chewing on life's gristle

omg i'm not crazy!

according to this article, claude *did* get dumber and more expensive, but it's my own fault for not reading the release notes :P

...

our upstairs friends came over for a bit - gd treated them to a preview of the sushi and onigiri, and they treated me to a bottle and a half of rather nice cider. they also offered to help us rescue my sister from ra'anana, as two of the weekend busses didn't show up and she was stuck out in the heat for over two hours while continuing to believe that one was coming... one eventually did arrive, though.

i just couldn't decide what to do with myself last night after dinner, so i continued playing inscryption and achieved a couple of minor events i'd never seen before. i didn't realize / had forgotten that you have to lose a game between getting the dagger and removing the... no spoilers... and discovered that defeating the wall of grizzlies twice and winning without meeting the final conditions leads to getting your death card pinned on the door with a little medal :P

[one run with unkillable squirrels with unkillable friends, including a black goat and an ouroboros. one run with an unkillable queen ant and an unkillable black goat. seriously OP]

i'm very grateful that last night's puff worked again. perhaps i didn't take a proper one on thursday night, i find with a vape it's hard to tell 🤷‍♂️

my sister's leaving tomorrow already, and it feels like none of us really wants her to leave...

unroutine

 oh. it's 00.28 as i begin writing this. i went to bed about an hour and a half ago, and i've been lying uncomfortably awake for the past half hour or so trying desperately to claw back the unconsciousness. my belly's been doing a thin all evening (again in the evening, again no idea what's triggered it), and my lower back's been doing a thing since i stopped sleeping, and my brain's been doing a thing since...

yesterday (saturday):

i wasn't very productive yesterday, mostly on purpose. i thoroughly enjoyed witnessing mr smear playing battlezone on the PSVR, and i tooled around most of the day arbitrarily, and i enjoyed a good afternoon nap.

in the late afternoon - around 4.30pm - my sister and i dragged mr smear out ("i don't want to go to the beach!") and we walked, in the not-too-unpleasant heat, down to the beachfront golda. after the ice cream break, we walked back up to the hilton beach, and enjoyed a lovely evening; unable to get mr smear out of the water, of course, and dragging his feet to leave the beach :P

after catching an outrageously packed bus home, and showering in turns, gd treated us to a great dinner and we all crashed.

today:

another reasonable night's sleep (only tonight breaks the streak). very reasonable, in fact. my sister left really early again (she went to tour the gaza envelope and see the nova site), mr smear slept in until around 11am and was annoyed that i'd bothered him (twice) because i think he should have some semblance of routine in spite of it being summer holidays.

i began my day on the balcony, then spent my work day in my office. the actual meaningful work i did was minimal, primarily because the people i need to approve my work are either on weekend time or enjoying the fact that nobody's work is properly monitored on sundays.

i burned a ridiculous amount of tokens improving dashboards and making an ai status tool look cleaner.

mr smear and i - and then gd - had a massive fight about music practice*, which eventually resulted in him actually practicing with a good attitude in spite of the emotional rollercoaster and having lost hours of screen time for being disrespectful.

* that he has to put his heart into it, not just get through it. and that he needs to treat it like a rage game.

we side-stepped the punishment by going upstairs to play settlers of catan, mr smear's first encounter with the game.

he enjoyed it!

aside from being vengeful (really just against me) and myself having a pretty rough game, we all had a good time and played pretty well. there was one incident which i still think is hilarious, but awkwardly so: big data's son got confused and thought that his dad had moved the robber to block him and mr smear, when it was actually me. but he was unshakeable, so i piled on against big data, at which point - in spite of my laughing - mr smear got caught up. this went on for a minute or two before i put a stop to it and admitted that it was me, which threw both the kids completely 😂

we got home at roughly the same time my sister did, and soon settled down for dinner. post-dinner i was becoming a bit frustrated with getting mr smear into the bedtime ritual, but i made good progress with the auto-doc project (i'm having a much better experience with codex than claude) and then read alice's adventures in wonderland to mr smear, which put me to sleep more than him.

trapped in the nothing

 i passed out watching ludwig, then dragged myself into bed. i didn't sleep well, though, oh no - i woke up in the middle of the night with my neck having seized in a way that triggered a massive headache, and even though i managed to massage it enough to get it to settle down, it's still hurting and causing flashes of intense pain every so often.

did i mention that i had a lot of stuff to do today? i'm so freaking dysfunctional right now. i have bandwidth for bullshit, nothing more. gd and i did a shopping run, big data came down to give our balcony a colonoscopy (his endoscope works well enough, but wasn't able to thread it anywhere too interesting), he and his way hung around for a little while, and now...

... now i'm feeling broken and useless and idon'twanna.

oh, i finished the alice in borderland book this morning, it's pretty good.

homeschooling

 six day war... twelve day war... twelve hour war...

bizarrely, yesterday felt like a return to routine.

שמים את השיגורים בשיגרה 

we put the rocket launches in the routine

mr smear's biggest lesson for the day was helping gd clean the floors; the first half was a nightmare until i got involved, and once it was done we had to have a family meeting and discuss how we help others (mr smear) and how we handle provocations (gd). we then had a bit of a repeat episode when he was supposed to help her with the dishes before dinner prep, but for a different reason, and i found myself explaining to a ten year old techniques for getting off the toilet quickly 🙄

my workday was alright, and ultimately successful. i'm still really behind - way past deadline - but i'm making some progress and certainly learning things along the way. i don't really have a solid mental model for what i'm doing, though, not yet at least, but a big part of that is how uninvested i am personally.

i also "wrote" (AI) a bunch of bash scripts for a CI workflow, and now i'm thinking i really should rewrite them in python...

i got stuck waiting on others in the evening, and mr smear and i took our fluxx collection upstairs to play a couple of games with our upstairs friends. it was fun, but more than that it was intended to be an educational experience for the kids, and as many annoyances as there may have been, overall it went well.

mr smear and i came back downstairs for dinner and macgyver, and gd's mushroom-soup lemonade (she followed the mushroom soup recipe, it's a terrible recipe), and then a hilarious chat with my mom (cemeteries can be dramatic), and then a night of intentionally doing nothing of value.

this morning we woke up (myself a lot more slowly than everyone else), and sent mr smear off to school, and then i read a little bit (a mix of stranger in a strange land and watchmen), and now i've posted this while singing along to synthknot, and now i guess it's time to get moving and go to work.

...

i've been putting off a bunch of preparation work that i need to do for the upcoming hackathon, it's not feeling good. but having published my extension and the related articles, i feel like a weight has fallen off my shoulders.

the rink

"omg you're making a face that looks like putin if he didn't have riz" - my son to me a little while ago, it made me want to die

...

we had a very pleasant evening, dinner and more cool runnings, then a visit from our upstairs friends, and then pure exhaustion and dropping into bed soon after they left.

this morning was chilled. i had a whole lot of stuff i wanted to do, but the thing i started with took hours. i did end up with the first part of a two-part article done and dusted, and i did quite a lot of it on the balcony on a lovely day (right until the sun started shining right on me, it was too hot).

then i got off screens for a while (i restarted reading watchmen again), and then i took mr smear our rollerblading. i was hoping to get to the roller rink at the sportek, but i did have any expectations. we made it though! and, in spite of his protests along the way, he did get on the rink and he did enjoy himself!

he had lots of little challenges to overcome, there and back, and we stopped for quite a lot of rests. at one point, we'd been sitting on a bench under some shady trees for longer than usual, and i suggested we move on; "no, dad, i'm enjoying this. we're very lucky to live here" 🌳 😍 🌳

so he's had a good time, and he's proud of himself, we've both had some exercise and rollerblading practice, and it's a fine end to a lovely day.

little big moments

 as i pour and get started on a beer, i reflect on my son, who has just spent the five minutes helping me take down trash and recycling doing everything to hold on to his anger at being disturbed in order to fuel his will for the pvp minecraft battle he's now returned to.

...

we watched alien today. it was magnificent. not just because mr smear was engaged and entertained, but specifically because he was so appreciative of the quality of the production from an age where there was no computer assistance in special effects, and the peak computing that could be imagined at the time looked almost exactly the same as it was in real life.

and giger's artistic vision brought to life, of course. absolutely stunning.

afterwards, we joined our upstairs friends who let mr smear try on their rollerblades. they unfortunately didn't fit, but we had a blast getting him and their youngest into the swing of things, and mr smear not only started getting the feel of it, but he had a great time and is confident that rollerblading is for him.

here we go... 🤞

location matters

 i'm still feeling tired, after an hour and a half on the couch occasionally sipping my first coffee and almost passing out while reading stranger in a strange land. 

yesterday was a half-day of work for me, though a full day off for my israeli coworkers and my son. i spent it doing two important things: the first, determining that most of the current round of work i had tickets for could be safely discarded. the second, figuring out a way to share agent skills across different accounts and devices without checking anything in.

once i was essentially done with the work day, i took mr smear with me and we did a round of pre-chag shopping. there was a literal back-and-forth and we hunted down the more esoteric items on gd's list, but we got most of what we wanted in the end.

we came home, had lunch (and a really funny fight / battle over the mixed leftovers), and then big data came downstairs to help me install the blinds and shelf my mom and i picked up from ikea a couple of weeks ago. we didn't move very fast, but we did a good job, andwe now have good-looking blackout blinds in our living room and can consume media on our failing projector during the day 🤘

then the rest of his family came downstairs for a visit. gd wasn't too happy seeing us drinking beers - we need to find her gluten-free beers now, although in general we don't really drink beer at all - but we enjoyed a pleasant afternoon while the kids... well, their kids watched my kid playing video games. he begrudgingly gave them turns whenever i intervened, but i think he was just taking advantage of them being as desperate as him to have any kind of screen time whatsoever :/

the kids stayed over longer than their parents, during which time they entertained themselves playing fluxx, which mr smear insists that he hates (he's just not very practiced with it) so he antisocially read his kindle. meanwhile, i worked on an article describing my skill-sharing adventures, and then it was dinner time for everyone.

we watched - for the second evening in a row - infinity train, which is really fun!

mr smear's bedtime took a while and ruffled gd's feathers, but once in bed on a non-school night (it's shavuot, though, and i feel a bit weird about not doing anything special) i (finally) read some more of the colour of magic (we're so close to the end!) and then continued writing that article and researching better ways to sync.

i climbed into bed pretty late last night, just after 2am, after publishing a piece i was pretty happy with. and i may be tired, but i slept pretty well for the second night in a row.

this is good.

sleep journal entry

 no lower back pain, and no (or not much) post-nasal drip. but my sleep was fitful throughout the night.

...

we had a lovely night last night, we ate too much, talked constantly and the kids all got along great.

i climbed out of bed after who-know-how-long deciding whether i was awake or not, and finished reading never again will i visit auschwitz over coffee on the balcony; partially because it's so good, partially because i was in a hurry to finish it so that i can focus on starship troopers.

the ending triggered some feelings, and gd and i don't exactly agree, and then my mother got pulled into it, but here's my review:

i'll start by saying that this book is a bit contentious in my household because of the author's political leanings and interpretations; as israeli jews, we're both scared by and scared for the jews in the US who have been convinced that trump is a fascist when he's the one leading the fight against communist-jihadist fascism.

setting that caveat aside, what a remarkable, insightful, eye-opening, and - dare i say - important look both at the holocaust itself, and at the differences between the german and polish reactions to it so many decades later. it's a fantastic graphic novel experience in and of itself, an excellent work of art, and the stories it tells are both heartwarming and heartbreaking.

we're currently living through a time of great anxiety and confusion - between the wars we're waging to protect ourselves from genocide again, and the pogroms against jews all over the world - and this book does an excellent job of connecting us to the victims of the sho'ah and understanding that we're facing essentially the exact same things as before.

now mr smear is starting to wake up, and he was making noises about going swimming this morning. we have furniture to build, and he's got laser tag in the evening, and i'm hoping to make some AI harness progress today... i guess this is going to be a busy day!

pause

 i'm a bit anxious because other apartments are anxious, we've just moved in and people are beginning to worry about metro construction that's supposed to be taking place beneath our building. sometime. no concrete dates or approximate timeline.

i don't want to even think about moving anytime soon. we're invested.

...

i got a little bit of work done on my first AI harness attempt, learning openspec (in general simple to use, but lots of nuances for people who care about the potential implications of esoteric configuration options), and i read a bit more of never again will i visit auschwitz, which i'm preemptively annoyed by because until it gets to the TDS part, it's a brilliant and important work. i also read a little bit of the sample i got of heinlein's starship troopers [pauses to purchase the full book on kindle and complain how the pricing in canada is a lot more than in the US], which has long been one of my favorite movies and i've yet to read it.

our ikea delivery, which was scheduled for sunday, arrived early ^_^

my mother, wife and i took a bus to the mall, picked up a few things and had an emotional and dramatic experience picking up her new glasses - first bad dramatic, then good - and we were considering stopping for coffee when we realized that we were running out of time to pick up mr smear and get home and get to the museum of illusions "on time". so we hopped on a bus that turned out to make things more complicated (thanks, transport app), and ended up getting off at a supermarket to do some last-minute shopping for tonight, discovering as we entered that the supermarket is in the process of selling off its stock and shutting down.

we got home, mr smear got home, and then we realized that's gd's toe was in no condition to go anywhere :(

so my mother, son and i caught a bus to the port, stopped for a coffee, and arrived at the "museum". unexpectedly, there was a lot of activity and a queue, and when we arrived at the head of the queue we were instructed that no food or drinks were allowed beyond that point. so we went back to the tail off the queue, and i uncomfortably drank my coffee as quickly as i could, gave up the last bit when we got to the front, passed security, and only then learned that we'd been in a queue for the wrong thing, and that the entrance was around the corner, and that there was no actual "time slot" in spite of what our tickets said 🤦‍♂️

that aside, the museum of illusions was fantastic! it was especially cool seeing all the illusions i saw jason pargin talking about just this week in real life, and we got some great photos, and the three of us almost lost our cookies in the "vortex", which was hilarious :D

we came home to put together a shoe stand and make challah-peño (my mom's first!), mr smear's been "doing homework" (pretending to read his history texts), i've been fiddling around with my first AI harness, playing slay the spire 2, and we're about to start getting ready to visit our upstairs friends for a friday-night barbecue.

wtf wednesday (ceasefire?)

 i really don't understand if there's really a ceasefire or not. or if it means anything or not. none of what's happening makes much sense.

...

yesterday:

we managed to get up at a reasonable time, and i woke up with an itch to reinstate public access to my comic pages and post an update to my patrons.

then i jumped on our daily call, and my manager reminded me that i was supposed to be on holiday.

i dragged mr smear along with me to the mall after learning that home center had not sent me the items i'd ordered. their in-store staff was just as useless. mr smear's friend met us there, and we paid a visit to the candy store, where i picked up a "hot mama" flavor of van holten's pickle-in-a-pouch, which still makes me giggle.

i dropped the kids off at home and continued on to the hardware store, but 100m out got trapped in a sudden heavy electric rainstorm. when it calmed down i jogged further on, arriving (wet) at a synagogue just as our missile alert system kicked in. i spent the next ten to fifteen minutes in their shelter, surrounded by people and animals with heavy smells, and i was half-asleep by the time we were able to leave.

i made my way to the hardware store, picked up a tape measure but not a garden hose, then paid a quick visit to a nature store to pick up a protein bar, passed one of my ex-bosses on the way to the grocery store (i didn't greet her, she didn't see me and i'm still sore about her and her co-founder back-stabbing me and not even having the decency to try to speak to me on my way out), picked up a bag of carrots and made my way home.

gd had let strangers into our mamad because she didn't know that it's safe enough for them to use the stairwell. weird people, apparently.

the kids had a great afternoon (mostly playing rayman: legends), we all tried the pickle (it wasn't that hot, but made for a great matzah sandwich) i had an emergency coffee and the put up two of our maps (a real world map, and our map of ankh morpork) in our office, and later i put up some clothing hooks too. and also managed to get our new sound system set up, and it's SO much better than our previous one!

i did, however, almost fall off the ladder doing that (i mis-stepped after forgetting i was on the top rung) and i managed to hurt my hip again, which had finally been feeling better :/

our upstairs friends came downstairs with wine, and we sat talking negligently late, which included some uncomfortable expressions by gd about some of their friends... not that she's entirely wrong, mind, but how one says stuff... :P

we had a nice dinner, chatted for most of it with my mom, and then watched the final episode of strip search. gd had had enough of the day (and parenting) by that stage, so i handled shower and tooth brushing, and i went to bed exhausted before mr smear had himself fallen asleep.

today (so far):

sleeping late, napping, reading and loving most of the importance of being earnest, eating a pretty good breakfast of matzah, peanut butter, banana, vegan nutella and tabasco. i tried watching jujutsu kaisen with mr smear but i passed out, and i woke up to spend a frustrating half hour or so trying to fix our microsoft / minecraft accounts so that i could reinstate his birthday present (the marketplace pass).

now we're heading out to try and make the most of what may or may not be a peaceful afternoon.

recovery

 today was nicer, though not by too much. i didn't feel nearly as shit and dysfunctional, but my neck's still sensitive and i spent a large chunk of the day either lying with my neck at stretched angles or avoiding screens (i found a pack of playing cards and played old-school solitaire).

otherwise the day was very much spent indoors, we watched the first half of terminator 2 and the first episode (TWO HOURS OF IT?!?!) of the second season of the live action one piece.

there was some arguing over privileges, but mostly the day went smoothly. after kiddush with my mom we had a nice dinner and watched an episode of strip search, and then after all the kids were in bed our upstairs friends paid us a visit, and just left a few minutes ago.

now i'm going to play a little more balatro (i've been vascillating between balatro and full throttle) and go to bed.

passover 2026

we're approaching midnight, and for the first time since this afternoon i'm feeling a little better, after spending most of the day with a neck issue causing a massive headache, nausea and dizziness. now i've showered, i've made myself a lavendar/chamomile tea, and i'm hoping to get some rest tonight.

...

i was so relieved to be on holiday and turn my brain off. feeling extremely ill and sore is not relaxing.

yesterday:

we didn't do so well when it came to coming up with april fool's pranks, but i did have a fun idea inventing an elevator that detects smells; if someone farts in the elevator alone, it emergency stops until the extractor fans clear the air. if there are multiple people in the elevator, it immediately lets them off on the next floor.

it was erev chag, so of course we had last-minute shopping to do. gd sent me and mr smear off to find stuff i've never bought before, and we ended up on a serious mission, tired, and frustrated by all the other last-minute shoppers as well as the shops themselves for largely being disappointingly crap.

we did manage to get everything by the end of the mission, though.

aside from helping gd out a little bit here and there, mr smear and i spent the afternoon resting or reading or playing games. nothing intelligent. gd, on the other hand, had a very dramatic afternoon and evening cooking for the pesach seder for her very first time.

as unhappy and stressed as she was during the cooking - not helping by a long series of rocket attacks timed perfectly to mess with everyone - she was as happy as we were with the results and the seder with our upstair friends - which included reading and singing in their shelter - was great. the kids were generally well-behaved and involved, we got through to the meal in pretty good time, and dinner was delicious.

today:

the first part of the day was perfect. i finished reading crumb's kafka, which unfortunately has a few too many inappropriate things for me to be able to suggest that mr smear reads it, but is thoroughly brilliant and engaging. we all enjoyed a huge leftover breakfast. mr smear and i walked to the gas station to pick up the new playstation controller and charger; neither are amazing, but they'll do.

that got us into resuming our latest replay of rayman: legends, and it went really well with some exciting invasion runs!

and then my day fell apart. everyone else seems to be doing okay. i managed to eat some dinner while we watched another strip search elimination, and then lay down on the couch stretch my neck and watching random shit until just after mr smear (finally) went to bed.

i hope tomorrow's nicer.

the masses move through the tent city

 the nights have been relatively quiet the past few days, but i've been sleeping worse. physical nerve discomfort, primarily, but also mental disquiet.

we got up yesterday morning at 10am, which felt wrong somehow. it was only in the evening that we learned that it was wrong, because daylight savings time. it took us a remarkably long time to get out the house, by which stage the weather had turned to cold and wet.

we were nervous about traveling across the city and getting caught in an attack while outside, but fortunately we were caught once while at the mall, and the second time while waiting for the bus home, so we had time to get down into the parking lot.

man, the tent city is an experience.

between the mobs of mall people, and mr smear being generally disagreeable, and a siren catching us before i managed to get myself a second coffee when i was already feeling twitchy desperate, i had zero patience by the time we left. but we had managed to get the two things we needed the most: a kettle cord* and a smaller (and less permeable) shower curtain.

* how the hell did we end up with one less than we have appliances that need them?!

and gd's hair-care products, and also a large container of cholent, which mr smear finally tried and liked ^_^

once we got home, i spoke to two cousins, declining the still-open invitation to a pesach seder because there's no way we're traveling far with the war still on.

big data's been doing a lot of work on the building these days, and in the afternoon he came over with his tools to give me a hand with putting up a shelf to tidy up our modem / router situation. not only was he a great help with getting the shelf up easily and neatly, but he had a brilliant idea of attaching our sound bar underneath it, and we now have the solution we should have had for the past four years - it's awesome!

unfortunately, while we did get the projector set up "well enough" (using polystyrene from the electric hob's box that we hadn't tossed yet), it's clear that it's seen better days and that at some point we're going to need to upgrade it :(

i mean, it's served us well for a decade already...

a bit later we went upstairs to join them for dinner. good food and plenty of it, and aside from some issues with mr smear we all had a very pleasant evening. it was very late by the time we finally went to bed**, but between the achievements of the day, the company, and a fair amount of alcohol, i went to bed feeling quite relaxed.

** after watching the first episode of rick and morty with gd so that she could be reminded of why mr smear shouldn't have seen it

so it would have been nice if i'd been able to sleep better.

...

it's been a peaceful morning so far. i sorted out the playstation in preparation for mr smear's friend coming over, and i've watched some random things, and maybe i'll do something productive now or maybe i won't.

useless

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

stopped

 we joined our upstairs friends for dinner last night (pot luck), and it was a lovely evening. my second drink of the day, and their couch was soooo... couch. we haven't had a couch in weeks, and i was - as the quebecois say - bean grease.

we all came downstairs and crashed hard.

...

i woke up late this morning, after a pretty full night's sleep. then i did random stuff - beginning with a painful attempt to upgrade the comics i made two weeks ago (needs a paid gemini subscription, and i couldn't find any easily-installable plugins for gimp to use AI), and then mr smear and i watched an episode of solo leveling on crunchyroll, and then i passed out for another hour and a half.

in the afternoon - aside from eating a lot - i began trying to set up paybox young for mr smear, which meant me signing up for an additional credit card of my own which i'm not happy about. but after doing the math, i discovered that just in terms of pocket money alone (plus doubling any unused for savings) he's already unwittingly earned enough money that the bank fees are covered by the compound interest, so it's worth it.

only... he has to install a different paybox app, and it can only be installed from the israeli app store, and our family account is still canadian and it's not possible to sign in to a different account on a managed phone.

*sigh*

after much digging - again - i learned that the only way to resolve this problem is to create a new family account from a different email, then migrate everyone on our family account. which isn't a huge problem, because we closed our canadian bank accounts last year so we don't really need to be on the canadian store any more, but it's really annoying because child accounts can only be transferred after a one-week waiting period. because reasons.

so i've done half the migration, and i guess we'll see how things go next week.

mr smear and i took a pleasant walk around our "backyard" park - park hayarkon - and after eventually extricating mr smear from the exercise machines we stumbled across what appeared to be a juggling school, which was quite fun to watch.

then we returned home, and i jumped on a call with protoplasm for our first catch-up in forever, and then it was dinner time, and getting mr smear into bed a half an hour late time, and then shower time, and now... i dunno, i'll probably go to bed soon.

hot water

 omg i'm tired. and i just realized, while on a call with my mom, that mr smear had been in the shower for a VERY long time and i now have to wait for more water to heat up so that i don't have to have another cool shower 😡

...

it was a very long day. aside from doing some weekend shopping with gd, and building the last of the chests of drawers (with the help of big data and his younger son), i walked mr smear to his class picnic at the bird park. although he arrived straight into his usual antisocial routine, he soon chilled because one of his - and i quote, along with his airquotes - "clique" was there. he even made his own pita bread on a tava over the fire. we hadn't warned them we were coming, and the other allergic kid wasn't there, so the kids were covered with / covered everything with labaneh and nutella, so we had to be as careful as if he was with his previous class...

i tried to record a jackal that was just chilling as we passed, but my phone decided i wanted a photo instead and i captured exactly nothing :/

mr smear's been a bit rude this evening, but mostly alright. gd's really not feeling well... hopefully we won't have any shabbat emergencies 🤞