testing

 the biggest news of the day was my mother meeting with representatives of the jewish agency to go through her documents again. unfortunately, it wasn't the final meeting, but it does look like she's made good progress and i'm very pleased that she spoke some hard truths to the reps that needed to be said.

hopefully she'll be sorted within the next couple of months. that would be nice. her story's going on four years already.

...

today got an angry start, part of it gd and mr smear (he's still a slow starter), part of it gd and one of our frying pans. so, after accompanying mr smear to school, gd and i went shopping. we picked up two frying pans, and a couple more soft blankets for our couch because winter's coming, and a couple of organizers to try and sort out our living room nightmare of piles of books and drawn-on pages and documents all over the place.

no vegan marshmallows for the birthday party mr smear's going to on saturday.

...

on my way to work i was suddenly overcome by some heavy memories of me being too hard on a much younger mr smear. it doesn't help that i thought i was doing right by him, i know now how messed up my behavior was and i'm sure that's going to haunt me for the rest of my life.

...

work today was all about writing and running tests. it was mostly good, minus a rocket attack and needing to fart while we were all waiting in the stairwell, and a bit of a fight with my boss which i definitely could have handled better.

i'm not sure if it helped that i was proved right by the end of it :P

i headed to the supermarket on my way home to see if i could find vegan marshmallows, and i'm getting the feeling they're off the shelves everywhere all of a sudden. i hunted through the entire mall until i eventually got to a candy store that had, while not the marshmallows i was looking for, a pretty good alternative from haribo. i'm not 100% sure if it's vegan, but at least it doesn't have fish, dairy or eggs in it...

they also had a giant bag of katjes that says "vegan" on it. so i bought that as well ^_^

i picked up a few umbrellas on the way to the bus stop, and the rest of the evening's been pretty good so far. putting mr smear to bed was a little bumpy, but we didn't escalate and i'm feeling pretty good about how the day went.

making memories

 phew.

last night i told mr smear we'd go out early this morning and head to the beach. he wasn't too enthusiastic then, but in the morning he absolutely refused to go to the beach. i managed to talk him down, compromising on the beach itself but not on going for a ride.

we enjoyed a fun ride down to the beach. when we got there, mr smear didn't follow my instructions to use the stair guide for bikes and dropped his bike, obliterating his front brake.

so that kind of sucked. but at least the rear brake was still good.

then, as we got to the bottom of the stairs, on a beautiful, perfect-beach-weather morning, with relatively few beachgoers and fantastic conditions, he said: "dad, i wanna go to the beach."

godsdammit.

we didn't have beach gear, because we'd gorram agreed not to the go to beach.

anyway. we rode down the promenade for a bit, then he decided he was ready to turn back. on the way, we stopped to get him a fanta, and then a fruit shake. we ended up sitting on a bench for quiet a while, just chatting and enjoying being where we were.

it was pretty cool.

eventually we decided it was time to go home, and by then it had gotten a lot hotter. by the time we got home, we were sweaty, and ready for some a/c, and three hours had gone by.

it was a good morning.

after showering, we enjoyed a big breakfast (neither of us had eaten, he hadn't been interested when i offered), and then settled in to watch gremlins 2, which we'd agreed to hold off on until it was daytime so he wouldn't be scared. he made it through about half the movie before decided to nope on out, primarily because it was too gory (all the slime :P).

he and gd then watched the aristocats, which they enjoyed. i didn't see much of it because i was passed out on the couch for the most part.

the rest of the afternoon is a bit of a blur, but then we had some drama: mr smear had agreed to go out again, and we'd reminded him for about two hours beforehand that it was happening, and then the time came to go and he was not interested in going. it took a combination of convincing and coercing to finally get him out the door, but although the first minute or two were quiet and uncomfortable he suddenly opened up and started talking about the games he remembers from the ps3 back in south africa. that led to a conversation about nostalgia, and about how our moments together now will be something i already know i'll have nostalgia for, and about rebelliousness and teenage hormones and how no matter what he feels we'll always have his back.

we ended up taking a rather long walk through the park, and we both enjoyed it. it was a very good end to a very good day. we got him in time for a second shower, a delicious dinner and the first part of the seventh harry potter movie, and a pleasant bedtime.

and then some more inscryption, act iii. i just discovered the mycologists for the first time 🤯

*sighs deeply*

i think i'm in a better place today than i've been for a while. hopefully that translates to a better work week. regardless, today was a day full of stuff i'm grateful for.

(my) back

the dryness in the hospital split the skin on my thumb again. it really hurts.

the full-day-of-youtube hospital experience wasn't good for anyone, but we did have some good moments and on monday evening mr smear did some great drawings and we read a bit more diary of a wimpy kid in hebrew. it's blowing my mind how mr smear can't remember simple things we tell him or whether or not he's brushed his teeth, but he remembers most of the books he's read verbatim and consistently helps me with or corrects my translations.

monday was hard. working on a chair in a hospital with a single screen was hard, dealing with mr smear dealing with youtube / other people like doctors and nurses / well-meaning purim revellers etc. was hard. not being able to go anywhere because he was in quarantine and attached to a drip was hard.

monday night was pretty much a repeat of sunday night. lots of sleep interruptions, but the actual sleep on their fold-out bed was pretty good.

yesterday morning was okay, a lot of the same from monday but mr smear's eye was looking much better. while gd got settled in and the doctors determined whether or not he was ready to go home, i went to the office.

the first hour or two in the office were considerably more constructive. lunch (a hummus run with my boss and a mostly full house at the table) was good. what followed was a mix of going to a three-minute dermatologist consultation - he doesn't think i have psoriasis, and believes everyone in israel should be shampooing daily - speed-walking back to the hospital ward to grab the toothbrushes gd forgot when they vacated, crashing in front of my desk while trying to avoid having more coffee, and a late evening struggling to debug something but finally walking out with a sense of accomplishment.

dinner in front of gravity falls last night - the last of the "special" days before getting back into a routine - and then a really hard night realizing that the last three sleepless months are at least partially, if not mostly, due to me being uncomfortable on our new mattress. i shifted to the couch in the middle of the night and slept much better.

now it's cleanup time, including dishes and grocery shopping online and taking laundry to the laundromat, before heading to work.