully last night. in the middle of the night, i got up to pee and found mr smear with his light on again, scared. i managed to handle this without a fight (in spite of his initial irritation that i was telling him stuff he already knew...), and i offered him a way of dealing with his fears that amused him. he then took it a step further into what was disturbing for me, so i informed him that he could do whatever he wanted in his imagination quietly, and left him to it.

it worked.

i woke up this morning to a surprise: my company's out of stealth mode! much quicker than planned - it turned out our hand was forced - but the attention is very exciting nonetheless. i've spent a lot more time on linkedin today than usual.

gd and mr smear both needed to go to the clinic this morning, both for issues with their big toes 🤔

on our way in i ran into the man who was the dean of computer science during my first degree, a man who had an enormous influence on my career - i think he felt a bit awkward, but he took my number 🤷‍♂️

we got some emergency appointments sorted out, and then headed to the pharmacy together. i paid a quick visit to the pain clinic to get gd another emergency appointment, then returned home for breakfast before heading out to the sleep lab.

i had time for a cup of coffee and to fix a coworker's PR before heading in. i feel oddly proud of myself for not commenting on the fact that their television was hung really skew, i think watching so many episodes of monk may have had an effect :P

on the way out i made another appointment for gd (standing up for her women's rights along the way), then hopped on a bus to work. on the bus, i chatted with my mom who informed me about my niece and her boyfriend and why my sister's been referring to them as dumb and dumber 🤦

work was pretty cool today, in addition to the out-of-stealth excitement. lots of little moments, and one big moment getting the biggest piece of the puzzle i've been working on locked in. and making plans with my lead.

i came home on a wired vibe, and the hebrew reading with mr smear was going great until it didn't... in spite of the unpleasantness, we pushed through and he apparently learned a lesson.

dinner was great, and we had a pleasant good-night chat with my mom which turned hilarious when i asked my sister (who's still staying with her) if she thinks it's possible that the reason she hasn't suffered any pain from her dental surgery is that she's gotten so much work done on her face 😈

we managed to get mr smear into bed peacefully, i reviewed my bloodwork results (nothing decisive, but i may be slightly anaemic and it looks like i have antibodies for mononucleosis), spent a good while rescuing gd's phone from her bad-user negligence, and now that i've posted this i'm starting to feel like i might be ready to go to bed soon.

it's been a pretty productive day.

bad language

i slept a bit better last night, but still tossed and turned a lot.

mr smear was off school today for shushan purim, and i left for my blood tests, which got off on the wrong foot because i couldn't register my arrival, and i waited impatiently for very slow people before finally getting to counter and discovering that i'd been using mr smear's card instead of my own :/

fortunately the wait for the blood test wasn't long. the drawing itself was a bit unpleasant, not terrible but not good - the guy left the needle loose and it was mostly hovering around a 90° angle. then i went to the pharmacy, where i learned that one of gd's prescriptions was incorrectly entered into the system, and then back to the receptionists to find out that the message i'd received regarding mr smear's therapy authorization was meaningless.

anyway.

i got home, and gd and i confronted mr smear about his hebrew teacher's report. we were shocked to discover that mr smear hasn't accepted his new reality at all, and that he's still been holding on to the idea that he doesn't need to learn hebrew, that he's going to give up being jewish and go live in america.

what followed was a long and brutal affair, but eventually we seem to have gotten him to understand that a) we have nowhere else to go and b) you can't give up being jewish and c) without hebrew and good school grades in general he's not going anywhere, least of all america.

good grief.

work today was alright, it began with a chat with lipgirl about south african violence (i didn't know she'd worked as a stewardess and had naively walked from a hotel to a mall in johannesburg), then a fight with file.pizza as an alternative to scp (but it refused to begin downloading on multiple attempts), then a very pleasant walk on another beautiful morning to the hardware store to pick up a modern flash drive.

the rest of the work day (and another hour or so after mr smear went to bed) was spent getting a very important part of our installation working. i think i'm about halfway through at this point.

i picked mr smear up after his therapy session and brought him to the office, where he mostly did his homework (reading hebrew comics and a few pages of maths). he also made a funny comic which uses the word "motherfucker", and as always it's very hard to admonish a child for bad language while you're actively laughing both at how he's used it and at how pleased with himself he is for straddling the boundaries.

good grief.

we ran into one of his classmates' dad on the light rail home, and amongst other things we talked about the allergy drama and he was supportive.

dinner was good, delicious in dungeon is still going strong.

i'm tired now. i didn't take the alpha lipoic acid and tomorrow i'm picking up my "home sleep lab" kit on my way to work. i think i'm going to hit the hay soon.

drama allergy

 well, shit. today was pretty dramatic, my workday isn't over yet but i need to do a quick mind dump to free up some bandwidth for what remains...

yesterday:

i slept better on sunday night. i'm wondering if the alpha lipoic acid the doctor recommended is having an immediate effect. seems too good to be true, but if it's working i'll take it.

i rushed to the office early to return the keys i'd accidentally left with, and started the day on a zoom call with gd and mr smear's therapist which was generally optimistic.

the work day itself was tough, and i got home pretty frustrated.

mr smear did some good reading with me, and as a reward for doing it with a good attitude i started teaching him how to play minesweeper :)

after dinner i managed to make a little progress on a dev tool before settling down to watch an episode of monk with gd, after which i watched a few random youtube videos until realizing i needed to go to bed.

today:

i slept relatively well last night. lots of dreaming.

today started off pretty well, between the time mr smear left for school and the time gd and i left to meet up with him and his teacher i managed to make a bunch of appointments (from sunday's meeting with the doc).

the meeting started off awkwardly, as they wanted mr smear to introduce himself and tell us how he's doing. my gods, i wouldn't have been comfortable being put on the spot like that either, certainly not at his age, but after a brief silence we got things moving forward and lots of things were said.

in summary: mr smear's teacher seems really solid, and they appear to be off to a good start. i think we covered all the things that have been going on, where he's coming from and what he's been learning to deal with, and it was pretty optimistic. once he'd left the room, we talked about some of the heavier stuff.

of particular note was the councillor informing me that she received a call yesterday from the organization i spoke to, and she was offended that i'd reported that we didn't feel like they were doing anything. i made it very clear that our second complaint was about bullying, violence and harassment, and that until i informed the principal that we intend to go to the police the next time mr smear is injured we never saw any real response from the school. we talked about that in depth, and i think both the councillor and his new teacher understand where we stand and what's at stake.

i managed to keep my mouth shut when the councillor told us how important communication is, when we're the ones who've been begging them to communicate...

from there i went off to work. my lead and i came up with a plan, but my boss' request to prepare what i've been working on for a third party took up most of my day. and random conversations surround our procedures and practices too, i guess.

...

after lunch, though, was when all hell broke loose: mr smear's teacher dropped a bomb on the parents by demanding no dairy in the mishloah manot that the kids are supposed to bring tomorrow, and a lot of the parents were furious. not just because they'd already invested in and prepared the packages, but on principle, too.

my immediate reaction was flat panic because we do not want the parents or the other kids to resent us or mr smear due to his allergy. let me tell you, it's very difficult to navigate a situation like that tactfully when you want the teacher to know that what she's doing is appreciated (and correct, considering dairy is supposed to be banned on school grounds just like peanuts) but you also want the parents to not hate you.

i sent a message to the teacher to that effect, then i posted in the parents' group that i'd done so and that we had no intention of making everyone's lives difficult.

what followed was surprising: the mother of the bully from last week reached out to me, along with another parent, and both of them were stunned to learn that his allergy is a real danger and that he's been isolated from the other children because he's (justifiably) too scared to eat with or near them. i spoke to the mother on the phone, and she almost brought me to tears: she remembers being an isolated olah chadasha when she arrived, and she was deeply upset that mr smear has had to deal with the food thing on top of everything else. she's determined to use this story as a way to teach her son, and insisted on putting together mishloah manot specifically for mr smear.

she also convinced me to clear things up for the other parents. so i wrote a post in the group as follows:

hi everyone, i just spoke to some of you and realized that <mr smear>'s situation wasn't so clear until now.

<mr smear> has a severe allergy to dairy products. not a sensitivity - an allergy - at a life-threatening level. he has to carry an epipen with him at all times, and he is (rightly) afraid of other people's food that contains or may contain dairy products, so he usually avoids eating with the other kids in class or stays away from them because he is afraid that there might be an incident.

there are even kids in the class who take advantage of this fear to hurt him. just so you know.

we are very grateful to the parents who are considering the social implications of this, and those who contacted us - you touched us deeply. those of you who already understood and always cared - we thank you very much.

we're happy that <the teacher> is taking this matter seriously, but i promise that it is not our intention to make things difficult for you or your children. this is not an easy situation, for both us and you, and i hope we will continue to cooperate (and tolerate as much as possible) so that we can all be as comfortable as possible ❤️

the responses that followed were positive. and even if only some of the parents are with us and supportive, that's huge, and for the first time we don't feel so alone with this and we understand that the lack of consideration has mostly been from ignorance, not apathy. and now there's a bit of competitive overcompensation going on and it looks like a bunch of kids might be bringing vegan mishloah manot for mr smear tomorrow, so of all the directions today could have gone in i ended up having to give him a talk about showing gratitude for any gifts he receives even if they're from kids he doesn't like.

to underscore the first lesson, though, when i discussed it with mr smear after i got home he told me that he'd been really angry to learn that most of his class - after three and a half years with him - didn't understand what an allergy was. so today mr smear and their new teacher taught them. and maybe some of their parents learned, too.

...

that whole story took about two hours out of my work day, i went from terrified to overcome with gratitude to awkward and anxious and it took quite a while to come back to earth and be able to do some work. and then it was time to come home (late), i was supposed to help mr smear with his homework but between our talk and his stomache really hurting that didn't happen.

he'd better be doing okay by tomorrow morning. his best friend sent photos of himself hand-making oznei haman with pistachio cream for him. holy shit.

accounting

 well... this morning could have gone better, mr smear was his usual uncooperative-in-the-morning self and our day began unpleasantly. although we did eventually have a (relatively) good talk, he was still unhappy for most of the walk to school. then i dropped him off and told him i was off to the doctor, and he very aggressively demanded that i tell him why which was kinda cute.

[jackals going mental, i've shushed them twice tonight already and i feel like they're not caring much]

i walked to the clinic and sat with our doctor. by the time i left, i had referrals for a sleep lab, a neurologist, a psychiatrist and blood tests, along with a prescription for alpha lipoic (supposedly for my pseudo-RLS hip issues, at least it's not psychotropic).

i came home, helped gd with some stuff (her back's giving her trouble), then got sent out to draw money for her. i was feeling a bit woozy by the time i got back up the stairs, so i hurriedly wolfed down an early breakfast and headed off to work.

i think my work day was pretty good, but it could've been better. i'm very excited by how we're performing as a company, though, the results of our weekend efforts were particularly exciting ^_^

i picked mr smear up from his therapist and he hung around the office - mostly pretty chilled - and i feel like the end of my day was alright. then we came home for dinner.

...

gd and i had had a discussion about his eating habits this morning, it's something i've been bothered by for a long time: he only eats symbolic amounts of the food he really needs. tonight i was proud of both of them; in spite of the drama (mr smear claims it was the most traumatic experience of his life) he ate three whole slices of zucchini.

...

we had a good chat with my mom and sister while mr smear got ready for bed. one of my cousins' kids is coming to tel aviv and we're making plans to meet up. and it was a little bit of a relief that it's his brother who was the jailbird and not him. we saw my nephew for a half a minute, and were shocked because he's not looking too good at the moment - his health situation's been terrible, he's been having a really hard time :(

after putting mr smear to bed, brushing my teeth and showering, i settled in for some phone calls to my canadian bank. it took a few tries, but eventually i got them to close the account and it looks like we're properly done with them!

it feels good to close the chapter on that.

i just realized how late it's gotten, i'm going to try going to bed now.

definitely down with the sickness

 i don't know what it is, or how long it's been brewing, but yesterday i continued to feel terrible and snotty and last night i began to develop a throat infection... it's currently in schroedinger's box, i guess we'll see.

yesterday:

the first thing - that set the tone for the day - was responding to the "integration teacher":

let's not gaslight the parents, please. it goes without saying that <mr smear> has a responsibility to cooperate and work in the classroom, and we're making every effort to get him to do so. i'll remind you that the school already knew that he had a specific problem with language classes, and in addition to not giving him the lessons that new immigrants are entitled to, you also put him in a class for two years with a teacher he didn't trust - so letting him, in a new year with a new teacher, start on the wrong foot without communicating with the parents is already an unacceptable level of negligence.

let's add to that that we've heard from him that <his teacher> A. has given up on him and told him explicitly that she didn't care what he was doing, and B. doesn't acknowledge him even when he does cooperate, and C. makes up stories that she hasn't given up "but", without trying to communicate with us *after* we said it was neither logical nor reasonable that until about six months ago we hadn't heard from her or about her at all, this is simply appalling behavior from a teacher who is responsible for a very important subject for our son.

shame on you.

it took a while to get going, but by the evening i'd put together the two side tables. it was a rainy day, and i was feeling miserable, so i lay down to rest for a bit with cowboy bebop on.

ten minutes in, i received an urgent call from the school - mr smear was playing in a puddle and slipped, hurting the same foot that he'd injured a few weeks back. i kitted up for the rain and walked to the school and waited for him to hobble out, very slowly and dramatically.

it turns out the woman who walked him out is responsible for the entire grade, and i was pleasantly surprised when she informed me that she'd seen my message from this morning and is going to investigate.

i walked about two blocks with mr smear, trying to gauge whether he needed medical intervention or not, and i felt that it wasn't warranted. but i did feel that a taking a taxi home was warranted, we were moving very slowly and it was threatening to rain again...

i got mr smear home and gd got him into the bath so he could warm up and soak his foot after being soaked in cold, wet clothing for so long. i lay back down on the couch and continued with cowboy bebop, and mr smear joined me after his bath and the two of us just chilled like that for a while.

until gd arrived to pop my bubble and send me off to the pharmacist. so i begrudgingly dragged myself off the couch, got dressed up again, and walked to the pharmacist. from there i decided to try to pick up the packages that i'd been led to believe had arrived at a post point for me, and i walked through the rain until i found the place and discovered that i'd misunderstood the tracking alerts.

i passed by zuppa on the way, so i picked up an "old time vegetables" soup and struggled home, each step reminding me that in addition to general fatigue, every step i take wearing my heavy rain boots is effectively lifting weights.

gd and i enjoyed the soup when i got home, and i spent the rest of the afternoon doing dishes, helping mr smear with his homework, and putting the bedside tables together. for gd's birthday, we ordered dinner and it was delicious.

...

i realized yesterday that i hadn't checked our bank account since the beginning of the month, and was both excited and confused to see a lot more money than i'd anticipated. it's very easy to do the math wrong - not least because my first paycheque in the new job will only be for half a month. that notwithstanding, this way these events have all played out will prove to be a significant windfall and we'll finally be able to clear our debt!

...

we had some unpleasant business due to my mother asking me in afrikaans if we'd made a card for gd, and gd's very sensitive about people speaking in different languages in front of other people, so mr smear and i ended up being a lot less subtle in kicking gd out of the room so that we could put it together :P

i pretty much crashed after mr smear went to bed.

today:

mr smear and i woke gd up with singing and her card, but with his foot he wasn't up for going to school or checking out the art school's open day, so we had a quiet morning until gd started becoming nervous about getting his foot checked out.

so here we are, sitting at an aroma waiting until 1pm when the doctors and x-ray operators arrive...

the salute

 good gods, i woke up this morning to find feeds flooded with musk's apparent nazi salute. here's a post on the topic for any of you who're freaking out about not much.

also: 

this morning started well, with mr smear getting up early and the two of us having a great chat before taking off for school - i taught him cursive writing, which he was excited about, and also had some ideas for that game i've been thinking about.

after dropping him off and returning home, i settled into a long conversation / pitch with swordschool, which was exciting and fascinating but by the end of it my brain was melting... as usual with our chats :P

the biggest things i've taken care of today: signing the severance contract with my boss, re-applying for gd's therapy authorization, transferring tooth fairy money to mr smear, sitting with gd as she called her OB/GYN's secretary (who claimed not to have received anything in writing, after she'd already responded in writing two weeks ago to confirm that she has gd's file), did the dishes while gd took care of the projector's annual cleaning, spent a lot of time on phone calls with the municipality about electronic recycling (the sites either don't exist, or aren't marked at all) and "school fees" (personal insurance for mr smear, whatever that means), and threading through all these items i played a great run of inscryption that completely bombed towards the end.

when i realized that i needed somewhere quiet for my interview, i then also realized that it was a half hour earlier than i'd thought it would be. so i quickly slugged down my coffee that i'd just warmed up, jumped on a bus and am currently sitting in my office building buzzing quietly, nervously, and felt the need to dump all of the day so far because i felt it was dragging on my consciousness.

it doesn't help that i've done nothing towards the exercise i'm supposed to be working on for the other company.

hopefully the interview will go well.

trade-offs (ceasefire?)

the psychological terror continues. now we pray each day for the (relative) well-being of the hostages that we're paying for in future blood as we release serial and mass murderers who have every intent on continuing to try to wipe us out.

i'm trying to not think about what we're doing and what it means but it's really hard, and there's no clear right course of action available to us. i hope our "leaders" have secured us more lives than we've already lost, and i pray we have a real plan for whenever this "ceasefire" falls apart.

...

if there's a silver lining to this shitstorm cloud, it's that otzma hayehudit has left the coalition. thank fuck.

yesterday:

it was a relaxed start to the day, but then there was another rocket attack by the houthis (who the fuck are these assholes?!) followed by a massive fight to get mr smear to come out with me for a ride, even though he'd already agreed.

what followed was gd sitting and talking him through things, for what felt like forever (probably about 20 minutes to half an hour), and then fifteen minutes of him calming down, and then...

... and then we were off. i pumped us his deflated front tire, we took a rather roundabout route to try and stay on reasonably good bike paths, and we stopped occasionally because he needed rest, but ultimately we ended up at givon square, where we stopped to have a bite - a very large bite - at schnitt.

not too far from the stabbing attack that took place in levontin :/

the food wasn't amazing, but mr smear was having such a good time that he actually - unsolicited, i might add - thanked me for taking him out on such a great day ^_^

the ride home was good too, including a long stop on a bench on rothschild to have a heart-to-heart.

the rest of the evening went really well, including a really fun session playing inscryption together, and bedtime was a riot.

then gd and i settled down to watch the end of the third venom movie. omg. the writing in the first part was weak, but by the end it felt like a parody of an eighties action flick and i turned over in disgust before passing out on the couch.

today:

i slept alright, for the most part. we had some trouble getting mr smear ready for school, but we left the apartment in good spirits anyway. when his friend and his friend's sister caught up with us crossing the road i hurriedly said goodbye so they could enjoy their walk together, then made my way to the clinic to try and figure out what they want in order to authorize gd's therapy sessions.

turns out... they don't really know. so they made me an appointment with our family doctor, who then sent me off to the hospital, where i had a bit of a back and forth before they sent me off. in the afternoon gd's therapist called and i explained to her what i'd understood, hopefully we'll get things right soon.

...

it's been a day full of distractions. i spent some of the morning working on the exercise, and managed to figure out how to get the thing running, and then some of the afternoon reading through their whitepaper to try and understand how all the pieces fit together. i spent a chunk of the day taking mr smear to his therapy session and handling him doing his homework. i've been made responsible for the keys to the bomb shelter for the building. i've been contacted by a company i interviewed for before taking my current (now-last) job.

it's been a day, so far. it's been a day.

the not-so-good doctor

 once upon a time, in 2018, gd and i were trying for another baby. gd's OB/GYN prescribed a medication that was supposed to increase her fertility, but instead triggered early menopause and obliterated any chances of her having more children.

i recently spoke to someone who's working in menopause studies, and mentioned this story, and she asked me what the medication was - but gd has forgotten and i have no records of it. so i've requested her medical records from her OB/GYN.

after two ignored emails, i called him up this morning. he knew exactly who i was, had all the details in front of him, and not only refused to release her records but directly lied about having prescribed any medications at all.

i was fuming - i'm still fuming - at his revolting behavior. although it's very clear to me that he's attempting to protect his ass from a malpractice lawsuit, but after making a mistake and hurting a patient he's now doing intentionally doing something that could interfere with her new practitioner's history-taking, even though we're living in a different country.

this evening i read the following. i don't know where this is going, but now i *know* we need to get hold of her records:

The Promotion of Access to Information Act 2000 gives everyone the right of

access to records held by either public or private bodies for legitimate purposes.

In the latter case, people should be allowed access to “any information that is held

by another person and that is required for the exercise or protection of any rights”.9

This includes access to health records.

Either the patient him/herself, or someone authorised to act on the patient’s behalf,

can request access; ordinarily the request itself is made in writing and should be

responded to within 30 calendar days.

...

yesterday:

another rocket attack in the middle of the night. it took forever for us to get out the apartment, and i honestly don't know why. when i got to the bottom of the stairs i saw mr smear and immediately yelled at him for not entering the shelter, then turned the corner and saw that everybody was outside the shelter because some asshole had locked it.

mr smear and i stopped to watch the demolition guys begin their work yesterday morning on the way to school, and he's decided that that's what he wants to do when he grows up.

i totally get it.

i was tired yesterday - my boss asked me if i was sleep-walking when he realized that i hadn't registered his existence while standing next to me in the elevator. it was a long work day, though by the time i left i felt like i'd made some good progress.

i knew on my way home that i was in no shape to go rollerblading.

on my way upstairs i checked the shelter and found it open. nobody's admitting to being responsible, and we still don't know who has the key :/

gd was at the dentist, so i took mr smear out for falafel. it was a really good experience.

i passed out pretty soon after putting mr smear to bed, and although some of the night was spent restlessly tossing and turning i mostly caught up on sleep.

today:

after dropping mr smear off at school, gd and i met with the guy who's going to do his psychological evaluation over the next few weeks. i feel it was a pretty good meeting.

gd and i had a small fight about something on the way to the bus stop, so that sucked, but we were fine shortly after. the work day was pretty good, minus my phone call to gd's OB/GYN and its aftermath, although the rude people from my cousin's office tried to crowd us out of the kitchen at lunchtime again and it makes things really unpleasant.

...

before dinner, i realized that mr smear hadn't completed his math homework (matific). when he completed it suspiciously quickly, i took a look and saw that he didn't quite do it in the requisite spirit of the thing. i made him do a time exercise because it's one his weaknesses, and where he was struggling i coached him through.

right until he threw an absolutely wobbly because, in his words, "it's IMPOSSIBLE!" even though he'd already done exactly the same thing successfully in the previous question. what followed was a tantrum of note, with much unpleasantness.

after his shower, and a very grumbly start to dinner, he cooled off. after dinner, i wrote out the question i remembered and he sat down and breezed through it (the IMPOSSIBLE question). he then begrudgingly apologized to me for the drama, and to gd, and finally to himself (he needed a bit of coercion to do that last apology out loud, but it's fine).

he then sat down to do the actual thing. the first few questions he breezed through, but then he got stuck again on a question where it was obvious to me why: he was overcomplicating things and confusing himself to the point where he was effectively guessing.

let me just say: there was a LOT of arguing. a LOT of me attempting different ways to get him to approach the question differently. a LOT of me pushing him to "think out loud" so that i could make sense of the weird leaps of logic he was performing.

but, goshdarnit, we got it in the end. and i witnessed what appeared to be a lightbulb moment, eyes wide and mouth agape, when he realized that he was confusing the numbers 0 and 60 because the minute of an hour is effectively both.

holy fucking shit.

the rest of the evening went swimmingly. emotions and strategic arguments with my mom and gd notwithstanding, and now that i've written this all down (has it been half an hour already?!) it's time to try watching venom again.

...

scratch that. after pausing for a twenty minute discussion with gd about the ceasefire agreement and the hostages being released, how every surviving hostage is as much a tragedy as every dead one, and how traumatized we all are, and how we can move forward as a people... i don't know what i'm doing or going to do.