terror storm

ever since i was a child i've loved electric storms, and found lightning and thunder comforting. but last night's lightning strikes were so close that every single one sounded like an iranian attack had caught us by surprise and that there'd been another impact nearby.

thanks a bunch, mother nature.

so, ironically, during a night with no actual attacks i got a whole lot less sleep and a whole lot more anxiety. fuck you, headless chicken that remains of the IRGC.

 ...

so i was a bit rough around the edges today. in spite of that, i feel like i got *some* good work done, and i helped mr smear through his programming "homework" (human resource machine), and he did (with a little bit of shouted encouragement) do a reasonable amount of music practice, and we continued to use in-shelter time-outs to learn zoology with ze frank, and while we didn't train this evening, we did do some serious stretching.

we received two deliveries today: a small care package from my client, and a slightly bigger couch. we're happy with the care package, but we're particularly happy about the couch.

the post office saga was embarrassing, the guy who i'd sent it to had to go twice to the store to pick it up, and i'd had to have a real fight with the representative who eventually ended the call because she was upset that i was upset and taking it out on her. specifically, because she started saying "the next time you use our services" which i immediately cut off with a tirade of why i would never (voluntarily) be using their services again.

what's it called, when you pay for a service and they don't provide it to you? it's on the tip of my tongue...

slightly more reasonable snacking levels today, but a big, late leftover lunch after the couch was delivered, and gd made latkes for dinner (for the flax), and mr smear and i had vegan nutella on the last of the marshmallows.

we watched another strip search elimination, unfortunately mr smear loved the sex-adventure comic and "sass" a little too much and it was an ordeal to get him to not repeat it all to my mother 🤦‍♂️

omg it's really late again. we keep eating late, and mr smear's been going to bed really late, and it kind of throws off my clock.

when life gives you a permeable shower curtain...

 ... double up. as i begin this post mr smear is taking a turn after me, after we put in another one of the same on top of the one from yesterday. so far so good, and i'm enjoying him singing to himself and having a good time 🤞

today began with a boom - a building or three a few blocks away got hit with a missile, a few cars got hit as well, and the next hour or so was an orchestra of emergency service vehicles. but, miraculously, the building in question was evacuated a while ago for reconstruction or renovation, so while there was a lot of damage, there weren't any serious injuries 🙏

not-so-small mercies.

so the morning went straight in and hard on social media and news.

my work day was far better than yesterday, even if it ended on a droopy note with me listening to a recording of someone who mumbles monotonically with a difficult accent.

three call-outs for the day: losing the spider we weren't sure was venomous (we don't think it is now, but we weren't sure), and way too much snacking, and trying to find out where our new couch is, and losing my temper after learning that the package i paid to have delivered to a specific address in ramle was delivered to a store nearby and they want the addressee to pick it up.

from a mr smear point of view, the first day of holidays went quite well. i cancelled his matific subscription - he hasn't used it in months, and it's a great practice tool but not very good for learning - and his "homework" for today was to play human resource machine. (on gog, so i'll link that edition too).

[the shower experience was good and didn't wet the floor! score!]

i was so proud of him! especially of him being proud of himself whenever he figured stuff out ^_^

the evening training was mostly really good - checking and roundhouse kicks - but the biggest challenge was him not responding when told to stop responding. i honestly couldn't tell if he was trolling me, or literally couldn't control himself, but he eventually got a hold of himself and we had a constructive conversation about it while stretching.

overall, he's doing really well.

dinner was delicious. dinner was interrupted by an attack. dinner was extended to include an extra episode of strip search, and more of panda's dubai-style chocolate with vegan marshmallows. it's kinda like peanut butter and marshmallows, but even better!

i'm not making any plans for tonight, but i'm tired and sleepy and i think i might go lie down soon.

less useless

 yesterday was - especially during this war - very strange.

i got up early* after a normal amount of disruptions**, and immediately set to writing a follow-up article on psychosis and trauma, and then jumped on a bus to the post office with my network appliance under my arm.

* a little later than normal alarm time when there's normal school

** it felt weird messaging mr smear's friend's parents to ask if they were all okay

i had to wait a while. half that time i spent scrolling on my phone, the other half trying to stare as far away as i could to relax my eyes. i got called up to the counter, got the package sent, and then caught the bus back home.

i was in a meeting when mr smear came home from his night out, and was distracted by him immediately fighting with gd because he felt like he desperately needed a shower when he was already late for class. it turned out that he and his friend had had a particularly late night, they'd watched duck soup and half of iron man 2, and he'd had a really unpleasant experience in their mamak because there'd been an attack and he'd had to lie down on a dirty mattress and cover himself with a dirty blanket and he was sure that he could feel things crawling all over him...

... i don't know how much of that was real, or imagined, but i know my little princess...

anyway, all reports were that he was very polite and well-behaved, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

my work day was more productive than the previous couple, though i did struggle with my back hurting from sitting down for too long. at least i felt like i contributed during a couple of our meetings, and i pushed a couple of code changes, and i fixed a couple of pipeline things...

in the evening mr smear and i accompanied gd to the pharmacy, and then we did a little snack shopping while she waited, and then rejoined her for moral support.

i don't know what's been going on with my stomach the past couple of weeks, but i think it's general anxiety and a less stable diet than usual. while we were out, i felt painfully bloated.

oh, and i've had a weird lump on the back of my neck the past couple of days. i hope it's nothing interesting... google says it's probably cancer.

my mother messaged me last night to inform me that her flight's been cancelled. she's scrambling to find another way to get here for pesach, if she can't this is going to be a real bummer :(

scrapper and i exchanged messages last night, and it looks like he's succumbed to the anti-israel / anti-trump narratives. i hope we get a chance to talk it out soon.

last night was a parenting-fail fight storm sandwiched between a good dinner and watching an episode of strip search, and hanging out in mr smear's room having a serious but often funny discussion about our abusive parents and his dealing with schoolyard bullying in his previous schools.

i went to bed right after saying good night to mr smear, emotionally exhausted more than anything else.

...

this morning we got up at our leisure, after a full night's sleep with no attacks. i started my day reading some more of ghost in the shell - now i *get* the intro sequence and why it's even more interesting after reading its parallel. there's a certain amount of fan service that's over-the-top, but i kinda get it in terms of a commentary on society... is in inappropriate for mr smear? i guess i'm on the fence.

useless

 today was rough, psychologically more than anything else. i was literally incapable of doing my "one job" task, every time i sat down (after pumping myself up with random distractions) i found myself doing anything but.

including paying our upstairs friends a visit to borrow a drill, and managing to find a guy from the post office to help me book the return for tomorrow, and taking mr smear to his friend's place where they're having a sleepover right now.

oh! and this morning i published the article i was working on until 1.30am.

last night was full of attacks, so i turned my phone off and the three of us slept in the locked mamad, and we were fine 🙏

this evening was a "date night" for me and gd, and we ordered a very expensive dinner, which was only partially disrupted by a potential attack. but it didn't matter, because as much as the side dishes were fantastic, the main course was just unpleasant, so it's not like the terrorists ruined the experience.

after dinner, i finally settled down and acted on the HUGE RELIEF NEWS from the afternoon (the money i transferred yesterday landed where it was supposed to), and for the first time in my life i picked a few stocks and EFTs and put money down on them

here's hoping i didn't make bad calls, but knowing what i know - having studied economics and investment theory as part of my undergrad - you can't do too badly when you bet on the market, and right now it looks like betting on the US and israel long-term is the safest move available.

*I* has the dumb

 well, today happened.

the dumbest part of today was sending a whole lot of money to an investment app without doing a test send first. i literally can't believe i did that. that's the second unforgivably stupid thing i've done in less than two weeks. now i'm nervous that - although i followed the instructions and everything "should" be fine - i might have made an extremely costly mistake.

...

yesterday i received the network appliance i'd ordered - and tried to cancel - and today i tried to figure out how to return it. but the post office. and war. i have no idea how to return it 🤦

work today was messy, i'm not sure if i got the job done in a way that my clients are satisfied, though, and by the end of the day my head was spinning. leaning on AI to understands codebases and system interactions can be a beautiful thing, but if you can't rely on the AI to get it perfectly right then it's all a giant waste of time. after three long and complicated iterations, i realized that i'm going to need to go in hard tomorrow to verify that it didn't miss anything, and that it didn't misidentify anything, which is basically the same thing as doing it all myself, but with extra steps.

mr smear had a LOT of screen time today, and that's in addition to his online classes. but it was mostly him figuring out how to use modrinth... when he complained that it was a waste of time and he wishes he'd never learned what he did, i offered to delete it. "you know what? pretend i never said anything."

with pleasure :D

...

i'm not bothering to link to news any more. earlier i went hunting through my old posts for something and i clicked a link, and then another, and they're all broken :(

we had a few attacks today, and then in the news we got confirmation that we haven't been imagining the increasingly scary number of booms at a time. and now they're threatening to lay mines at sea. what a time to be alive.

also, my mom's supposed to be arriving in ten days' time. we're all hoping nothing stops that from happening 🤞

...

while i've slept relatively well the past couple of nights, i've been snacking a hell of a lot more than usual. and i've got this "fried-brain feeling". and overall, i'm feeling decidedly distracted, irritable, demoralized. it could be the war, sure. being cooped up and all. or maybe it's just a general malaise, because it's been months of - how do i put this? - some really awesome things have happened, but most of my life has been feeling like death by a thousand paper cuts. the shoelace.

...

mr smear just woke up to blow his nose really hard, which always worries me because every now and then he blows his nose so hard he ends up with a nosebleed, and that goes on for days. so i explained to him what i just learned about the erectile tissue in our nostrils*, after this very evening we decided to introduce him to ze frank and had to explain "red rockets" to him 🤣

* which will from now on make suffering from a fully stuffed nose "nasal erectile dysfunction". you're welcome.

recovery day (1)

 i dreamed a lot last night, so i'm confident i slept. i accompanied mr smear to school (we remembered to take the bus), and then i made my way to the employment agency. "for adults" 🤔

the man who ushered us in spewed a stream of instructions at us, which led to confusion when we got to the ticket machines and they weren't finished booting up yet. then i followed the instructions and waited at the counter indicated on my ticket, but when the clerk showed up she was immediately pissed off with me and sent me to the waiting area. and as soon as i was seated, she called my number.

she didn't speak any english, which wouldn't have been a big deal had i not used an expression i'd translated from english. and she certainly didn't have any detectable sense of humor.

anyway.

after that, i returned home, where i found a delivery notice from the post office indicating that a package had arrived more than two weeks ago, which meant there was a good chance it had been returned to sender. again. i angrily rushed over to the post office, notice in hand, and confronted the manager... who assured me that she's also very frustrated with the delayed notices, and that there's nobody she can talk to about it.

good grief.

the good news is that they hadn't returned it yet, so i finally picked up our math fluxx and mystery fluxx ^_^

(and rain gear for mr smear)

i barely had time to get those back to the apartment before i had to leave again, and with a brief interlude discussing pre-dawn philosophy with horseman i arrived at the coffee shop to meet with the other firees. it was a good couple of hours spent discussing all sorts of things, but mostly supporting each other, and chatting about how to manage (or not manage) a business and what kinds of things we might be interested in building.

at least skippity joined us this time.

i made my way home chatting with swordschool, and we dived into the weeds of a book he wants to publish and i'm trying to help him edit. it's interesting stuff, and it might play into another side project i've been thinking about.

once mr smear got home, it was all about homework until i received a message from the unhinged, once again claiming that her darling innocent angel had been verbally abused by my son.

i immediately took him to task, and put the fear of god in him, and he told us the details and appeared to be suitably contrite regarding his behavior. but i didn't want to respond to the unhinged without some council, so i asked their teacher to call me.

while i waited (and in-between helping gd prepare dinner), i chatted with someone who wanted our windows machine for much less than i'm asking, leading me to re-evaluate my offer and raise the asking price again, but also format the machine.

when the teacher called me, i was pleasantly surprised, both because she's not usually so easy to get hold of and also because she was aware of the incident and supportive. and then, in addition to that, she informed me that mr smear really has been making an effort, that his behavior's no worse than any of the other kids, and that today he entirely voluntarily participated in her science class.

so while he's being punished for handling the unhinged's daughter really badly, we're also very busy praising him for everything else :P

when i finally responded, just as had been recommended, she responded with a flood of her usual disrespectful bile. i took a screenshot and sent it to the teacher so that she knows what's up, and successfully held myself back from responding.

we had a long and entertaining chat with my mom and sister after dinner, then put mr smear to bed (relatively smoothly), and i'm now trying to decide whether to try to be functional or not. i have lots of interesting stuff to read (swordschool homework), but i also have a very busy day tomorrow supporting the window fix and the air-conditioner cleaning, and the floor cleaning in between with gd only able to yell at me for doing a poor job because she's still recovering from yesterday's nerve block...