cold sweats

 i think i slept relatively well last night. i got up early, read the last of the five asterix books we have (asterix and the banquet, i was amazed by how many of the names i remembered), and had a few naps throughout the day.

we played rayman for a while, mostly it went great but we had some pretty bad feelings at one point due to a misunderstanding... it's hard to explain to a kid how some yelling is okay :/

we played uno for while, that was fun.

we watched some more deathnote. the past few episodes really haven't enjoyed the same level of writing and i'm beginning to find myself over it. i hope it resolves well, but where we are it's a confusing mess.

i took mr smear (bike and rollerblades) to his friend's temporary home, it was extremely hot but it went well. the last uphill before i got home wrecked me, however, and i entered our apartment feeling faint (my neck had been giving me trouble for most of the ride home).

after i cooled down, i cabbed to meet tahoma in his new apartment. it's an awesome apartment in an incredible location! he convinced me to consider looking for a new apartment now and finding a sublet for our current one, i spoke to gd and hopefully we'll be able to make this happen.

we had a pizza at the green cat, and then walked to cassata - a remarkably tel avivi place - for ice cream, before eventually walking to the eliphelet station where it took me three tries to get on the right train because the signage is so bad.

...

having not realized how late i'd been out, i was caught mid-dinner by mr smear informing me that he was ready to go home. for the first time, i arranged for a taxi to pick him up, and he got home fine, but he called me from inside the taxi to say "dad - do you remember how you told me about stranger danger? i'm feeling that right now" 😰

we're definitely going to have to have a talk in the morning 🤣

parenting (at home and at work)

preying on my mind this morning: overhearing bigtalk (apparently) badmouthing our tech ops' manager to him while simultaneously making him feel unappreciated. i literally didn't know what to do at the time, and then later the topic came up (partially) when we were talking to our boss. now i feel like i have to take him for a walk and discuss what happened, and i feel like i need to talk to my boss about it first, and i don't want to do either of those things.

monday:

i dropped mr smear off at his therapist and proceeded to work. i presented my roadmap to a bunch of coworkers, with the sharpest feedback being how i hadn't made the timeline clear. after an inspirational quote from my boss (churchill's "plans are of little importance, but planning is essential") so in the middle of the night, i spent an hour or two making a gantt chart that was received very favorably (and with surprise that i actually did it properly, thanks free online gantt chart software!)

the largest / most important effort went into setting up an installation machine, which provided some really tricky challenges and i ended up leaving without understanding how to connect two very important dots.

yesterday:

the houthi attack in the early morning proved a very effective alarm for mr smear's first day of summer camp. it wasn't the smoothest morning, but we arrived at the bus stop on time for the shuttle - a pity that the shuttle was about forty minutes late. but that did give me an opportunity to get a coffee from the bakery on weizman, which turned into quite a weird experience (from the confused cashier when i asked about their alternative milks, to the barista who didn't understand that "barista" wasn't a brand, to the french people standing and talking while inappropriately blocking anyone who needed to get to the counter, to the barista having difficulty letting me know that my coffee was ready).

on the way to work i spoke to my mom, who sounded pretty bad (and by the evening would sound terrible). we both expressed gratitude that none of us got sick throughout her vacation here, which was a first. i'm a little concerned by her always insisting that she feels fine when she's obviously really sick - serious patient-zero vibes :/

it was a very busy work day, with a highlight and a lowlight. the lowlight was the incident i described above. the highlight was figuring out, after a couple of hours, the ridiculous process of getting the installation machine accounts sorted out and operational. just in time, too: we had two urgent installations yesterday, and if it wasn't for that machine the tech op and i would have had to spend the evening in the warehouse.

instead, i made it to my dentist appointment on time. i hadn't understood that the pain i was having was due to a new hole, so it was a standard filling that needed to be done. the procedure was very uncomfortable, and it was very sensitive last night, but it seems to be a good job.

on the way home (the bus didn't arrive, so i had to walk) i tested my connection to the installation machine, and the successful test meant that i could have dinner with my family (when the two hours were eventually over) and watch deathnote and, most importantly, grill mr smear about his first day in summer camp.

there were a few hiccups and funny stories, but overall it sounds like he's managing well and having new and interesting experiences ^_^

the installation went on until almost midnight, and ended in a weird failure. but as i was reporting the failure, we received news that the deployment has been delayed. tech ops was really bummed out, but then i reminded him that a) we just got more time just when we needed it and b) that we'd been able to work from home and hadn't been stuck in the warehouse all night.

today so far:

i feel much better since finishing the course of antibiotics yesterday afternoon, they were really making me tired. my new filling seems to be settling.

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.

mom's home

 i didn't sleep very well at all. i got up before my alarm, prepared coffee in a takeaway cup, and even chatted to mr smear, who wasn't interested in coming with to the airport but did make a point of calling excitedly every half hour to find out where she was :)

my timing would have been great had the north entrance to the train station been open. and it was almost great even for the south entrance, but i arrived just as everyone was getting off the train and pouring up the stairs in a way that prevented anyone from going down, and i ended up missing it by seconds.

fortunately the next train was only a few minutes later 🙏

picking up my mom and getting home was straightforward, and it was nice to start the day altogether.

then i went to work, where most of the day was spent setting up in the warehouse, preparing an installation and then executing. it went well, but took a long time.

i arrived home pretty late, we ordered very serious salads and sandwiches for dinner, and i didn't last long after getting mr smear into bed (the air mattress on the floor).

it was nice playing rayman: legends with mr smear before we sat down to eat - he had an eye exam in the afternoon and his vision was apparently too blurry for anything else :P

i slept relatively well last night, although my sleep was disrupted a number of times because my mother wasn't sleeping so much :P

i'm a bit nervous going into today: i have a presentation to give to a bunch of new employees and i've got literally nothing but an empty template right now.

beats

 it was a big day, it had ups and downs. big ups, with a sprinkle of frustrating downs.

it started with me waking up with a sore shoulder, and it's ending with me either being eaten by a mosquito or just imagining it.

we left reasonably on time, with only a minor mr smear hiccup along the way. the drive there was longer than i'd anticipated, but we arrived relatively early in the day. it wasn't quite what we expected - the party took place in an amusement park - but for a family-friendly trance event it was a pretty good space.

immediately, mr smear decided he was struggling with sensory overload and wanted to go home. we tried to calm him down, and make him understand that we weren't leaving anytime soon, with varying degrees of success.

for round one, we hit the main floor while he sat outside drawing, but soon the wind came up and he went upstairs to lie on a bench and watch the floor from above.

in retrospect, i feel really dumb for not having brought him earplugs or ear protectors. i'm guessing roughly half the other parents remembered and/or cared :P

between rounds, we ate the packed lunch in the car and then played foosball before returning to the main floor. something bothered him (i found out later it was people eating at the table he was next to) and he went and sat outside (reading on his phone, i let it go for today), and gd and i continued having a really good time dancing, enjoying a beer or three (i only had one :P), and being both amused by all the families on the floor and proud of all of us for doing precisely what our people fight and die to be able to do: live.

on the way out, mr smear actually joined us for a final dance on the second stage (a dj with a didgeridoo, mr smear wisely thought it prudent to step away from the bass bin because he was feeling the beats in his chest), and the long ride back was (long, but) very pleasant. coming into the apartment, gd made a comment about how we need to do that more often and my heart lifted ^_^

the rest of the evening was good, with mr smear and i playing some there is no game together. eventually, he went to bed. everything seemed fine.

by the third time he called for gd, i went to go and see what was going on. i was surprised to find him in tears, and i pushed him to tell me why he was crying... to which he responded that they were joyful tears, because gd had sung him a lullaby and he'd felt truly at peace for the first time in years 😭

i've spent a little time working on the language project, but it's late and it's been a big day and i think i should probably go to bed soon.

almost restful

yesterday:

we all went out to pick up pillows (the ones we bought a few weeks ago are expensive but shit), a bunch of nature store groceries and treats, and then "opened a table" at the hummusia. it was great.

but all the while we were on the clock, trying to make arrangements to get mr smear and his friend to cinema city to see a minecraft movie (in english with hebrew subtitles, as they instructed, because his friend's trying to learn english and they both agreed that it's always better to see a movie in its original language 🤣)

we caught the bus home just in time for me to be able to pick up the first car (our "usual" vehicle wasn't available), figure out how to start it (?!), pick up the boys and get them there just in time, and only almost taking a wrong turn once. i turned the wrong way for parking, though, and we ended up having to walk quite a way... his friend's mom had organized the tickets which were supposed to include concession stand items, and figuring that out when they were already running a bit late was stressful.

i eventually got them seated, then headed out to the car to get it back before the reservation ended feeling somewhat liberated by them being okay and somewhat nervous about them being alone (i was thinking about the off-chance of mr smear somehow coming into contact with dairy)

i drove back to the car's parking spot, parked it, and had just left the building when the sirens went off - a houthi attack.

good grief.

i managed to get into a bomb shelter nearby, one full of extremely loud neighbors, while frantically talking to mr smear's friends parents and explaining that they were alone in glilot but that it was probably okay (because the theatre should be a protected area). then i walked home, grabbed a cup of tea, and began the journey to the second car, which was much futher away.

just before arriving there his friend's mother called to say that she'd called him, and that he'd complained that she was disturbing their movie :P

i drove back to cinema city, found a closer parking, and got to the theatre just as the two of them were walking out, full of enthusiasm and joy ^_^

it took a while to get out of there, but it was all good spirits and they decided that mr smear should go to his place for the evening. the drama that followed was him refusing to take stuff for the night (insisting that he didn't want to sleep over), even though he eventually did end up sleeping there.

god knows if he brushed his teeth. i know for sure he didn't shower :/

gd and i made kiddush, ate a very simple dinner, and watched the rest of nightcrawler (meh. also, have i seen it before? but mainly meh - it's a good movie but not something i'm ever in the mood for)

today:

it's weird waking up without mr smear at home. not unpleasant, but weird. after much not-much-ing (including a fair amount of slay the spire), gd and i took care of the humungous pile of dishes, and around lunchtime i called mr smear and heard that the parents were out and that he hadn't eaten. he was "peckish", he told me, but not hungry.

i walked over there (it's a half hour walk) to pick him up, and arrived in time to find them being fed. i ended up being coerced into staying for lunch and extra coffees, while the kids continued with their screen-time marathon, and the adult conversation was excellent and ended in me passionately describing the magic of shakespeare's sonnets to people who really appreciated it.

after that, i finally managed to extricate myself and my boy, and we were off on our way home. in very good spirits.

...

right until i explained that due to the excessive screen time, there would be none until dinner (which at that point was only an hour or two away). what followed was pretty extreme, not just the fighting over screentime and rudeness and consequences, but also me having to physically drag him half the way home.

it was all just fucking awful.

there were big feelings and strong words and angry silences. also a couple of funny moments, but they didn't last. i explained to mr smear that we're going to mark today - the 10th of may - as the last day that he gets away with the bad attitude.

i didn't know whether gd would be supportive or not, but it only took her a minute to realize what he was doing and how and we agreed whole-broken-heartedly that real measures needed to be taken. so while he showered, i figured out how to block specific sites on the computer, initiated an account deletion for roblox, deleted almost all the games of the ps4 (except for my games) and unsubscribed from their plus program, and disabled his access to our steam library.

it's cold turkey time.

there was still some lingering nastiness over a very quiet dinner, but afterwards we all had a family talk and it really feels like we got through to him. in addition to everything else we discussed - and we discussed a lot of stuff - i instructed him to start working on a gratitude journal, which he did with gusto.

bedtime was smooth, and pleasant.

post-bedtime? gd and i are absolutely drained following all the drama. it was a beautiful, restful weekend that was marred by car rental issues, terrorism and a massive parenting failure, and it's pretty hard right now to focus on the good stuff. i'm going to go practice that now.

yom ha'aztmaut 2025: everything is on fire

the devastating eco-terrorism fires set yesterday seem to be relatively under control, so we can at least open the windows and go outside for yom ha'atzmaut.

this is a tough one.

a beautiful prayer has been written for it: a prayer for yom hazikaron and yom haatzmaut 5785-2025

saturday:

mostly resting, with mr smear finally feeling better. watching big, which has aged surprisingly well. an afternoon walk which turned sour, but managing to rescue it by the skin of my teeth (and a mix of forcefulness and letting some shit slide).

explaining to mr smear that there are four types of authority (power, knowledge, leadership, and dependency).

sunday:

a really good night's sleep

waking up to surprise renovations downstairs while trying to get stuff done, including lots of time on the phone learning that my debit card issuer can't cancel our debit cards

successfully getting our freelancer to deploy, then discovering that my son had informed his therapist and mother that he was suicidal. a long, serious but mostly positive talk with him and gd at schnitt's

homework help: after some fighting, establishing that he'd done the book report properly, making a lego pizza slice

spending the evening mindlessly doing minesweeper quests until way later than i should have

monday:

a very positive morning after a short but relatively good night's sleep. surprisingly good yoga start. surprise water outage, but at least an apology / acknowledgement from the apartment owner that he should have warned us beforehand

a reunion lunch with my previous teammates, no vegan options but a manager who took the feedback well

rushing to get the car and pick up gd and mr smear, surprise trucks blocking the pick up point after mr smear misunderstood that "meet us here" meant "meet us here now", parking too early, gd getting an answer about her toes (her toenail seems to be disconnected from the matrix, and might be infected)

fucking up the installation, a panicked hour or two with my lead on the line trying to help him (through his panic) to do stuff he doesn't want to do while simultaneously trying to get anydesk to work so i could rescue the machine i'd auto-deleted from our vpn

leaving the office around 9pm, getting on a bus with a suspicious package and getting off at the next stop because the driver didn't care. the next bus driver doing me a favor by dropping me off where he shouldn't have

getting myself cleaned up and then diving right back into work. making some progress but grinding until 3am before giving up

tuesday:

3.5 hours sleep, good quality sleep but waking up feeling broken

crazy day of non-stop support and phone ringing, exhaustion, napping before a sezchuan lunch, everything still broken but eventually somewhat successful (our test site, at least), the simpsons and pushing bedtime back a half hour (possibly a bad idea)

our whole family at the door putting shoes on to rush to the shelter before realizing that the siren was for yom hazikaron

an early-ish night

wednesday:

a proper good night's sleep

starting the day with a massive wake-up fight (see previous comment about possibly bad idea)

a clinic mission after dropping mr smear off at school

visiting the bank on the way to work: "you could have just sent me a message". getting the cards cancelled pretty quickly.

my son the asshole ("secretly" erasing the board every day, then threatening the kid who told him not to - the kid whose mother he insulted, and whose artwork he tore up, and who he hit with a rock - then calling gd in tears to say he was being bullied by the whole class, then kicking "the usual" bully, then telling the teacher she's an idiot that's being manipulated, then finally apologizing)

jesus fucking christ.

over the course of the day i managed to defuse the situation with my lead by agreeing to walk back a change he was unhappy about, and we're going to have to find a different way to approach it. and i expect that we'll know soon enough if that was what broke the deployments...

ordering lunch was a mess, wolt took the wrong payment method and the two agents i spoke to were completely useless. but the lunch itself was absolutely delicious (yellow curry), and i should only have eaten half of it.

the rest of the workday was smooth, cursor's "assistance" was a mixed bag (90% of the code was ai-generated, but it was also 90% wrong and needed a lot of iterating). i learned a lot about kubernetes, though :P

on the way home i needed to mask up because of the ash

a long "family meeting" that was very intense. parenting is hard.

a quiet start to yom haatzmaut playing minesweeper and slay the spire and thinking a lot about everything.

today so far:

mostly quiet, but now heading out with mr smear. we had a fight about heading out - as usual - but this time i warned him that we won't tolerate this shit any more. if he doesn't change this behavior, i'm going to start deleting his game accounts, like roblox and minecraft. i'm done.

chag sameach.

un-holy

 unholy shit. the past few days have been thoroughly exhausting, i've got twenty minutes to type this up before taking mr smear to shul and hoping for a smooth evening.

i've been playing a lot of slay the spire, as much because it's an awesome game as because i desperately need some kind of escapist meditation.

gd and i left mr smear at home with cubase and tinkercad and did a quick pharmacy run before rushing a lunch and packing and heading for the train to jerusalem.

for the past two days, it's been near impossible to get mr smear "present" in any sense, all he wants to do is play games on his phone.

the train experience: just great, although managing mr smear's phone addiction wasn't easy.

the light rail experience: omg, so many people. so many low-iq, unwashed, neglected/neglectful people.

mr smear became progressively angrier and more upset about moving between the masses on their way to the wall, and about us trying to help him navigate his feelings, and by the time we arrived he was pretty much a lost cause. but in a way that really tied in to all the shit we've been dealing with lately, the rudeness and the belligerence and the defiance and the anger.

the ingratitude.

oh, i left out the shitty experience at the armenian quarter museum where we just wanted to use a bathroom.

the way back to the light rail was better, the ride back to the train station less unpleasant, the train ride back to tel aviv a relief - although a lot of that was just mr smear knowing that we were on our way home :/

we had some talks, we had dinner, and then i said goodnight and headed to the mongoose's to chill and decompress. he called me a taxi to get home because i was falling on my nose, and it didn't even occur to me to just order one myself :$

today:

another couple of talks in the morning, but him actually finishing his hebrew book report. a shopping mission that only had a couple more incidents. a mission to find an english copy of munchkin (didn't find one), introduce gd to the teva castel, eat a nice little meal off our favorite vegan cart, and take a long, slow stroll home (we were too impatient to wait for the buses).

oh, and lots and lots of dishes between last night and today to make up for a few negligent days.

the retelling

friday evening:

so we watched prince of egypt on friday night, and if i recall correctly we also watched the end of paddington 2. regardless of when we watched it, i interpreted the ending the same way as this guy.

gd was going to bake challah for shabbat but suddenly realized - once the dough was ready for the oven - that we don't have a working oven... so we did what we technically should have been doing anyway, and had matzah instead :P

yesterday:

we re-watched joseph: king of dreams in the morning, and while we didn't love the songs it wasn't as bad as we remembered. but the writers really added a whole lot of unnecessary stuff to the film and laid it on so thick, that afterwards i downloaded the sefaria app and started reading the original text.

i don't recall much from yesterday afternoon.

in the early evening we picked up the car, and almost left the gift behind... which worked out, because i'd forgotten to relieve myself before heading out and considering the traffic i would've been in trouble if i hadn't.

it was heartbreaking and aggravating seeing so many people protesting on erev pesach.

we arrived in reasonable time, and the evening was very pleasant. the seder was a lot quicker than usual (and less loud), and mr smear got "stage fright" when it was his turn to sing, and i struggled with the tiny font of the unfamiliar haggadah, but it was great seeing everyone and the kids were adorable and the food was great. (i agreed to let mr smear have half an egg on account of it being a very special occasion and ironically symbolic, but it bothers me)

and the drive home - ignoring having to duck my head to avoid super-bright LED headlights - was relatively smooth.

today:

i spent a large chunk of my day napping. leftover lunch was delicious. in the afternoon i took mr smear for a long walk through the park, we talked about storytelling and workshopped an idea of his. on the way home we picked up some snacks, and hid in the entrance of a building when the sirens went off for a rocket attack.

we watched the simpsons over dinner, and i started playing slay the spire, which is really fun. mr smear went to bed rather late, in large part because i picked up a copy of asimov's i, robot and started reading it to him. we're well into the first story and really hating the parents.

i played some more, until i died, and although i have to work tomorrow i'm contemplating playing a little more now...

... uh, oh...

breaking the cycle

 it was the first real weekend in three weekends, though i was really, really tired last by yesterday afternoon. i think that's just because i'm working really hard these days.

i slept awfully and far from enough on what remained of thursday night, woke up yesterday and took mr smear to school, and then shortly afterwards gd dragged me to the mall to do some shopping. i was starting to feel worn down by the time we returned home, and was relieved to have half an hour to myself before picking up mr smear when he called to say that the juggling teacher was MIA. again.

*sigh*

i convinced him to calm down and just wait by the gate, and once the school day was officially over i picked him up and brought him home to change bags before we all headed out to the ayalon mall for purim costume shopping. after some bus shenanigans - waiting almost half an hour before giving up - we grabbed a rental and were there in no time.

we couldn't find a costume mr smear wanted, but we did find him a fake executioner's axe.

which he can't take to school because since october 7th, no costume weapons allowed :/

anyway, i dropped them off at home and returned the car and returned home, and napped hard, and took a hot bath, and then it was dinner time, by the end of which i was literally passing out at the table.

today:

mr smear and i got up around the same time, and i restarted buddy simulator 1984 which he'd begun last night. we had a great time together, but some of the events were quite disturbing and he had trouble going to sleep tonight...

the game's ESRB rating being for teens is... appropriate. i'm only a little way in and i'm first and foremost impressed by the use of lazy writing to disguise a very carefully crafted experience. secondly, what begins slightly creepy is only becoming creepier.

son of a *****, i'm in.

we had a bit of a fight about him coming out with me today... as usual. but he did, and once he was out he was great. we paid our friends a visit for a while - it was only supposed to be a quick stop to drop off the extra calvin & hobbes books and a hand-me-down onesie - but mr smear and their kids were having a good time and then we got into some conversations. eventually, it was time to go and they asked if they could join us, so we all headed out together on our bikes, through the park to the port.

we began at a playground, with mr smear uninterested in using the facilities and deliberately sunning his "herpes eye" (wtaf?!), and afterwards we biked through the port (big mistake) until the crowds proved too much and then we took a quick detour to get to babylon park. as we turned off the main stretch, right after two large women had just walked right in front of us while mr smear's temper was reaching boiling point, he angrily yelled something to the effect of "i HATE that obese people existing is a thing!" [laughs and dies inside simultaneously]

babylon park was a great idea, except that about 45 seconds in mr smear's friend burst into angry tears because her father wouldn't pay for her to use one of the gambling machines. that tantrum went on for a long time, while mr smear played some cool games (he's surprisingly good at the shooting games and he's getting good at the motorcycle ones too), and mr smear and her little brother and i played air hockey, and generally had a good go.

they left before we did, but when we decided we were done we found them still outside, with her refusing to leave. she agreed to go home with us (although we didn't agree to that :P), and we were almost out of the park when mr smear stopped and i had an opportunity to give her a talk about how her dad was protecting her from herself... it seemed to have landed, but she still didn't want to ride home with him so we all split up and i made sure she got home before mr smear and i came home ourselves.

overall, i'm really pleased with mr smear's attitude today and the two of us got exercise and sunshine and had a good time together, and i feel like i parented well even with the other kids. we had a good evening, with a less insane episode of delicious in dungeon, followed by a good chat with my mom and big sister (who's just arrived in cape town and is staying with her for a week).

and then it was bedtime, and the remaining half of an episode of monk that i'd fallen asleep during, and then comforting mr smear, and now... it's late, and we're about to lose an hour of sleep to the clock moving forward.

[checks]

why the fuck did anyone say that the clocks would be moving forward today? it's another few weeks.

either way, i'm tired and i hope i get a good night's sleep.

a hard end to the week

[the jackals are at it again, it's become an all-night thing that starts really early in the evenings. i just caught a glimpse of one of them patrolling our building's garden.]

i'm in-between sleeps, and i can sum up today with a solid "ugh".

the morning was good. it was the first time in a long time that i didn't feel anything hanging over my head. i even played a little of one of the games i picked up yesterday while enjoying an early breakfast (i usually fast until noon), the path. so far, cool concept.

the work day wasn't easy. nobody had time for the PRs i worked on last night, although one guy made a very interesting suggestion which i'll probably look into over the weekend. lunch was delicious (green thai curry) but i ate too much, and the entire afternoon my stomache felt uncomfortable. i made some progress, but nothing that felt meaningful, and the most significant conversation i had (security posture and strategy) had good results, but some of it took place during happy hour when i was legit tipsy and some of it dragged and caused me leave the office late while i was deliberately trying to leave earlier.

and speaking of happy hour, one of our bosses was entertaining a colored-hair liberal and oh my god i'm praying that that's not a new hire. i really don't want to work with people who constantly feel the need to educate everyone on their political ideologies... i can't stop thinking how in the animal world, bright colors are a warning sign to others :/

...

coming home was flustering. i left the office in a rush - "escaped", more like - and immediately caught a bus that would take me home. the buses stop much closer to home than the light rail. but as i got on the bus, i realized that i'd left my computer on my desk. i got off at the next stop, and judged that it would be quicker to walk to the light rail than to an opposing bus stop, and i quickly returned to the office to pick up my laptop and awkwardly repeat my weekend wishes to my coworkers.

and that's when i made the mistake of trying to catch another bus home, because i waited forever (and even took two buses, hoping the stop further down would see a higher frequency), and by the time i eventually got home it was clear that walking the entire distance would have been faster. even though the light rail adds an extra ten minutes of walking, it's by far the fastest way to travel on average.

...

the evening went well, although we watched episode 17 of delicious in dungeon while eating and the level of violence was entirely unexpected. we actually had to check in with mr smear to see if he was okay, and have a talk about whether it was appropriate or not. i'm honestly not sure whether we should continue.

...

but at least he went to bed without drama, and when i was brushing my teeth i was amused to hear him singing himself to sleep :)

...

just as we were settling in for the night / weekend, my boss called me up, apologizing repeatedly for bothering me but informing me that we have a surprise installation. i don't think he was too pleased that i don't know more than he does about how to do the old installations (i've been working on the new ones), but i assured him that i'm happy to assist and then contacted my lead to make sure that he knows that i'm available if he needs anything.

i tried watching an episode of monk after that, but i fell asleep on the couch instead, woken occasionally by work messages though thankfully none of them needed any action.

...

my nose was still giving me trouble all day, this evening i wondered if sick didn't transition into hayfever... but i took antihistamines and it's been a couple of hours with no results so i don't think it's that.

...

i'm seeing antisemitic anti-israel propaganda being floated by members of our cape town congregation and it's distressing. and we're still reeling from the impact of the deceitful "documentary" winning an oscar. it's disgusting and demoralizing.

the dusting

 i feel like i managed to clear a lot off my plate the past couple of days, which has made me a lot less anxious. having said that, my morning plans were thoroughly disrupted when gd instructed me to go on an urgent pharmacy run right before my dentist appointment...

mr smear woke up still coughing his bad cough, so he stayed home again today. we're really hoping he'll be going back to school tomorrow, both because it's effectively his last day with his teacher before she goes on maternity leave, and because i really need to work from home and i don't really feel comfortable doing that when he's around.

on the way to the pharmacy, i crossed the same intersection that i'd had trouble with yesterday, and two cars - one a taxi - didn't stop. i think i need to make more noise about this.

fortunately, the wait for the pharmacy was unusually short. i made it home in time to pick up my bag and hop on a bus to the dentist.

while i was waiting, my number was called for a different room, so i launched myself across the offices thinking that they'd changed my room and that someone else was taking my turn. instead, it turned out that their system uses duplicate numbers, which i complained is confusing. the receptionists don't see anything wrong with that :/

i didn't really appreciate the dentist's sense of humor, nor did his assistant, but whatever. the experience overall wasn't unpleasant, he removed a mark on my reconstructed incisor and assured me that the nerve pain i occasionally experience isn't actually from the tooth's filling, but rather from the exposed root and gum.

great.

...

the bus to work got stuck in traffic and had to take a detour. i walked into the office that was practically empty because all the smart people were working from home. i worked really hard until i was finally able to take a late lunch - i found a good falafel place close by - and then returned late for a very important meeting that i hadn't realized was in my calendar.

my suspicion of narcolepsy yesterday was strengthened by another attack during that meeting. i need to get myself evaluated.

by the end of the afternoon, it was clear to me that we should have been strongly discouraged from coming to the office while the renovation is taking place, and that all of our desks should have been covered in plastic before they began. what an absolute shit-show. i hope i didn't ingest any asbestos. i'm always nervous about that because that's ultimately what killed my father, and i've been exposed a number of times.

...

i came home just after gd left for her acupuncturist, who's apparently excellent. i did a little work in between helping mr smear with a maths exercise he was struggling with, and while we had one of our usual arguments about him restarting it whenever he made a mistake, we both communicated much better than usual and he eventually heard me out and tried it my way. with a little twist of his own: it's an exercise that requires the child to have a good handle on multiplication tables, and when he made a mistake with a number he then practiced the multiplication table entries for its factors before trying again.

and it worked! he was clearly proud of himself for getting through it, and i told him he'd earned each and every star on that one ^_^

just before dinner arrived we did his hebrew reading, which wasn't as much of a struggle as usual but he still didn't want to do it before he eventually did it and felt good about doing it.

we never learn :P

...

dinner was great, very salad-y but delicious and enjoyed by all. and then it was bedtime, and me and gd watching monk time, some of which i passed out for. then she went to bed and i watched a bunch of stuff on youtube (mostly political these days, but some ai and inscryption strategies too), and now i'm posting this and considering my next move. bed? reading? gaming? probably nothing too practical.

narc-olepsy and hydra-tion 1

[part 1 / 2 because of the label limitations]

i spent longer on my cdktf repo last night than intended, but i hit the hay with a sense of accomplishment. i managed about two sentences of of mice and men before realizing that i was too tired to understand anything, and promptly went to sleep.

mr smear woke up coughing this morning, he was doing a bit better but definitely wasn't ready to return to school. instead, he pulled maus off the shelf and started reading it, and he appears to be really getting into it, both in content and in style.

i was sad to learn that art spiegelman has been turned by pro-palestinian propaganda, and - like gabor maté - i suspect their trauma has made them hypersensitive and vulnerable to our enemies' cries of "genocide".

while he read that, i read the first chapter of of mice and men. so far, highly enjoyable.

it was bitterly cold this morning, and i was dressed in a double layer with gloves and my hoodies up for my walk to the post office to pick up gd's new purse.

i asked mr smear to "fix" my water bottle that he did a number on the other day. i'm not sure he followed any of my requests / instructions, but the overall effect is cool so i took to it work anyway :)

i messaged mr smear's hebrew tutor and told her we were taking a break, he's doing well enough now and it's a huge amount of money that we can't really afford...

on the way to work i stopped by the clinic, almost getting run over again by a taxi at the same intersection. after yelling and chasing down the driver - who actually apologized - i decided that instead of filing another complaint about him personally, i need to take this up with the municipality. so now i'm being bounced between departments trying to get them to do something to make the intersection safer.

i had a good meeting with my boss today. he wants me to go on-site sometime soon, so i warned gd and tried to reassure her that i'll be safe...

static electricity and spontaneously bleeding hands: i actually had to run off to find hand lotion for the office, i've never experienced that before.

speaking of surprises, i spoke to our landlord who offered to send a handyman to help us with the flaky sink, which is quite something!

[continued...]

the night owls

 as i begin writing this post, it's 2.20am and everyone's awake. me, because i woke up an hour or two ago with indigestion (we had pizza for dinner, and every day since wednesday has been a celebratory cheat-day), mr smear because he woke up thirsty and coughing, and gd because i went to pee and him calling for me woke her up...

anyway. it's been a crazy couple of days, now seems as good an hour as any to get it down.

wednesday:

i walked home, furiously messages everyone who needed to be updated with my news. on my way, i picked up some rum. well, i picked up a bacardi mojito, to be precise, and the cashier expressed her disgust which reminded me that gd had asked for whiskey. but the whiskeys there were way overpriced, so i ended up taking the bacardi while she muttered "disgusting" under her breath 😂

gd had ordered from our favorite vegan burger joint, and i ate my entire meal which was twice as much as i should have :P

as part of my celebration, i also picked up a copy of final fantasy vi (pixel remaster) and car mechanic simulator 2021, but unfortunately the latter proved unplayable after mr smear and i enthusiastically gave it a go this evening after talking about it for almost two days :/

thursday:

i dropped mr smear off at school and then continued on to our clinic, where i finally received the authorization that gd's been waiting on. i walked through to the hospital compound to deliver it, then returned home.

by the time i entered the office i realized that i hadn't received any sign of my contract, so i signed in to the signing app and found it waiting for me - it had been sent immediately after i'd approved it the evening before, and gmail had filed its notification as spam :/

i immediately skimmed through it to ensure everything was as expected, signed it, and it was done.

HOORAY!!

nystire called and we had a quick chat, which began with us trying to remember the name of the ultra-orthodox guy we'd served with that i bumped into on my way to the office, and resulted in him suggesting something that bolstered my confidence that i was making the right decision.

for a while i had a live-stream open of the hostage release, though eventually i realized that it wasn't constructive and i just waited on occasional live updates instead.

everything about how hamas is behaving with the hostage release just seems completely unhinged. who is their footage aimed at, and what kind of bizarre narrative are they trying to convince people of? what the hell do the goodie bags and framed certificates even mean?!

and how does it help them to show such cruelty to an old man while releasing him?? make it make sense

two of my coworkers came in, and one of them is interviewing for the same company. i enjoy working with him, but he's a particularly quirky developer so i'm intrigued.

[half an hour later and mr smear's really struggling, gd's taking care of him but it's unsettling]

...

i received a dramatic message from mr smear's homeroom teacher informing me that the kid mr smear hit with a rock, and whose artwork he's torn up on a couple of occasions, was very upset because mr smear had insulted his mother by calling her fat and saying she was unable to move. made worse by the fact that those statements are true 🤦

he claims that he and this kid were playing a game that involved generating drama, and that he immediately recognized and regretted his going to far. considering the fact that his teacher told me she had to give him a talk and ask him to apologize, i have my suspicions.

to add insult to... insult, he took a pack of oreos to school today to give to the poor kid as an additional apology, and then ate them himself :/

...

while i'd already signed the new contract, i put a lot of effort into making sure that i rejected my other offer in as constructive (or, non-destructive) a way as possible. while it was true that i'd made up my mind before i got the one i signed, it was surprisingly easy to honestly express the aspects that i'd had to weigh (especially as it wasn't an apples-to-apples comparison) and how much i valued their offer and would enjoy working with them. 

it was a relief to get back warm, sympathetic responses from the three people i emailed my letter to and it feels like they're keeping the door open too, which is comforting.

...

i'd intended to get my chair and monitor home before taking mr smear to the second part of his evaluation, but it proved too tricky, so i walked home, fired off the aforementioned email i'd been preparing, and the bussed him to the evaluation. i enjoyed a decaf coffee while waiting for him, resuming learning about the dangers of localStorage and coming up with a potential mechanism for using it securely. 

while there, gd went to the dentist and finally got her first crown sorted out! it's a huge relief.

i picked mr smear up, we grabbed hummus at a hummusia close by, i showed him the building i'm about to start working in and we took the light rail home.

i didn't need to eat so much of the pita, but it was delicious.

...

it having been unseasonably warm the whole day, i left the apartment after dinner without a sweater and barely regretted it. i took the train to the office (i'd been misled by a bus stop display to believe that there was a protest causing traffic), picked up my chair and wheeled it out, then called a taxi. fortunately, the taxi driver not only had no issue with transporting a chair, but was able to jimmy it into the front seat in a way that i definitely wasn't capable of.

i'd originally intended to use an hourly rental, and i think i would have deeply regretted it.

yesterday/today (friday):

i got mr smear to school, and from there caught a bus to the office to pick up my monitor and drop off my key and keycard.

i was amused by my reflection in the elevator mirror when i realized i was taking office equipment out the building wearing a hoodie that says "pirate king" on the front 😅

i took the train home, and set up my workstation, which i'm happily using now and it makes an ENORMOUS difference to the experience of using my shitty windows machine!

i kinda regret not setting something like this up before.

i picked mr smear up from school, came home, helped a woman pick up a whole bunch of mr smear's unwanted books and toys, then walked with mr smear to one of ze germans' son's street exhibit on ben gurion, which was simply astonishing. what's just as astonishing to my mind is that most of his artwork was sold by the end of the afternoon!

amazing kid. even mr smear found his work riveting, and at some point told him "i'm good, but you're waaay better than me" 😅

...

we were supposed to meet up with the mongoose but hadn't heard from him, so we walked around until we discovered market vegan and stopped for lunch. i had a thai curry soup that came with glass noodles, mr smear wasn't a fan of the soup but enjoyed the noodles, then decided to try adding soup to the noodles, and at that point decided he could enjoy it properly :)

we also picked up one of their desserts, which was delicious, but mr smear looked like a chocolate version of heath ledger's joker so we stopped in at a bar/restaurant to clean up. on our way out, we stepped on broken glass that had simply been abandoned while whoever dropped it went to get something to sweep it with, and we were about twenty meters away when i realized that mr smear's shoes had a massive glass spike in it that almost went through to his foot :/

...

we met up with the mongoose and co. (wife/daughter/some friends), his daughter's really starting to speak! and i just realized that i never put her birthday in my calendar and we just missed her 2nd birthday 🤦

it was nice seeing them, but mr smear really got in my face and wouldn't let me talk, which not only infuriated me but also lost him a chunk of privilege time - it took three increments of 15 minutes to finally get him to stop. on the walk home i explained to him how bad that was.

we were almost home before he realized that his punishment was going to be carried out immediately, and we sat on a bench and had a massive fight about how punishments work, and how the punishment itself is his fault and not mine, and how what he was doing to me was assault and if he wasn't my kid he could get into real trouble for it.

eventually, with only an additional 15 minutes added on top for rudeness (he did try hitting me a couple of times, but i responded in kind so that stopped quickly), we returned home in surprisingly calm spirits.

...

we tried out the new vegan sachlav that's being advertised everywhere, and it is good! it's one of those things that i've missed every winter since i went vegan (so... almost 15 years now) and i really enjoyed it :)

after doing some dishes while mr smear served his sentence (some sentence, he just chilled and read for an hour), we headed to the synagogue. along the way i talked to him about prayer, that there are different forms of it, and that there's power in communal prayer (whether in synagogue or on a dance floor) and power in being connected to our ancestors and our history.

the chazan was in a bit of a droning mood, so it wasn't as vibrant a service as usual, and there was a weird choir thing as the end, but otherwise it was a pleasant experience and i'm glad that mr smear's going with the flow.

...

between getting home and saying kiddush, we had time to try out the mechanic simulators, and sadly our windows machine just isn't up to spec :(

at least i could get a refund.

[gd just went to bed, and mr smear's now up and reading todd strasser's the wave on the couch behind me]

we enjoyed the pizza dinner and the simpsons, and then mr smear got an extra half hour to play an FPS during which time i taught him how to strafe and not stand still when engaged in a fire fight. i then jumped in the shower, where i heard him yelling excitedly from the living room after he won his first game ^_^

after getting him into bed, i played a bit of final fantasy vi and then went to bed myself. it's 4.15am and i'm not feeling particularly tired myself...

wackier thursday

 i'm starting this post at 1.30am on a friday morning, after tiredly and restlessly flopping around on the bed for the past couple of hours unable to get comfortable. i'm so freaking tired, but so freaking wired, and lower-back sore to boot.

...

after my previous post, i fired up inscryption, which turned out to be a big mistake. i got sucked in, and ended up going to bed a couple of hours later, which was way too late.

so getting this morning was rough.

i got mr smear to school, came home and updated my resume and sent it to my bosses, then shot out towards the train station to meet dod in ra'anana. trying to make sense of the train times via the app, i decided to chance taking the bus instead, and was given a stark reminder that tel aviv is the only city in israel that really *gets* public transport: an hour and a half by train(s), vs half an hour by bus. and when i arrived, dod explained how the train stations in ra'anana are effectively inaccessible to the people living there :/

travelling through my old neighborhood of gan rashal was a trip, seeing how the area's been completely renewed even though it's generally retained its layout, then seeing how shavit hasn't changed one iota. at least not from the outside. then seeing how the hillbilly farmland behind gan rashal was turned into a highway and train station, then entering ra'anana's ahuza and finding it looking pretty much identical to how i remember it.

the nostalgically gentle spring fresh-air smell of ra'anana as i stepped of the bus into the heart of suburbia was overwhelming.

we sat walked to a coffee shop where dod placed his order in french, and we had a good, long chat over good coffees. the relief of hearing that - by-and-large, in spite of his inability to find work in his chosen career - he and his family are doing alright, was big. we then aligned on the side project we want to build into a business, and our way forward seems pretty clear.

and then it was time to go home. i quickly and easily caught a bus home, and spent its entirety catching up on personal messages on instagram (which has recently become my answer to its algorithm). i had a hearty breakfast when i arrived, then walked to the school to pick up mr smear.

the plan was for me to take him to the first session of his evaluation, but as we arrived i suddenly felt sickly and faint, and i was grateful that gd could take him and i could lie down for a while instead. i eventually got up, made myself a cup of turkish coffee, and headed out in the wishy-washy kind-of-rainy-almost weather to meet with a friend of my CEO's who'd gotten in touch the evening before.

i thought i was running late, but as i stepped out of the light rail i found myself facing the sign on their build with five minutes to spare. thank you, light rail!

just before leaving the house, i noticed something strange - the invitation for the meeting had been updated by someone with the same name as lipgirl. i'd shaken it off, but when i walked inside their offices lipgirl was the first person i encountered! what a bizarre situation for a reunion :)

the boss man handed me a strong cup of coffee, and we sat down to chat.

what was supposed to be a 45 minute discussion ended up being more than an hour, and i cannot begin to describe how utterly amazing the fit would be if i could get this job, the alignment with my values and interests is simply unreal! i then chatted with lipgirl for a while, catching up* as well as diving into our ridiculous aliyah story, and she may have a contact who can help us expose it.

* there was an awkwardness talking about a friend of hers passed away half a year ago from cancer, i didn't remember her but i *think* she might have tried to set us up once upon a time.

anyway, in addition to how incredibly enticing the company is from a business / tech point of view, i have it on good authority that it's a great bunch of people to work with.

i left the office buzzing. partially from the excess caffeine, but in large part from what an amazing opportunity this is - i'm praying that i get through their evaluation rounds 🙏

i sent a thank you to my CEO, caught the bus home, unloaded the story on gd as i did the dishes, helped mr smear with his math homework, and then sat down for dinner, not once having looked at the exercise i was supposed to be dedicating the afternoon to... this exercise has become A Thing. A Heavy Thing.

hopefully i'll get it done tomorrow. maybe even over the weekend, even though i try not to do any form of work on shabbat...

we had a long goodnight chat with my mom after dinner, and after getting mr smear into bed gd and i finally finished watching beetlejuice beetlejuice.

it's... it's not a good movie? although it kind of is? from a plot and engagement point of view it's really meh, but at the same time it feels like a horror stoner movie that's parodying itself. and it has some redeeming moments. it feels like an art house movie, the kind that might have been produced by the character of delia deetz herself. in a way it felt more like a play than a movie.

i didn't enjoy the movie, but i also didn't not enjoy it.

...

good news on the OB/GYN story! earlier we received an email from him directly, with a proper summary of gd's care along with exactly the prescription we were looking for and that he denied prescribing when i spoke to him directly. it was clomiphene. i've passed that on to my rollerblading friend, and i'm relieved that this rather uncomfortable little story doesn't have to been dragged any further.

dental and rocket drama

[in case i miss a few, i'm typing this on my dell, and for some reason the keys aren't always registering] 

yesterday:

i left for work early to preemptively make up for gd's dentist appointment. i was pissed off about the code review issues - the clear conflict of interest - but i was determined to find a reasonable solution so i rewrote my changes on top of my coworker's branch, and opened a PR for him.

i don't feel like he appreciated that as much as he should have, but whatever.

for my second task of the day, it took a while for me to understand what i was meant to be doing but by the time we stopped for lunch i'd at least made some progress. lunch was good (gd's vegan cottage pie leftovers), and i left earlier than the estimate i'd asked the transport app for in the morning.

amazing how suddenly there was no way to get there on time.

fortunately, i registered that a bus that was supposed to have passed already was so packed that it was delayed, so i managed to squeeze myself in and arrived at the dental clinic just in time to help mr smear out the taxi and upstairs.

i had absolutely no bandwidth for work while we waited, and we were there for two hours. it was really good that i was there, though, because i had the list of things that gd kept forgetting to tell the dentist and we managed to get her on the same page regarding how much gd's been suffering and how urgent this treatment is.

also, i came up with an idea for a hairdresser business that gd could manage and we're both quite excited by the possibilities!

the ride back to work, during rush hour, took another hour. i arrived in the office just in time to help my coworker out with merging my changes and his, and then everybody else started leaving so i left too, doing a little grocery shopping along the way.

i was completely done by the time i got home. after dinner and getting mr smear into bed, i turned in myself.

today:

and woke up to the siren at 4.45am. gd hurt herself jumping out of bed, and between her and mr smear's bound foot we couldn't make it to the shelter, and simply stood outside our front door in the stairwell for five very cold, very uncomfortable minutes. recently a building collapsed after being struck, so after we got back inside i was haunted by the idea of us being crushed to death...

i stayed with mr smear for about an hour because he always struggles to get back to sleep, so i ended up with a very sore back myself.

winning.

at least by the time he woke up for his return to school his foot was feeling much better, so we unbound it and he was fine the entire walk to school. then i returned home to pick up gd, we went to the clinic to find out what was happening with her psychologist authorization, then caught a bus to the dentist.

on the way i had a great idea for gamifying property listings, so i wrote it up before coming to lebowski for a coffee and to post this.

i'm sore, i'm tired, and i'm praying that gd's session is going well and that the rest of the day and weekend will be at least relatively smooth.

aaaand GO!

 today began with mr smear limping out of his bedroom with a very sore ankle. that resulted in me leaving the office around noon* to take him to the clinic, but our clinic was closed already at 1.30pm and the closest one available (fortunately pretty close) was only opening at 3pm. so i got a little work done in the interrim.

* on the way to the office i went to the clinic to submit a form for gd, but only she could submit it. i had to talk her through the process, and i'm still impressed at both of us for getting through it. the office experience itself was a mess**.

** i was nervous about how things would be with my boss, but things seemed fine. then we had a big meeting (all four of us devs and him) and it was really frustrating because nobody would let anybody else speak, but by the end i felt like some semblance of sanity had finally been restored. now i'm pissed off about code reviews and forming a theory about how and why PRs need to be prioritized.

the clinic we went to is in a building that's under massive construction, and mr smear was hobbling along using one of gd's walking sticks. it was a long hobble from the taxi to the elevator, and then we had to navigate stairs down to the reception, and then go see a doctor, and then go all the way back to the elevator to get x-rays done.

mr smear let a couple of deadly ones go in the waiting room, i was mortified. and one of them was exceptionally loud, too. everyone else was being very polite, while i died a little inside.

the x-rays were quick, and we then headed back down to the doctor, who informed us that it doesn't look like there's a break but that there's something worrying he wants a specialist to take a look at. he then sent us to the nurses' offices to get mr smear's foot bound.

a couple of us waited for half an hour (mr smear and i had a nice chat with another ex-saffer) before being told that we needed to take a number. we then had to wait another half an hour until they called our two numbers in quick succession, and by the time mr smear managed to get to the door they refused to open it.

i - was - fuming.

when they finally called the next number, five minutes later, i had to put on a mask of patience so as not to interfere with mr smear's treatment, and that was hard.

anyway.

on the way out i ordered a taxi, and while we waited i pitifully tried to be helpful to some old ladies who were trying to hail a cab. the weather was pretty unpleasant, and it's simply not possible to hail a cab without an app these days; that's really unfair for older people... i'm now trying to get in touch with the app's product team to convince them to make it possible to order a cab for someone else when you've already got one on its way to take you.

i got mr smear into the apartment, then almost immediately turned around to walk to the pharmacy to pick up some emergency supplies.

the first thing that irritated me was trying to dispose of used medical containers: i was directed to the pharmacists, and the pharmacist i spoke to insisted that they don't handle that and that i should just throw it away, which is ridiculous and clearly wrong. then, after gathering the stuff i needed, i found myself standing in a long queue, with only one cashier and two out of the three self-service kiosks out of order.

i don't know if i waited in the queue for five minutes, or ten, but as i got to second-in-line a random woman with a coughing kid signed to me that she was next :/

whatever. i just wanted to get out of there.

just then, the second cashier arrived (she'd been putting prices on things), and hurriedly scanned my items. i was a bit taken aback by how expensive it was, but by then i just wanted to go and i tried to make sense of the numbers... but while packing, we realized she'd mistook something someone else had left on the counter for mine and scanned it. so then i had to wait another three minutes while she reversed the charge...

the final candle lighting for chanukah was mostly smooth - mr smear was pushing my buttons a little, but he'd been otherwise really well-behaved for most of the day - and dinner was delicious, showertime was complicated (mr smear can't get his foot wet), we finished re-reading the magic pudding and, as i said good night to him, we agreed that it's a brilliant book highly deserving of a modern reboot.

today was a Very Long Day, and my brain hurts. god knows what tomorrow will bring, but we're finally meeting with gd's dentist in the afternoon so here's wishing us luck 🤞

happy new year!

hopefully 2025 will be decent. if it's even halfway decent it'll be infinitely better than the last one.

having said that, this last one has ended on an extremely good note. one of ze germans (the irish one) asked if any of us were interested in coming to the science museum in haifa, and i've been wanting to take mr smear but i thought it was closed due to the war. and it wasn't.

so, very last minute and to gd's chagrin (initially), mr smear and i very spontaneously jumped on the train and headed north. the train ride was cool - mr smear expressed his amazement that he wasn't on screens but also wasn't bored, though he now denies it - and we arrived there in good time.

mr smear was throughly engaged for most of our hours there, and he also got along really well with our friends (two kids, ages 4 and 6), and we all had a really good experience. after they left, we ran through the maze and then headed into the "behind the screens" exhibit, which was highly entertaining and very interesting for both of us, and we had to be ushered out at closing time.

the bus and train rides home were pretty uneventful, mr smear got his "rewards" of sprite and screen time, and we've had a pretty good evening overall.

...

in addition to the two of us enjoying a really fun day at madatech today, there was another momentous occasion we have to celebrate. this morning, i received an email informing me that my south african chequing account had been closed. this was good news!

but when i signed in in to check, i saw that our credit card account was in minus. this was bad news :(

partially because without a chequing account i've no way to pay it, but more so because two days ago, i asked them to make sure everything was clear for us to close our accounts.

so for me, the train ride (~1 hour) and the taxi ride (~5-10 minutes) were consumed with messages to my bankers. i had to explain to the first agent that i wasn't interested in paying, and that whatever it was he was telling me i should have asked for was their responsibility to have told me two days ago. he eventually transferred me through to the credit card people (this was about 45 minutes in), who took forever to respond and then closed the chat because i didn't respond within a couple of minutes. so i had to start again.

for the second agent i got through to, i explained that i wanted them to reverse the charge and close the account, and i was (and still am) literally stunned by her rapid reply that the charge had been reversed and the account closed.

so here we are, ushering in a new year with our only remaining debt to my mother, and nothing more being held over her and her apartment.

...

yesterday was a wonky day. the two memorable events were mr smear doing homework - fighting about it and subsequently doing it well - followed by me taking him to his jiujitsu class in the rain and realizing along the way that i'd misunderstood the hours update, so we arrived in time for the next lesson which simply wasn't appropriate ages for him.

*sigh*

anyway, it was a pleasant and interesting little adventure.

...

happy new year. may 2025 bring israel military success, peace and stability, both in the middle east and worldwide. the entire world deserves a break.

oranges and clementines

 well, we did it. we got up on time, left on time, and arrived at kfar neter on time for the picking of the fruits. overall it was a great experience, the weather was gorgeous, and we spent an hour milling around, picking fruit, and occasionally, very briefly, chatting to class parents we like. we left just as everyone starting gathering and drinking, not only because gd and i were feeling awkward about mingling with the parents socially but also because mr smear was ready to go too.

the drive there was cool, but the drive back was tense, primarily because at some point i missed a turn and waze got thoroughly stuck, and i ended up having to drive almost all the way back to ra'anana before i could turn the car around, and between gd's initial panic (which, in her defense, she got over pretty quickly) and plenty of people driving dangerously around us, i was in a bit of a mood.

the rest of the afternoon was mostly peaceful, minus a blowout over mr smear having been antisocial with his new friend yesterday, and while gd started feeling proper sick (after a couple of days just being snotty and headache-y) i was just extremely tired. although, before i forget, i was surprisingly wired before we left. i hope i'm not coming down with anything.

we all watched the princess bride together, with mr smear enjoying it thoroughly in spite of himself (he was quite the reflection of fred savage throughout), and we started watching men in black: international at dinner, and he asked me to read the magic pudding to him at bedtime. otherwise, i played a fair bit of crying suns and did a lot of dishes.

the freshly-squeezed freshly-picked clementine juice is amazing.

...

my lower back's still hurting.

...

i've been thinking a lot today about the "sanctioning", in particular about mr smear's behavior leading up to the bully's father threatening him with it. mr smear had been effectively trying to "sanction" the bully, and we'd been actively trying to get him to stop doing it. now i'm wondering if i'm gaslighting myself by turning the "conversation" (the imaginary conversation i'm having in my head) upside down.

jesus christ, parenting is hard.

stuck in the middle with you

 it was a pretty good morning. mr smear spent some time impressing us with the keyboard before i walked him to school, gd and i had a chilled morning together, and then i caught the bus to the office.

the day began with an all-hands, and we learned that the company isn't quite where its board wants it to be. i asked how much runway we have, and i've been assured that we're good. the "higher ups" are going to try to figure out new markets we should target, and a few of us got into quite a heated debate about the possibilities we're seeing from the ground.

ironically, this situation has made it clear that our project manager's vision is out of touch, but it's anyone's guess as to how we're going to tweak our approach going forwards.

overall, it was a decent day in the office, although i was quite tired for a stretch of the day and i was snacky for most of it.

the walk home was intense and full of feelings, because the roads were gridlocked with people behaving badly. i'm wondering if we shouldn't be doing the london thing, and making it impossible for private cars to enter the city center...

i got home just in time for dinner, and we had a bit of a scene because mr smear hates walnuts. he finally relented and tried to eat them with gd's home-made pesto pasta, and that definitely helped, but what really helped was his own suggestion: "do we have chocolate sauce?"

we do have chocolate sauce, we were surprised to discover, and it apparently only expires in about a decade's time. i tested it, it was great, he put it on the walnuts, and he enjoyed them. hell, he even agreed to put it on some dried mango and he enjoyed that, at least until he'd had too much chewiness because a couple of his teeth are apparently loose.

winning!

after dinner, and getting mr smear (all of us, really) ready for bed, and both him and gd going to sleep (well, he's coughing a lot, he coughs a lot at night), i'm now trying to decide whether i'm going to spend the next little while studying the storage stuff from the other day, or giving clickolding a try.

i think i'll give clickolding a try.