girl drama claude drama

 hoooo boy, it's been a couple of days. i'm going to be rushing through stuff i don't want to rush through...

yesterday:

arriving in the office just in time for my meeting, then spending a good half hour trying to get my computer connected to the network. nobody knows why my vpn connection keeps dropping, and i lost a significant amount of ephemeral context - not just work time - resolving it.

i spent a good chunk of my day running test jobs to enable me to finish working on one of the changes, and then i had to leave early to pick up mr smear, grab a bite to eat (and a cup of coffee), and head south to his class end-of-year pool party at a country club.

not only did we have quite a time getting there, between bus line switches and an unhelpful transit app, and some drugged out guy aggressively harassing innocent bystanders (he came too close for comfort while mr smear was fiddling with his sandals, but i think he ducked when he picked up my vibe).

while we were trying to get there, gd had managed to get herself lost on the way to the dentist, and there was much drama as i tried to troubleshoot remotely for her...

the pool party was really cool. the kids in this school are a different culture completely, much less cynical, and there were a few "performances", a couple of nice speeches, and then into the water. only a couple of parents went in with the kids - myself being one of them - and i had a good chat with the mom of one of mr smear's friends. and then some fun with mr smear before getting out (he was disappointed, but he was having a good time with his friends) into a chilly post-water 28 degrees.

i sat with a couple of other parents and we really got in to politics, ai, economics and ideologies, it was an exhilarating rabbit-hole dive and i think we all enjoyed it. when we were thinking about leaving, the mom offered me and mr smear a ride home, which i gratefully accepted.

suddenly, mr smear came out the pool and declared that he was "bored" and ready to go, but i could tell by his expression that something was up. i walked with him a little and managed to get it out of him - one of the kids had told his class nemesis that he liked one of the girls, they all were chanting it loudly, and the girl in question heard and apparently seemed to quite enjoy the idea of mr smear liking her.

he was mortified, dying inside, and i gave him some calming advice... but also, when i asked him what her name was, had to inform him that we were going to be going home with them in the car!

both the kids were a bit distracted on the way to the vehicle, but she saved mr smear from the scenario he was particularly dreading by jumping into the front seat. but then, as we pulled out, mr smear let one rip - i don't think anyone else heard it, but he opened that window really quickly 🤣

the ride home was much less awkward, the little girl's very sweet, and he made it home in one piece :)

it was pretty late, we had an amazing dumpling-y dinner that gd's concocted, and a good conversation about relationships and responding to teasing at bedtime.

today:

i didn't sleep so well last night, i spent at least a couple of miserably hours lying in bed, not quite awake but certainly not asleep.

i received some good news this morning, and some not-so-good news: gd's physio treatments are finally being covered - half the amount, but considerably better than nothing - and my request to have the parking fine cancelled was rejected.

the main thing this morning before heading to work was switching my copilot subscription for a claude code one. i figured it made the most sense, not just because it seems better from a value-for-money point of view, but also because my client is switching everyone over to it and i have to learn how to work with it anyway.

so that was pretty much the story of my day: trying to get real work done while simultaneously trying to get claude code to work the way i want it to. it's not a trivial migration at all, and claude code does a bunch of things in an utterly infuriating way (and i'm not the only one in our area to feel this). that stretched the day into a particularly long and emotionally draining one - lots of "i REALLY hate claude" moments - and i got stuck on something at the end of the work day that made it take longer to get out of the office than i could handle.

i picked up some healthy snacks from the supermarket on the way home. i wanted to take mr smear rollerblading, but he was doing hebrew homework and i walked in just in time to go over it with him. we both learned some stuff, but overall i'm very pleased with how he's doing.

we watched some more grease at dinner, which is initiating quite a few interesting conversations, and after dinner we had a lengthy and heated discussion about an incident with the crazy mom's manipulative daughter at school today; i'm so grateful that he voluntarily let us know immediately after school came out, because that gave me an opportunity to text his teacher before the madwoman poisons things.

i managed to do a little bit of productive stuff since putting him to bed, but i had to stop to write this and now it's feeling like bedtime.

not enough drama!

 it's late, and i was already tired a while ago, but i've spent the past couple of hours putting together messages for our current and future landlords and i'll send them in the morning.

...

last night would have been far less stressful if i hadn't seen the response from our current landlords to my earlier message, which was offensively stupid. i wish i hadn't seen it then, and i wish i hadn't read it to gd, because we were both shocked and furious. we rushed to get to our friends (soon-to-be neighbors) with the freshly baked challah-peño (it was a bit of a flop - great challah texture but unexciting taste), realized when we finally got there that we'd left the ice cream at home, so i rushed back to grab it and chatted with my mom along the way.

the evening was great, largely cathartic, dinner was excellent and i drank just enough wine for my nervous system to calm down a bit. mr smear had a great time with the kids, all was well.

we got home late, and sleepy, and everyone went to bed pretty quickly.

today:

this morning i got up early-ish, pretty much finished ping-pong (it's great) and got most of the dishes done. gd and i were both surprised when mr smear woke up and informed me that he wanted to go to the swimming pool. NOT by bike.

so i had a quick breakfast, grabbed my second coffee and off we went. it was a very nice walk there, through a park we weren't familiar with, and we spent about an hour and a half in the pool, mostly just splashing about. before we left the pool to brave the cold air between the pool area and the locker room in order to shower, mr smear told me he might be willing to go back to jiujitsu training if he doesn't have to do mma.

i'll take it.

the showers there are great. once we were done mr smear decided that he really wanted a laffa for lunch (breakfast, really), and the only place open was the shuwarma place by the port.

it was a loooong but entertaining walk to the port, and then we had two huge laffot, preceded by mr smear eating pickled carrots without complaining  (he usually hates carrots) and even about half of a really hot hot pepper.

[omg my hands are so freaking dry, my skin's cracking all over]

halfway through my laffa i had a suspicion that i may have overpayed - google pay doesn't show you the amount when it verifies - and after an only-slightly uncomfortable back-and-forth we determined that he'd charged me 200 shekels for an 80 shekel meal... at least i caught it while still there.

we both enjoyed the meal, but mr smear really shouldn't have forced himself to finish his. we had a long walk home (with a couple of minor incidents of being rained on), most of which was him complaining about a sore stomach...

gd prepared the bath before we arrived, and he warmed up and soaked for a long while. then scrapper's niece came by to pick up his bass guitar and amp, which i'm sad to say i've barely touched since he left it with me, and after sorting out mr smear's toenails scrapper called, and we both had a lot to talk about (during which time, i later realized, mr smear was sitting in his room, drawing and listening to tool on his phone). then it was dishes time, during which time we discovered a really gross mold situation that needed a lot of cleaning, and then i cleaned the area where the guitar had been sitting for ages and accidentally pulled out one of the hooks for the fibre cable.

neither mr smear nor i really needed dinner, so we ate some fruit and the three of us played pictionary for a while before he had to go to bed.

another really good saturday together, he said ^_^

now it's my turn. tomorrow's scaring me, hopefully i'll get some rest before it begins.

...

the situation in iran is horrifying. the fact that nobody's swooping in to help the persians is horrifying.

dog day halloween

 i'm still feeling tired, weak and fatigued. at least tahoma's halloween party last night gave me a proper excuse :P

...

yesterday morning started at the park with the school's "dog day". there were dogs, and it was a day. the sun was beating down (it was surprisingly bright and hot), and mr smear and i arrived a few minutes early, just in time for me to be awkward with a couple of other dads before everyone began setting up the picnic.

highlights:

mr smear's teacher sitting down next to us and reporting that mr smear has really turned things around over the course of the past couple of days. please god it holds.

the angry mother from the previous week refused to make eye contact. gd and i have been laughing about the fact that both of us were responsible for bringing a specific vegan cheese spread, so we  childishly brought two in order to "show her up" 🤣

i asked mr smear not to tell anyone that we were going to a private birthday party afterwards. he made sure to tell everyone. loudly.

everything on the table was vegan because of the allergy requirements, which was a first for us at a school event. cake for breakfast.

...

from there, the relevant parents and kids snuck out and the birthday boy's mom gave us ride to the country club. it was a perfect day for it, beautiful weather, hardly anybody else around. the downside was spending a fair amount of time fending off crows, egyptian geese and myna birds, but most of the afternoon was spent watching the kids have a great time together both in the water and out, having long and interesting conversations with the other parents (there were only three of us), and quietly recovering from the madness of the previous weeks (and months).

we were not expecting the gift giving, because our previous school and social circle culture is so different. the gifts were custom, and really impressive, and we're going to need to do something about that this week.

oh! and his eye seems to be clear, so i don't think the pool - certainly not this one - is directly contributing to his outbreaks.

...

we got a ride home, and showered, and immediately jumped in to some of the math homework mr smear hadn't done during the week. it wasn't all smooth, but it never got dramatic, and even for me it wasn't trivial (it's working with square roots and ranges of answers, neither of which he's used to). by the time we were done, we'd both had good exercise and i was quite proud of him.

we made an particularly potent challah-peño, my face caught a bit of it (fortunately not my eyes!) and my fingers burned for hours in spite of washing them thoroughly and even doing a whole sink of dishes.

but it came out delicious.

dinner on call with my mom was nice. afterwards, we did have a repeat of the usual fight about mr smear going out with me on saturdays, but at least it ended softly. then i left for the halloween party.

...

nystire and nyah nyah and partners, as well as the linguist we served with, were there, the place was packed with interesting-looking people and the decorations were really something. it was a really fun evening, there was lots of alcohol, and the conversations migrated from work to parenting to language as the night wore on.

by the time i left i was practically falling over from exhaustion - at least i'd made an effort to drink a fair amount of non-alcoholic liquids along the way - and i hailed a taxi home and climbed into bed. i got a particularly warm and fuzzy feeling from ending a night of good company and entertainment with a heart-to-heart with a taxi driver about the state of the nation that left him profusely thanking me for the conversation (which i'd very much enjoyed too).

it didn't take long for me to climb into bed (having thankfully received authorization from my wife that i didn't need to shower again first) and i mostly slept well, and late. it's been a slow and pleasant morning, we've talked and i've read (i'm halfway through blindsight) and now i've posted this, and gd and i are on our way to the shop quickly to pick up flour in honor of friends coming over for lunch.

two years

 october 7th, two years later. i have nothing to say. that is, i have lots to say, and zero energy to even say it.

...

this morning got off to a pretty good start. reading and napping, including reading a chapter of the neverending story to my wife and child.

on our way out to ride to the swimming pool, i got stuck for almost half an hour trying to arrange tickets for circo circo for us and mr smear's best friend. we eventually got that right, so crossing fingers that friday will be smooth 🤞

the ride there was pretty chill, though i think mr smear was right about it taking much longer than i'd expected. most of our swimming experience was good, in spite of me having woken up with my neck threatening to lock (it's still threatening a bit). the toughest, drainiest part was the forty five minutes spent getting mr smear out of the pool, into the locker room, out of the shower, and out of the locker room.

we were both that special kind of tired after a sunny ride and a long time in the pool.

and that was before we had to ride all the way home...

we made it, eventually*, stopping only for a much-needed ice-cream break.

* about half an hour later

we came home with a plan, and we executed it well. drink water, shower, eat, play, and watch the first two episodes of full metal alchemist: brotherhood.

the rest of the afternoon has been switching between dirty dishes and inktober. now it's almost dinner time.

grind break

this morning we completed the pokemon puzzle (including a few frustrating minutes hunting for the final piece that was resting, camouflaged, on top of the puzzle), i helped mr smear through the first page of his holiday homework, i did the dishes, and headed off to the office.

it was a weird work day, lots of syncing and strategizing, and keeping my nose out of the bunch of kids hijacking the office, and by the time i got to the important, urgent work that needed to be done i ran into some big issues that thoroughly blocked me. and then it was time to leave the office in order to be able to take mr smear to the swimming pool.

mr smear and i arrived at the pool in good time, only to learn that it was closed. the nice lady printed me out some sheets that are much easier to parse than their schedule boards, so now we have an idea of when we're welcome there...

the past hour or so has been all about helping gd in the kitchen (and being upset to learn - or relearn - that the hand blender we bought months ago never worked), and struggling to update the dell device drivers (i'm typing this on the same machine while i continue to struggle), and being frustrated because i decided earlier that i didn't want to go swimming any more, but now mr smear's all-in and he's never all-in so now i have to go.

*deep breaths*

the good, the bad, the ugly

the good:

the swimming pool experience yesterday was just excellent. he followed instructions, and i came up with some new exercise ideas, and his swimming dramatically improved in front of my eyes. not only is his crawl technique significantly better, but he figured out how to get himself to the bottom of the deep end and we generally enjoyed our time together.

we both had a great time.

i napped well in the afternoon. in the early evening, we spent some time discovering bird flight simulators (such as birdz and aquila) - while the intention is to learn how to code them, i ended up feeling a bit overwhelmed...

while we were doing that, i installed starcraft ii (we're not really using our windows machine, so i was pleased to learn that it runs on a silicon mac!) and war thunder. the latter i tried out while mr smear was in the shower, but the former? mr smear and i have completed the tutorials and begun the campaign, with him playing each level first (and me kibbitzing) and me playing through after, and we're both having a blast!

we finished watching the boy and the heron during and after dinner, it's absolutely gorgeous and i was pleased that we all enjoyed it together.

i slept pretty well last night (until i was woken up by imagining the work conversations i need to have) and i napped a fair amount after everyone else got up.

more starcraft ii today, and we finally continued watching fantastic fungi which we started a few months ago. my late coworker had recommended it to me, and i was caught completely by surprise by the sudden shift in direction, and now it's too late for me to ask him what it is that made him recommend it to me. did i mention my opinions on terrence mckenna's food of the gods? or timothy leary's writings? did it have to do with veganism? or did he just happen to have seen it recently?

the bad:

on our way out to the swimming pool, we discovered that something broke the valve on his bike's front tire, so in addition to having to take the bus, we're going to need to get it fixed soon. that sucks.

my new filling is super-sensitive to cold. and it feels like i've been eating a lot of things that are much harder than expected - like the raisins in my muesli which are unusually small-rock-like.

i think my ingrown toenail isn't healing.

gd and i have unfriended some recently-added friends because they've gone from protesting the government to blaming us for the supposed famine in gaza and dressing their daughter in watermelon shirts. WTAF.

our afternoon walk this evening should have been good, but i left the house in a bad mood and returned in a bad mood.

the ugly:

as if the office politics from thursday weren't enough - they woke me up in the middle of the night and i never quite made it back to bed - while mr smear and i were at the swimming pool yesterday i noticed some redness around his eye.

it's herpes again. this time, there's a blister right on the edge near his tear duct, and i'm freaking out. and to make things more interesting, the timing couldn't be worse because now taking him to the doctor tomorrow and giving him his meds really interferes with his summer camp experience, which in my opinion is critical for him in terms of being a corrective normal-israeli-kid experience. (not to mention how expensive it is)

mission

 yesterday:

the surgeon advised me to return only as a last resort, and to book an appointment with a pedicurist instead.

my mom, mr smear and i took a very long walk to the beachfront and down to the shuk. we had a very serious talk about her making aliyah, and i hope she's processing it all because it was a big conversation and i think i managed to get across all the big points.

we took a bus home, then spent the next few hours resting.

in the late afternoon i picked up a car (which was a struggle, it was hot and the directions were shit) and we dropped off the watermelon at our cousins', then met up with them at the cemetery for a quick and personal memorial service.

we then returned to their place for a really nice friday night dinner. for the most part we all had a good time, including gd who'd been very uncomfortable the last couple of times. mr smear slipped back into his usual baby-hating habits, but was mostly good.

this morning:

this morning i discovered that my hip issues aren't necessarily caused by the bed. halfway through the night it got so bad that i left the couch and went to the bed, and slept better.

weird.

we had a pretty relaxed morning (i read asterix, and napped), and then we all went to the swimming pool. the lifeguard wasn't convinced that mr smear should be allowed in the deep end, but we were with him at all times and he made an effort to prove he actually could swim... but i think my mom and gd are right and that he needs proper lessons.

we were there for a couple of hours, we had a really good time, but it started falling apart as we prepared to leave when mr smear got angry with a baby for picking up gd's phone, and then messed around in the shower while i was waiting for him and while the clock was ticking on our car. and then when he finally came out i saw how badly he's scratched up his leg, and i lost patience.

and then, when i told gd that he was in trouble, she lost patience. so it wasn't pretty.

in spite of that, the rest of the afternoon went pretty smoothly (i think, i napped for most of it) and in the evening my mom took mr smear out for dinner and i took gd to south tel aviv for a dinner date. between the green cat pizza and a random hostel bar, we had a really good night ^_^

...

but we're all sad that my mom's leaving tomorrow.

shifting gears

 yesterday:

we walked. we dropped off gd's sandals for repair, found the bike shop closed, and walked up the road to the next bike shop. we dropped off the bike, then walked to a small grocery store, then continued on to the big one, did an annoyingly long shop and carried it all home.

loop one.

we stopped for a bit, but the clock was ticking so we walked again, picking up gd's sandals, then grabbing a laffa for mr smear, picking up his bike and walking it home.

loop two.

the good news is he was very happy with the repair job.

the remainder of the afternoon was pretty quiet, with lots of napping and reading.

one of my upper teeth has been really, really hurting the past couple of days, and it's getting worse.

in the evening we all went to our friends for a delicious and very entertaining dinner. the conversations were all over the place, but i'm struck by how diametrically opposing our political views are becoming.

we came home very late and i slept surprisingly well.

today:

we got up pretty early, and ended up leaving around 10am for the kibbutz. gd and my mom prepared and brought all the food - there was plenty - and we had a very nice time visiting our kibbutz cousin and her daughter (who i haven't seen in many years, and suddenly looks so much like her dad), and an excellent time by the pool.

on the way home we stopped in netanya to see my cousin, for whom the move (and the leaving of her husband) is very new and overwhelming (and i also realized that the connection to one of my bosses is that he was her landlord, which is a whole story). she suddenly looks so much like her mom that my mom and i were both blown away.

gd was having a tough time by then, so we came home. it's been a very long day, mostly very enjoyable, and i think i'm going to crash soon.

after a gin and tonic, with my mother and i realizing that i've been joining her the past couple of days and it seems to be helping me sleep...

never a dull moment

 yesterday was perfect, right until the end. mr smear came home, we grabbed our gear and headed to the pool. he put in the work, and he's improving dramatically. he's learning how to handle showering and changing in a locker room, and after that we returned home for a calm and peaceful afternoon. he did creative stuff on the old macbook with ubuntu (he made a really cool pacman image with gimp), while i tried to repeat thursday evening's steps in unity on my windows machine. we watched the "season" finale of asterix & obelix - the big fight, which was great fun even though it's totally not canon, and right after all that wonderful stuff gd and i got into a huge row that took forever to... not quite resolve, but to bring to an end and leave lots of stuff to think about.

today:

i didn't sleep well last night, partially due to waking up in the middle of it feeling a lot of unpleasant feelings. i ended up "sleeping" quite late, and waking up with a really sore neck.

my damaged toenail flipped a bit this morning, so it was time to remove it. it... seems okay? i hope it regrows safely...

it's fair to say that i've spent most of the day watching youtube videos and doing really hard quests minesweeper.

we watched a minecraft movie together, but mr smear left half an hour in to go to his friend. i can see why he loved it so much, and it's definitely entertaining in a very jack black kind of way, but it's not quite gd or my cup of tea. so we rewatched léon: the professional after that, which i haven't seen since high school. there were three things i remembered from that movie: mathilda sitting by the stairs swinging her legs, mathilda walking with the plant, and the explosive moment that me and my friend laughed at in triumphant relief just as his dad walked in a furiously berated us for enjoying such intense violence.

i think i appreciated it much more for having read nabokov's lolita, i thought the playfulness of the two characters was beautiful and found the transformation from something sexual endearing.

in the evening, with a little help from looking at my coworker's thursday evening code, i managed to get my first unity project doing an approximation of what i'd intended, i've documented every step for myself and i'm looking forward to our next session.

one thing that i've learned, though, is that microsoft's made it complicated / against the terms of usage to use vscode extensions in windsurf and cursor, so i've now returned to the vscode fold and subscribed to copilot once again. and now that i've taken care of that, i think i'm ready to get back down to business with the language project.

encouragement

alright, i'm *really* happy about how today went. mr smear and i went to the pool, and my biggest regret about purchasing 10 entries is that i should've gone in for a membership (we'll do that when the ticket runs out). our main purpose was him learning crawl, and he worked hard and made huge progress.

and we had a good time.

i do feel a bit bad for him that a part of his motivation is that he's worried about getting fat, but we've been explaining to him that the answer to that is doing sport and eating lots of good food. i mean, if that's what it takes to get him to stop hating sport on principle...

he also really enjoyed the shower there, i had to explain to him afterwards that there're certain enjoyment noises that one just doesn't make in a locker room 😂

we came home, switched clothing, and then headed out with gd to the mall. we had a delicious hummus (with vegan shuwarma) lunch, found him two types of swimming trunks (costumes as opposed to boardies), and picked up what seems to be a really good pair of sandals for me.

by the time we got home i was done. i showered, napped hard, and eventually got up to do the dishes so gd could make dinner.

then mr smear and i spent some time on MAZE (until he got bored / creeped out), which is completely insane (trying very hard to avoid any spoilers, but mapping out our paths in a text file). incredible artwork and concept!

kiddush and dinner, and watching the first two episodes of asterix & obelix - the big fight. so far? brilliant!

too - much - cake.

everyone else went to bed a while ago, i'm probably going to crash soon. we've got a BIG day tomorrow ^_^

buzz

 yesterday:

i felt better, at least. made more progress on the language project. waited twenty minutes at the store to pick up my "neon-nazi"s only to discover that i was supposed to wait for an sms update, but they sorted me out anyway. had a pretty productive day at work, with the biggest achievement being a coffee walk interview with someone we've been courting and who signed later in the afternoon. good for him (as a new oleh) and good for us! ate too much cake at the happy hour, brought home too much cake and nobody else wants to eat it. went through possible summer day-camps with mr smear (whose preferences surprised us) and tried to book it, but we're now waiting for them to get back to us :/

the bug zapper in mr smear's room is super bright and may have been a mistake.

a couple of hours work in the evening (to protect us from a mysterious bug that we encountered during the day), a little more of the language project, then finally passing out.

this morning so far:

getting up early, catching and crushing a fat, slow cockroach, being blown away by the dor brother's AI short film. fighting with mr smear (but winning, apparently) because i'm taking him swimming but he wants to go to his friday computer class. more progress on the language project. now getting ready to head out...

...

i hate the spice girls, abhor wannabe, but i've had it in my head the whole morning and am somehow enjoying the nostalgia of it 😶

obsession

the day started early for all of us. we made a good start on cleaning the big windows, and i accompanied gd and mr smear to the nearby swimming pool, which is pleasantly close and very nice indeed.

on the bus to work, i struggled with my bluetooth headphones, and almost lost my watch in the process. i still haven't got them quite right :/

the first order of the day was pushing the testing improvement, which worked well and went down well with the team.

most of the day was a difficult day, primarily because i'm working on something new (for me) and very complex. it was hard because of what i was doing, and because i was struggling to stay focused in the face of the tedium, and because my mind was distracting itself with thoughts of the hex.

i *am* obsessed with the hex.

but that's not all, i'm also obsessed with making sure our testing tools work for us*, and as much as i value my coworker's complementary competences, i don't feel that the direction he was planning on going on was going was the right one, and we ended up spending almost two hours arguing back and forth, both trying to compromise constructively...

* this is purely for selfish reasons, because in almost all my previous companies i'm the one who ended up having to deal with... suboptimal... implementations.

it was getting dark by the time i left the office. i came home just in time for dinner, which was delicious, while we watched the beginning of tad, the lost explorer and the emerald tablet, which is quite fun.

...

i'm exhausted.

overflow

 i boiled over this morning, i'm doing what i can to take this afternoon as easy as possible.

the day began pretty simply, we got up, had coffee, i played through bloons: adventure time quests and caught up on stuff. then we woke mr smear up, fed him, and we left for the shuk. on the way to the bus, we ran into our old neighbor and his now six-month old son, and we had a good chat. i mean, the subject matter was tough, but it was nice talking to him.

the bad feelings began on the bus. not because the driver was driving recklessly (and throwing us about) - though that didn't help - but because there was a bunch of young people and nobody would give up their seats for the old people who climbed in.

and then it was a fight to get off the bus because of all the idiots blocking the doors, and it took a little while to start calming down. but by then we were in the shuk itself, and we were realizing that we weren't going to find what we were looking for, and then all the people around us were doing what mall people (yes, same thing) do, and then that started stressing me out...

then we walked down king george, but first we encountered an old rollerblading friend and i completely blanked on his name and got super weird and uncomfortable. we walked down to dizengoff center, where the security guard insisted on shaking my hand before letting us in.

*shakes head*

king george was unusually empty - obviously because lots of people are scared or scared away - but the mall was pretty full.

first a pit stop, then finding food, all through mall people. that part was good, and the tourist group doing a headphone party activity was amusing.

we hit the sports store and found gd a swimming cap, then took mr smear into the toysrus to see if there was anything he wanted for his birthday. this time i was the one who became overwhelmed, and progressively desperate for a cold drink and coffee. eventually, on the point of losing it, i rushed everyone out, very grateful for gd being in full support mode.

we got some cool drinks, then crossed the road to ozen hashlishi and sat down. i approached the baristas, who informed me that... that their coffee machine had broken down. the big man i'd assumed was a barista was actually the technician. i looked her in the eyes, and explained that i was desperate, and would settle for a turkish coffee if they had any.

they did.

and just as she was about to start preparing it for me, the technician announced that the machine was back in working order.

*relief*

still very anxious, we sat outside and i slowly calmed down over my latte, and then we hopped on a bus home.

i still had some leftovers and a bagel from our mall breakfast, so i figured i'd give it away if we came across anyone in need. there's an older homeless woman who i've seen a lot in the area lately - the last time i saw her she was fighting with some garbage men about *her* trash can - and i asked if she was interested. she said no, but told me there was another woman walking around who would be, and so i left it on the bench and said it was for that woman.

she began yelling at me. i tried to walk away, but she picked up the package and ran over to me because "she's got enough trouble of her own, she can't be helping other homeless people".

wtaf.

*sigh*

anyway, we came home, and i rested, and the rest of the afternoon's been all about playing games: inscryption (act ii of the story mode), and i roped mr smear into playing shivers with me because he wouldn't stop going on about scary games. overall, we had a fun experience together, and while the atmosphere totally creeped him out the jump scare (which i'd warned him was coming) didn't bother him too much. i think the proprietor's corpse was a bit much for him, though, but reading about the hieroglyphs seemed to distract him sufficiently.

...

now praying for a quiet weekend.

getting real-er

or, at least, it feels like it.

this is not an easy time.

this morning a motorcycle accelerated for a long time on the nearby highway, and mr smear yelled and jumped off the toilet in a panic. it's even harder seeing him affected...

today was an odd sort of a day, but also fairly standard too. gd and mr smear went to the pool that they discovered on an outing with my mom before she went back to south africa, and although gd's foot started hurting so badly they had to come back in a taxi, mr smear's swimming's getting stronger and he was having a great time.

my work day was pretty good. i had a good opportunity to apologize to my coworker in front of our boss, and i seized it, and i feel that smoothed things over. lunch was excellent - i had my usual salad, but i also ordered fries with the team so i could do the salt and vinegar thing (apparently one of my coworkers has been silently wondering for months what the heck i've been keeping in the plastic bottle on my desk).

i made progress on the big ticket i'm working on.

because of gd's foot, i had to take mr smear to mma today. all in all everything went well, both in getting there and back, and in the class itself. on the way home we went past the supermarket and i picked up a bunch of stuff, and for the first time mr smear actually helped me carry things home.

after watching some harry potter (we're on the sixth film), and reading some harry potter (we're on the fourth book), i settled in to complete a new medium article for the first time in a while, and in order to do so made the changes i described to our work repo (so... that was a personal-time contribution/favor). i'm very happy with the results.

war anxiety is stabilizing at extremely-high / wtaf-is-going-on-levels. life is feeling pretty surreal right now. we're making plans to go to the shuk tomorrow, but we're also waiting for the sirens to go off at any moment...

...

so, i've just completed challenge level 12 in kaycee's mod. with an AMAZING deck + totem. an infinite bee/ant generating machine. and i have to admit - i'd read about the final final boss, but there's an angle here (at the beginning of the run) that i really didn't anticipate and i'm not sure how to process it.

a moment of appreciation

 first, but not foremost, the thing that triggered me stopping my game of inscryption to post this: on my current run, i've built a really solid ant deck and acquired an ouroboros, and i have an insect totem with a beehive sigil.

my ouroboros has a corpse eater sigil, and my ant queen has an unkillable sigil, and because of my totem if my queen gets hit, the bee it produces is unkillable too. what this means is that as long as i have the ant queen and the ouroboros out, i have a perfect cycle where i sacrifice my unkillable bee and the ant queen to bring in the ouroboros, then sacrifice the unkillable bee and ouroboros to bring in the ant queen.

inscryption is a rogue-like game where every run is different. what this means is that i'm very likely to build an awesome deck exactly like this again, and i'm nervous as hell that i'm going to make a misplay and stuff this run up.

...

last night:

sadly, gd wasn't up for coming with us, but my mom and mr smear and i took a car and arrived on time, although we needed a few minutes before going upstairs to contact the previous driver who'd left his wallet in the car. he seemed very relaxed about it, whereas i'm pretty sure i would have been losing my mind...

dinner was lovely. mr smear put into practice all the things we've been talking about, he was super cool and really polite and he had a good time drawing with his similar-aged cousins!

we got home really late, and i got into bed really late because i dived into inscryption again.

today:

i slept well, until i didn't. i woke up a bit tired, restless, and with visions of inscryption floating before my eyes... but i held off playing more. instead, i started off with my usual combo of bloons: adventure time* and youtube, and only later fired up inscryption to play a bit before heading out to pick up the car for the day.

* yeah, i haven't really stopped playing that, but i'm much less rushed to complete daily quests etc.

the last thing i did before leaving was add the corpse eater sigil to ouroboros, so i left with a burning desire to see how it played.

the first part of the trip to the kibbutz was a bit stressed, for a variety of reasons, the biggest one being the tire pressure indicator lighting up and my mom and i having a hard time figuring out the pressure pipe station at an entirely self-service gas station. i ended up unsure of whether i got it right, and prayed the rest of the way there and the whole way back that we wouldn't suffer a blowout.

it was *hot* today. it was great seeing out kibbutz cousin, lunch was lovely, and i napped fitfully on the couch while everyone talked, dreaming of inscryption. of course. i'm not obsessed, you are! anyway.

later on we drove through to the swimming pool, where we not only had a great time, but mr smear tried and mostly succeeded to learn the crawl stroke! this was a huge level-up, both for him as a swimmer and for me as a parent encouraging and teaching his kid something new. so i'm still riding high on that, definitely the highlight of the day ^_^

coming home was a bit of a story - lots of protests throughout the country generating lots more traffic than usual - but we eventually got home in one piece, had a very late but very delicious portobello mushroom and seitan (and cauliflower) dinner, and it's been inscryption since.

right, back to the game 🤞