oh, right! and ozdoc messaged me last night, once again inviting us to flee the potential danger of an iranian attack.
the situation really is bizarre. nobody knows what's going on. tousi tv is the only reliable source of information. everyone has theories.
hopefully the iranians won't attack. if they do, hopefully we'll have time to get to the in-apartment bomb shelter in the new apartment, and not have to go huddle in the asthma-inducing dust-and-stale-air choke room downstairs.
well, the sleep like a baby trick did seem to help last night. hopefully it'll work again tonight.
i dropped mr smear off at school, and for some reason decided to pick up a copy of yisrael hayom on my way to the post office (after dropping my bag off at my office). it was an interesting read, not least because it informed me about tonight's lunar eclipse.
i picked up mr smear's new shoes, walked home, then returned to the office. it was a bit of a weird day, but i did make a bit of progress on my main task (each step forcing me to wait five minutes), convinced my boss to start looking for an IT guy, and got mr smear to his therapy appointment and encouraged gd to let him make his own way home (he succeeded without any issues).
in the evening, i rushed into the kitchen to confront one of my coworkers in a way that i hope he found amusing: "hey! are you a computer? no? then why are you adding items to lists in non-alphabetic order?"
[interrupted by jackals howling]
i came home, and what followed was a mix of good and bad vibes (helping mr smear with his math homework). then we rushed dinner and went out to see the eclipse, which fortunately we had a good view of from right across the road.
i was pleased that mr smear was interested, and nervously amused by a neighbor trying and failing to get his teenager into the spirit...
the bedtime routine was mostly positive, and reading about the time loop in the neverending story was fun.
the past couple of hours have been a mix of downloading random feeds into my brain while mindlessly playing minesweeper, and getting through a few chores that have been piling up. hopefully tomorrow will see me getting through the big ones that are still outstanding.
omg. sailor said if we could finish this war in under six days it'd be a new record, today's day six and already many iranians in the government and military are defecting and declaring for the crown prince. we just came back up from the bomb shelter, so it's definitely not over, but i'm praying that this is all actually real and that it's not too good to be true.
i cannot imagine how the iranians must be feeling. after half a century of oppression. no less the rest of the countries in the region.
...
my work-from-home day was mostly meetings, and supporting others, and not getting of my own tasks done. and occasionally helping mr smear, or getting upset with him for not respecting my work-from-home boundaries.
and watching a lot of news. i can't stop, but we perpetually stand at forks in the path, and each fork leads up into the light and down into the darkness, and i'm as anxious about someone somewhere taking the wrong turn as i am excited but slightly skeptical about the too-good-to-be-true outcomes we're seeing out of iran right now.
in the middle of the night, the pre-pre-alarms went off, and i jumped out of bed still in a dream-state and automatically woke everyone up before realizing that there was no point. three or four hours later, anothe pre-pre-alarm, only that one turned into a pre-alarm and we spent the next while in the shelter with no internet hearing lots of loud explosions.
mr smear did some fantastic drawing while i tried to stop one of the neighbors from enthusiastically pointing out all the flaws in the shelter and dreaming up awful ways we might die.
i don't know when the right time is to discuss urgent safety issues with the bomb shelter is, but i am pretty confident it's not when you're all stuck in the bomb shelter in the middle of a massive wave of rocket attacks...
we did all get back to sleep, but when the 7am alarm went off along with a reminder that mr smear had a hygienist appointment, we painfully dragged ourselves out of our beds (i was the slowest and the groggiest) to get ready to go. i did try to find out if the appointment had been cancelled, but all avenues pointed to "go", and mr smear and i scrambled out the door and just made it to the bus stop on time and i just finished my take-away cup of coffee in time to get to the dental clinic on time to find it closed.
on the plus side, it was an easy, quiet ride there and back and mr smear and i both enjoyed the conversation immensely (kerbal space program has inspired him to want to be an astronaut).
...
when we returned home, i called the dental service to complain, and the woman who answered was disagreeable right from the get-go, which pissed me off, and although i continued to try to explain to her that the clinics should be cancelling appointments if they're not going to honor them, by the time i got through her gaslighting and dismissing i totally lost my shit and i yelled and swore at her.
then i spent a furious little while navigating making a complaint, the process of which honestly made me even madder.
someone called me back a while later, and i explained what happened and told her to listen to the recording. i was satisfied when she took me off hold to agree to handle the complaint with that asshole's manager.
...
we had an interesting all-hands today, our company's in massive demand and things are heating up. this is good. but it's also exhausting right now specifically :P
...
my cheek seems to be healing alright, but it's still very fresh and i'm nervous about it. i'm grateful i didn't bleed on my pillow.
...
while i managed to get some work done today, i'm not satisfied and in spite of my current desperation to return to bed there's a chance i might try to dig in some more.
mr smear was pretty good about doing his homework, with only one emotional outburst that he turned around on so quickly that i'm still feeling really proud of him. he also helped me do the dishes this afternoon, and we actually had a good time of it. he's definitely growing up.
...
both of the people i communicated with yesterday regarding my mother's aliyah got back to me positively. i hope they can help me. i just wrote myself a reminder to contact whoever i contacted last year.
...
there's so much news happening right now. i was actually in a media briefing earlier, though i didn't hear anything new i was pleased that the people involved aren't missing the point of what's happening. and from the looks of things...
holy fuck, it looks like our forces are doing what they're now used to - going from suburb to suburb cleaning up, but there's no actual army to fight. just lots of terrorist cells with missile launchers (my thoughts after watching this tousi tv video about khamenei trying to flee to russia. what remains of the IRGC is absolutely psychotic)
... holy shit. this was only day four. in october last year, i wrote:
i've been fantasizing about us going all out against tehran for months, i keep thinking about how the US went into iraq in 2003 and how everyone was expecting it to be a serious war, and then the americans walked right through them. i have a feeling that if we hit tehran directly, we could be looking at a post-ayatollah iran which would immediately change the face of the entire region... so that's what i'm praying for.
just sayin'.
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.
today wasn't all sunshine and rainbows, because there was some drama around washing the floor, but it was mostly sunshine and rainbows. whether it was starting the day quietly reading a canticle for leibowitz (i'm finally more than two-thirds in), or spending a couple of highly enjoyable* hours playing through there is no game: wrong dimension, or going to the beach with mr smear on a gorgeous day, enjoying late afternoon fries and beers**, all followed by a smooth dinner and bedtime***.
* although at one point - when we hit a credits screen - i found myself becoming increasingly agitated by a combination of the puzzles difficulty and mr smear's unwillingness to relinquish the mouse. but i was proud of him for how he stuck with me and the dastardly puzzles until we figured them out, and for how he solved a whole bunch of them faster than i could
** his was a malt beer
*** the houthi attack was just as mr smear was going to bed, any later and it would have been much more stressful. and the vibe in the bomb shelter was vibrant and there was lots of laughter
...
i'm supposed to be reviewing a PR right now, but i don't know if i have it in me or if i'm going to put it off until tomorrow morning. one of my coworkers assured an external dev that i'll have it done by tomorrow and i don't really know what it deals with yet...
...
the colorado attack. the recent washington attack. major news outlets should be helf accountable and there should be consequences for propagating libel and propaganda. they're literally making this happen.
today was holocaust memorial day.
never forget.
it's scary seeing that so much of the world has learned nothing. may we be inspired to find ways to bring light to the darkness of the disinformation age. may the memory of the millions who perished be for a blessing.
...
sunday:
saturday night was another rough one.
omg it finally happened: mr smear was embarrassed to say goodbye in front of other kids, so we had to walk back a few meters so no one would see.
we've now agreed that a double fist-bump means "a kiss and i love you"
work-wise yesterday was pretty successful, but it was tough because i had to figure out really complicated group queries in postgres and our ORM proved utterly useless.
the evening was nice. the only rough part was continuing to read diary of a wimpy kid to mr smear and having to stop because greg is just so insanely horrible, just like daffy duck. i explained to mr smear that while i won't stop him from reading it (he's read through 14 of those miserable books so far), i very much disapprove and i'm concerned about its influence on him.
today:
i slept a bit better last night. i woke up with what seems like a cold, or really bad allergies, but i don't *feel* sick. the first part of the day went well, getting mr smear to school, productively working from home, picking up mr smear and taking him to his hebrew tutor (gd's foot's really messed up), doing some quick shopping on the way home, and then diving into a really shit afternoon because our tooling's broken and i just couldn't figure it out.
the siren caught gd and i by surprise today, it was hard not to freak out.
now i've done some of the dishes, and i'm about to drag mr smear out for a quick mission to find nutritional yeast. brewer's yeast is okay, but it's really not the same in either nutrition or enjoyable flavor...
