ritual insanity

yesterday the ceasefire went into effect. more psychological warfare, more terrorist propaganda, more anxiety. at least the first three hostages made it out alright, which was an enormous relief. i don't understand the schedule for the rest of the jesus-fucking-christ *third* of the hostages they're holding, but at this point i don't trust or believe anything to hold or make sense.

it's a relief that trump is now the american president. at least he's less likely to make things harder for us than the democrats have been...

...

i'm a bit tired, and sore. it's just past midnight, my brain's a bit fuzzy.

i dropped mr smear off at school, completely oblivious to the fact that it was a field trip day. and he'd left his phone at home. i came back, and then gd and i went off to our guidance session.

amongst other things, all three of us (the therapist, myself, and gd herself) learned that gd has been losing patience with the "play therapy" sessions. and i realized that we're going to have to be very careful about signing him up for the art school lottery...

we bussed home, i had breakfast, and then took off for the dermatologist. i had a list prepared, and was relieved to learn that most of the things that have been bothering me are just irritating getting-older-with-overly-sensitive-skin things, nothing dangerous or infectious (well, aside from one minor thing that i knew about, and now need to see a plastic surgeon for).

her exact description was "you have a ginger's skin" :P

on the way to pick mr smear up i saw photos from the field trip, and by then it was too late to cancel his hebrew tutor... fortunately, she was able and willing to make up the lesson in the evening.

a little later, while waiting for the kids to return, i had an awkward conversation with our hardcore-democrat friend's hardcore-democrat parent, and things got a bit uncomfortable.

mr smear got off the bus so grossed out that he wouldn't stop (literally) spitting, which was quite embarrassing. he claimed to be feeling sick, but i'm pretty confident it was psychological because he'd been sitting next to a sick, coughing kid the entire ride :/

on our way home, we purchased his next hebrew book: a translation of the first harry potter. i hope this goes well!

the next couple of hours were a mix of getting mr smear to do his homework, trying to read more about the exercise i'm doing, and then eventually taking my kindle to the couch and reading/napping for a while.

...

mona lisa overdrive: five stars for vision and depth, but it's hard to follow.

i recently re-read neuromancer, which has aged superbly and is nothing short of miraculous. i chased that with count zero, which takes a while to get warmed up and ends with a character abruptly tying up all the loose ends.

and then there's mona lisa overdrive. brilliant world-building, phenomenal ideas and a grand vision for bringing everything across the three novels together... but for the most part i found it incoherent. some scenes blew me away with how ingeniously and cleverly they were rendered, and some just left me feeling confused about who was doing what and why. i still enjoyed reading the book, but i feel like i missed a whole lot of stuff and i would need to go back and re-read it to put all the pieces together.

what i'd *really* like, though, is to see this adapted into a graphic novel or television series. i feel like gibson may just have been biting off a little more than even he could chew.

...

i took mr smear to his tutor and spent half an hour with a decaf coffee while studying the code, with a south african voice engaged in an intense conversation about investec nearby and an enormous flock of monk parakeets in the trees across the road erupting in a loud debate that lasted a few minutes and drew angry yells from someone in the building.

i picked up mr smear and we returned home, i helped him with his math homework and we watched the simpsons over dinner.

...

so far we're up to '92 (season 3), and there're two simpsons predictions nobody ever talks about:

1. with all my criminal buddies

2. otto the school bus driver not having a valid license. i'm not going to share it, but we have a video of mr smear's class stuck on a bus last year chanting "shame! shame!" at their bus driver after he arrived with an expired license 🤣

out of it

 the weekend has come and gone, and i'm... tired. and feeling dramatically overweight - i have gained a couple of kilos, but it's less about that and more about how i've been consciously eating too much in general, and generally too much stuff i shouldn't be eating in the first place.

yesterday:

mr smear seemed pretty much fine by the morning. while he was at school, i strapped on my rollerblades and skated across the city to pick up his new rain boots, which happened to be at a place that makes great shakes. my coffee shake was excellent, and i enjoyed just sitting with it in the sun on the sidewalk.

gd hurt her back in the morning, and her cough is getting worse. it would be really nice if things could be boring for once.

after picking him up from school, we did a grocery run, and i was definitely ready for a nap by the time we returned home... only i was sent to the pharmacy to pick up something urgent. that took forever, but in addition to the meds i also picked up a couple of graphic novels translated into hebrew: spider-man: quantum quest! and amulet #1.

and some edamame, which looked really good but turned out to be bland and yucky. and a bagel, which turned out to be really heavy and didn't taste so great. and then, after finishing the bagel on the way home, i discovered that gd had made ramen that mr smear didn't want, so i garbage-bin-dadded and felt awful.

after an unsurprisingly urgent nap, i coffee'd up and did the dishes and helped gd clean the apartment. after that i read through spider-man: quantum quest!, then we had dinner, got mr smear into bed - just as the massive thunderstorm began - and then i passed out on the couch.

today:

i eventually managed to crawl into bed, with the thunderstorm still raging on, but i slept rather poorly.

in the morning, when the world had calmed down a bit, i got up and completed what remains of edith finch:

the mechanics are excitingly clever... the story is tragic. the game does an incredible job of making the experiences wonderfully vivid and disconcertingly real.

this is a masterpiece.

mr smear saw a couple of scenes over my shoulder, and he wants to play some of the stories, but avoid the really sad ones. i think that's fair.

i read some more mona lisa overdrive, then fell asleep on the couch for a while. after i got up, we all settled in to watch thor: ragnarok. we have now seen all of the great MCU movies together (minus guardians of the galaxy, that's for when he's older), and it was a great experience.

i did, however, eat too much popcorn on top of the pastry on top of the definitely over-the-top challah with peanut butter and chocolate spread that i'd had for breakfast. i'm now officially on a reduced carb diet - not low carb, but just avoiding all the obviously unnecessary ones.

i took mr smear out for a walk, which ended up a very pleasant three hours past the museum (mr smear walked into the replica terror tunnel, then immediately bolted out), sat outside habima, walked up rothschild to legenda where he had a sorbet (i'm starting on the right foot), then walked all the way back home without barely any complaining and lots of good conversation.

we arrived just in time for dinner - gd had a squash alternative to the pasta for me, which was good - and mr smear has just gone to bed after a slow but mostly pleasant bedtime ritual.

i have no idea what tomorrow will bring, but i'm once again grateful for the weekend pause.

shape of a weekend

over the last couple of days we've become really concerned by mr smear - he's barely eating, lately, either claiming that he forgets to eat or that he's just not hungry. we don't want to make too much of a "thing" about it, but it can't be good :(

otherwise, gd's continued to be pretty sick. it's not as dramatic as the last time (a few weeks ago), but she's finding it unpleasant and gross and demoralizing.

...

the weekend is now over, after a very long and tiring week. i'm not sure what this one's going to bring, but i'm already feeling... unenthusiastic. i guess i need to find a technique to turn that around...

friday:

gd's dentist appointment didn't go as well as we'd hoped, but at least she got the filling for the cavity that was intefering with her crown being taken care of. we caught a bus, paid a visit to a pharmacy, hardware store and nature store, then walked to pick mr smear up from school.

the rest of the afternoon was spent quietly at home.

i started playing what remains of edith finch and journey. both really great so far. 

so far, i'm feeling like planescape: torment is torment in more than name. maybe now isn't the right time.

yesterday:

the day started with a few hours of doing random online things (mostly reading, but also posting a comics update for the first time in months) and reading mona lisa overdrive (i'm about halfway through, and it's finally starting to feel like it's coming together), and playing more of what remains of edith finch, while mr smear played on the playstation.

it was the mongoose's birthday, and he invited us to join him and his daughter for an outing to the zoo. that ended up turning into a stroll in the park, which turned into meeting up with his wife and going for hummus, and ultimately it was a very pleasant few hours that saw us getting a very real amount of exercise and fresh air, with only a few mild complaints from mr smear about wanting to go on his phone.

i spoke to the mongoose about a couple of ideas that have been bouncing around my skull: he put forward some solid arguments as to why my property disruption idea can't work as i've envisioned it. it's a sad feeling to discover big blindspots...

on our way home, we picked up a couple of tiny tubs of ice cream and mr smear expressed the sentiment that it was unfair that gd couldn't join us, and that he should leave her half. i agreed whole-heartedly in principle, though only half-heartedly in practice - it's *really* good ice cream :P

shower / dinner / bedtime: the first two were pretty smooth, but bedtime was, as usual, problematic. his fear of the dark.

...

i must have spent at least half an hour with him, trying to comfort and boost him but having a couple of fights along the way, but ultimately i got him to understand that i'm trying to help him out of love and that he's going to have to face this stuff - he might not find my specific advice useful, but that just means he's got to figure it out for himself. he finally rolled over without a shit feeling between us, and whatever he did appears to have been successful.

hopefully tonight will be easier.

adulting

last night was... stressful. i played some of a particularly difficult mission in shadowrun: hong kong, and i honestly can't tell if my nerves were all from the game or not, but i was buzzing with anxious energy. then gd exploded out of the bedroom on the verge of a panic attack, desperately angry because she can't wait another month and a half for her dental treatment when she can't eat properly (her dentist warned her about bread, FFS) and her mouthguard has become a catch-22 (it doesn't fit properly with her temporary crown, but if she doesn't wear it there's a good chance the tooth will fracture).

...

gd and i dropped mr smear off at school today - in spite of his now-regular protests - and continued on the dental clinic. it was a pleasant enough walk.

we didn't achieve a lot at the clinic, but the receptionist tried to help and gd was much more satisfied with the outcome.

we sat and enjoyed a slow coffee at lebowski, then walked back home, stopping on the way to pick up her new shoes from the post office (which she seems to be very happy with) and do a quick grocery run (the carrefour staff creeped me out today).

by the time we returned home i was pretty hungry, and i was stuck between instructions from my boss and a sync with my teammates, so i had a decent breakfast. after the sync i had a much better idea of what i needed to be doing, but the next hour or two i was generally quite distracted.

i picked mr smear up from school and took him across the road to his tutor - we sat together in the sun for ten minutes, it was nice once he stopped trying to get me to "compromise" on spending time together vs him playing games on his phone.

the coffee shop i wanted to sit in has rearranged their counter away, so i was forced to sit outside in the glaring sun at a table surrounded by flies :/

at least i managed to make a little progress on the work, although i was distracted by helping an old friend request donations for his unit and a man standing right behind me selling books to whoever would give him the time of day.

after picking up mr smear and returning home - witnessing some interesting construction work and having an awkward conversation with a stranger who recognized my saffer accent and had stories to tell of his time living in cape town - the afternoon went by quickly in a rapid-fire series of distractions with little pockets of work in between.

during the hour leading up to my phone interview, i tried to rest and prepare myself, but i realized that i'm not just burned out, but also bummed out (read: depressed), and i really can't afford to project that during my interviews.

at 6pm i got on the call, which ended briefly after we discovered that we don't just work in the same building, but that we're on the same floor, and we've agreed to meet in person instead.

i rushed off to dizengoff to pick up mr smear's new prescription glasses, and on the way back home received authorization from my boss to take three days off next week. i made a conscious effort to not look at my phone for most of the bus rides there and back.

the evening was pleasant, i ate too much, and around mr smear's bedtime i dived in to my work and achieved a flow state for the first time the entire day, and actually managed to finish off (the work day) around an hour ago with a satisfying commit.

at that point i closed my laptop and took my kindle to the couch, reading mona lisa overdrive until i passed out for a bit, then getting up with a sore back and deciding to write this all down before i head to bed.

...

shit, i was supposed to call my mother after saying good night to mr smear, we're trying to figure out the best way to manage crypto transfers and debt repayments.

pulling teeth

 the past twenty minutes have all been about gd losing her shit because her nonsensical dental plan's off the rails and she's scared she won't be able to eat solid food for the next month or two.

@$#!.

today's been a quiet, wintery, indoorsy day. we had another missile attack in the middle of the night, which struck in south tel aviv, and i wasn't able to get back to sleep after that. it was an awful night, and i spent a lot of the day on the couch napping.

i've finally uninstalled bloons: adventure time. after 500+ hours, most of which was grinding for zero payoff (the character resources mechanic is broken).

we watched the secret of NIMH, which has really held up well.

it took me most of the day to get through the dishes.

i've barely had the capacity to do anything interesting or functional. so it's been all about watching house and reading bits of mona lisa overdrive on the new kindle.