reversal

 WELL. we went to our friends for dinner last night, and aside from enjoying a really nice evening with them - and eating too much delicious food - we were all completely taken by surprise when mr smear and their daughter forgot their rivalry and just had a really good time together!

today was mostly relaxed, we played rayman: legends (we've restarted from scratch, and we're generally playing pretty well together), and we watched the second installment of pirates of the caribbean. so that was a great start to a saturday.

in the afternoon we all went out to play table tennis, which would have been nice except for a) mr smear throwing a wobbly on the way that generated a lot of unhappiness and b) the apparently-biting flies (both gd and mr smear complained about them) and wasps around the table.

so after all the drama in getting there, and the minor success in mr smear deciding he wanted to play, we ended up getting out of there without much playtime.

i had a good chat with horseman, though it's tough hearing how much he's been struggling (he's been suffering from chronic pain, he's in montreal where the only effective care is private, and he's had to quit his counselling job and has limited benefits that are running out).

in the evening, i put on my blades, mr smear got on his bike, we picked up our friend's daughter on hers and we went to the climbing wall together, for the last time on the three-month membership we bought. the kids were cool, and the evening was largely successful (her father and brother joined us after a while).

after a few walls mr smear decided he was done, but not after doing something that i had to punish him for. minor, but still. towards the end, i struck a bargain with him that i instantly regretted the moment i heard it coming out of my mouth - two more "goes" to drop the punishment.

gosdsdammit, i'm the one who's being trying to reinforce the idea that punishments are not transactional. fuck, fuck, fuck. afterwards, i explained to him that i'd made a mistake and that that won't be happening again...

the ride home was alright, and the rest of the evening was alright. now it's our bedtime, we have a big day tomorrow - first day of school, and ari's pain clinic appointment, at the same hour. whoo!

compulsions

 i'm really not sleeping well. friday night was a bit better, but still rough, and last night was pretty horrible. i did have some really weird dreams, though, when i finally did pass out a few hours ago. in one of them i was being harrassed by an "undercover" black man when i saw his red-haired manager plant something in his bag. that ended with me physically attacking the manager, but although i was beating him up we had that weird dream-thing going on where my attacks were doing a lot less damage than they would have in real life.

there was another dream, too, but the moment i described the first one that one melted away... something about a sandwich named "jamothy" and a vegan tuna wrap named "vuna vovegood".

yesterday was all over the place. firstly, i got up with a bee in my bonnet about obtaining the missing inscryption achievements (666 damage and deleting the captive file). that didn't take very long (thank god i tried the stim mage tactic, because the ouroboros one was extremely tedious), but even after obtaining them i continued playing through the end of the game again because i was enjoying the deck i built.

the afternoon was mostly spent relaxing and napping.

i had a talk with my mother about our argument the other day, i hope what i said landed.

in the evening, mr smear and i walked to the climbing wall. the walk there was nice in itself, but there were a lot more kids than usual so mr smear had to queue to get on walls, and by the third one he got emotional. i tried to talk to him after he calmed down a little, but he said some really hurtful things and i needed to walk them off.

we met outside, and started on our way back, and i was trying to find a way to tell him how he made me feel without making him feel the same. it looks like i succeeded, but that opened up a proper fight over him going to the summer school and after school programmes, and i sat him down on a bench and talked (okay, there was some yelling) him through what we, as his parents, saw and went through.

suddenly, the look on his face changed and he apologized for what he'd said, and we both took some breaths and had a very grown-up conversation about it all. that continued into the walk home, and the rest of the evening went well.

this morning was going well until he thought i was teasing him about his accent (i wasn't), and we had a whole different shit-show. eventually resolved, but not without me stress-sweating. and it turns out the new anti-persperant that gd insisted on me buying doesn't work well for me, and she subsequently insisted on me getting rid of it :/

...

anyway, i've just arrived at work and am about to begin my day. everyone's nervous because we stopped a massive missile attack aimed at tel aviv, and i just cannot figure out why we're supposed to be more worried today than yesterday, before we stopped it. or the past two weeks, when they've been threatening it. or the past eleven months, when they've been attacking us non-stop.

if it was up to me, i would've dropped flyers on quatar and tehran weeks ago, waited a few days, and then bombed the shit out of them.

stretched thin

omg it's half past 1am, i've spent the past couple of hours writing a "short" summary of our immigration disaster story for mr smear's friend's dad. i was going to start writing it this morning, but i've been on-call since 9am and it's been a heck of a day.

big things from the day that were work related: i had to convince a coworker of the value of a fix and became increasingly frustrated because he apparently literally didn't understand what i was fixing or why it needed fixing. i felt he was being obstructive, but in addition to "walking it off" one of his questions inadvertantly led to me finding something legitimately wrong and fixing that, so i couldn't be too mad.

big things from the day that weren't work related:

mr smear being rude on the way home from his hebrew tutor, i dragged him aside to a shady spot in a park and managed (somehow) to get through to him. not only did he handle it well (from that point, at least) but he took his punishment (an hour without screen time) like a boss.

he also decided that he'd rather go back to mma than keep up with the wall-climbing. sad for the wall-climbing, but great for the mma. we made a deal, and *he* insisted on recording it on our phones.

we also finally plugged in the guitar hero guitars and he's done some of the tutorial a few times - he's getting better. and he's persisting, which is big. even though the buttons seem to be jamming.

something big happened in the news today, big and crazy, and i only just heard about it now. so i'm going to try to sleep, and then try to wrap my head around whatever the fuck it is in the morning.

steps forward

yesterday:

a really exciting meeting with gco and an extremely interesting writer/comedian, which went so well that i blabbed to one of my teammates and instantly regretted it. but, at the same time, got immediate and very enthusiastic feedback for my idea ^_^

it was mr smear's final "play therapy" session in the afternoon, so that's a bit sad, but he was cool about it.

my mom, mr smear and i took a very crowded bus to the beach to meet with the mongoose and his family, it was a beautiful evening and we all enjoyed it immensely, although his daughter was very upset by something (twice) and i strongly suspect it was me - but we don't know why. possibly my tattoos? or just me being awkward? who knows.

i hadn't intended on eating dinner when we got home, but i ended up eating rather a lot.

today:

sleeping really badly last night, waking up in the middle exhausting and with a stiff neck

picking up gd's clippers on the way to work

sorting out - or assisting gd with sorting out - luna park tickets, mr smear's friend's mom really did manage to wrangle us half-price tickets

a busy and positive day at work not taking care of my urgent task, but after hummus for lunch just wanted to close my eyes (or play inscryption :P)

dubstepping home later than planned

a good climbing wall session, both in terms of his performance and in meeting a sweet guy who wants to be a councillor/guide - mr smear was really cool with him, and he got mr smear to give a new wall (with a real incline) another go

mr smear getting into bed really late but adorably asking us to give my mom permission to read to him anyway

inscryption degradation (i feel like i lost some dignity over the second run)

bailing on sync -> google drive

inspiration

 yesterday:

the exhibit was very interesting. getting there was a story, i don't know if there was a GPS issue or not but my bus app was playing silly buggers and i ended up making some lucky guesses to get there on time.

on the way i bumped into a combat fitness instructor (identified by her shirt), who was happy to answer questions that i had on behalf of someone online who's trying to get into that role and asked me if i could help. so that was convenient :)

the first part of the exhibit was very, very long. and there were no seats. and as a not-journalist, i found myself both amused and frustrated by the differences in calibre of the people in the group with me. some of the things i saw were new, one piece of footage of an unsuspecting victim driving straight into the firing line of a rocket launcher was unsettling.

not as unsettling as being in the same room as the actual trowel that was used to behead a thai worker, though. the room was filled with weapons, documents and clothing, along with certificates from hamas' kids' training camps, and the more information we were exposed to the deeper and darker the picture it paints.

it was a look into the abyss of the darkest recesses of the human spirit.

eventually we moved to a screening of footage from october 7th, and although i'd braced myself, all i needed to hear was the vague description of what we were about to see and "nope" the fuck on out of there. i understand the journalists having an obligation to bear witness, but i didn't need to see it with my eyes or hear it with my ears.

just the description alone was more than enough to rattle me.

in a completely different vein, the conversations outside on the way out and home were riveting, constructive, and encouraging. i feel less alone, and i'm warmed by the enthusiasm which some of the group who "get" what we're facing embraced my vision.

it was also cool seeing gco again. and i gave a pep talk to a couple of cadets who were on duty as guards.

i was utterly bombed (poor choice of words) by the time i got back home. i passed out for a while, woke up to a small fight with mr smear about his homework - gd did a great job coming to the rescue - and then mr smear, my mom and i went out to dizengoff center and the shuk for what ended up amounting to a nice, but rather hot, walk before dinner.

inscryption, then bed.

today:

i definitely slept better. i worked from home today, and actually got stuff done in spite of my noisy family all around me. mr smear's synth practice this morning was very impressive, and on the whole mr smear was very cool today. including at the climbing wall in the evening, even though he was really unhappy about the heat. it was ridiculously hot today.

otherwise, my mom and i took him to his hebrew tutor and i ran a quick half-hour errand in the heat to the post office depot to pick up what turned out to be nothing but a single sharpie :/

ali express ftw...

anyway.

two amusing things at the wall: i made a deal with mr smear but worded it badly, and he thoroughly enjoyed following my instructions to the letter in precisely the opposite of the spirit in which they were clearly intended. i conceded graciously, we had fun, and he'd already done a lot of good climbing anyway :)

the second was a harley rider driving by taking himself very seriously. mr smear: "i love it when motorcycles sound like farts" 🤣🤣🤣

it's late, and the next few days are full of Business. i'm probably going to go to bed soon.

...

my mom and her best friend were talking today, and a thought suddenly struck me - they're both aware that they need to get out of south africa, and they're both nervous about where to go and how to manage. so why not make aliyah together, be close to their families, and provide each other with a good buffer and support while settling?

infestation

tuesday:

tuesday morning, i managed to convince mr smear to join me for a walk to the post office to pick up his test synthesizer. we had a good walk, a little bit of tension when arriving at the post office and seeing that we needed to make an appointment - which turned out to be nonsense, but nobody else saw the sign pointing to their package depot either - and i was very pleased and relieved to open it and discover that it's actually pretty good (for a cheap chinese product) and mr smear's been giving it a good go!

by the time i'd gotten him set up, i realized i was going to be late for a meeting at the office, so i scrambled and made it there on time. the coworker i was scheduled to meet was late :P

my coworker made a comment about disco elysium, and he's not wrong. he stopped playing the moment he realized he was playing against his own character's self-destructive behavior.  i'm finding the game's story and mechanics fascinating, but my character is indeed the kind of person who i would avoid like the plague in real life.

yesterday:

i went past the hospital in the morning to arrange for gd's final allergy challenge (in the current round), and on the way out picked up some really nice fruit from a stall nearby. it was really expensive, but also really good, and i guess it's supporting our farmers down south so i wasn't upset.

my boss, however, wasn't happy that i'd bought my own fruit for the office and insisted on paying me back for it. no complaints here :)

gd, my mom and mr smear went to the museum in the afternoon, and due to a miscommunication i was in a shitty mood for a lot of it. but we had a chat when i got home and all was settled.

today:

the day began with bad vibes, primarily triggered by me unwittingly dumping big pieces of food into the kitchen sink's drain thinking that our drain filter was in place. and gd is definitely sick with a horrible cough.

i went to the clinic on the way to work, after it took me way too long to get all the right documents together, and hopefully the authorization for mr smear's dairy allergy challenge will arrive before the scheduled date.

i was quite unmotivated to work today. i feel like the most constructive thing i did all day was take a walk to the sarona market at lunchtime to pick up hot sauces, chutney and potato spice. oh, and pick up a pack of sharpies from the post depot on the way home.

oh! and take mr smear to the climbing wall. he did great, and there was a group of amputees climbing *well* with or without prosthetics that just blew me away.

...

 
i haven't managed to complete kaycee's mod yet. this game so far, i picked up an ouroboros and have been slowly pumping it up... but i also managed to build myself a bee and ant deck along the way, which just became ridiculous as i've also scored a totem of undying insects... PLEASE let this be the deck that gets me through!!

...

godsdammit, i just completely ruined my run because i - on autopilot - picked up an insane amount of pelts. which i realized immediately that i didn't want at all.

slow

it's getting late, and i have to be up at 4am to go fetch my mother from the airport - we're so excited that she's visiting!

yesterday:

after a chat with horseman, i went up to our elderly neighbor's place because i suddenly remembered in the middle of the night that i promised to visit her days ago and clean forgot. turns out she needed help with her wifi and an ipad her family bought her, as the neighbors who recently left had been letting her use their network.

she can't connect to ours through all the concrete, so she asked me if i could help her get internet installed. we then discovered that already did have internet installed, and we could upgrade her connection for less money than she was already paying. eventually, we managed to get her password sorted out, and her devices connected, and she was really happy.

she then informed me that she was particularly grateful because her husband and son both passed away many years ago, and the rest of her family is too far away to help with this sort of thing... so that was heartbreaking. it was interesting to learn that her daughter's a published poet.

afterwards, she gave me a super-sharp knife for gd and i came back home, gd responded by going to visit her and i took mr smear out to run errands. i asked the mongoose for advice and he invited me to join him and his daughter at dizengoff, so mr smear and i made our way there. stopping for an emergency breakfast sandwich along the way.

our mission at the center was really fun. we all had a good time, between the robotics and the games and the comics and the figures and the toys, although we didn't end up buying anything. and mr smear got a taste of a proper synthesizer at the music store :)

we ended up having lunch with them as well, even though that wasn't the plan, and after they rushed off for toddler nap-time we made our way home for a quiet, lazy afternoon and evening.

i started playing disco elysium. i'm enjoying it, it's brilliant, but after quite a few hours i still don't really understand what the game actually is. i mean, i want to solve the mystery, of course, but i get the feeling that that's merely a superficial element...

today:

aside from a midday excursion to discover a nearby park that tahoma suggested and pick up ingredients so that gd could make tabouleh for my mother, and an evening excursion to the climbing wall, today was very much spent indoors resting and playing video games.

the climbing wall experience was excellent, and mr smear got to the top of the really high wall he's been working on for the last couple of sessions.

it's now 11pm and i've got to be up at 4am to fetch my mom from the airport, so i think i'm going to go to bed pretty soon.

probably.

reset and repeat

 today was an interesting day, particularly around mr smear. we had about four separate incidents, each one starting with trouble, then resolving (in all cases but one) quickly, and resulting in a "good talk" with good vibes and a productive sense of accomplishment.

gd was supposed to go to a class this morning, but is instead going tomorrow, so mr smear will be coming to the office with me. he's really excited, i'm excited but praying that everything's cool. my boss is weird about kids (even though he's a new dad), hopefully everything will be smooth.

apparently his session with his hebrew tutor went well. and this evening our climbing wall session went amazingly well. he arrived with a good attitude, and definitely levelled up! he went to bed really late though...

my hand's still messed up.

work was pretty good today. slow and steady, and ended with a surprising victory (we all thought what i was doing wouldn't work - it initially didn't work, and then magically it did. maybe golang really is okay with multiple binaries in the same module?)

i had a hard time with eating/not eating today.

light-headed

 this has been a *really* hard week. i've been feeling shit, and i've been getting really nervous about my mom arriving soon, because after the last two visits i *really* don't want any of us to be sick.

now it's thursday night, mr smear is in bed, and i'm trying to remember what happened.

i also should point out that i've been having trouble with keeping up with the world politically, and i've been kind of taking a mental health break. not properly, and not enough, but kind of.

diet-wise, i've been all over the place this week. but i have been rollerblading a lot, and the days i've failed i've made up for it, i think.

i've really been having trouble sleeping.

monday:

for months i've been unable to work from home with my home network, and it's been very frustrating. after a few hours on calls with tech support - especially the shift manager - along with a helpful hint from my boss, we finally figured out the source of the problem and i can work from my home network!

(it turned out my router had "dns rebind protection" enabled my default)

the climbing wall session in the evening was pretty good. as much as he's getting stronger and better, he's also beginning to get it through his head that "this is happening". 

tuesday:

i had an early breakfast, and arrived at work early to donate blood. they weren't set up yet, so the morning was weirdly shifted. and the nurse who took my blood was fascinated by my being vegan, so i ended up giving advice on both veganism and her son's career progress :P

one isn't supposed to exert oneself physically after donating blood, but our sprint meetings ran a bit late and i had to run to catch the train (i barely made it before the doors closed). i found ze germans without too much trouble, and we had a great lunch while talking about some of my ideas. they seem pretty enthusiastic. i have homework to do.

in the afternoon i had a long, difficult conversation with mr smear's teacher. it wasn't all bad, and it felt constructive, but i'm left praying that she's his teacher next year as well...

wednesday:

resolving an issue with stripe payments, that turned out to not be a real issue but just a UX fail. i'm super impressed by their tech support, both in how professional and helpful, and in little things like enabling me to verify that their call wasn't a scam, and the agent agreeing to forward the recording of our conversation to their product team.

we've had a contractor working with us for the past month, and yesterday was his last day in the office. he's very sweet, and it was an emotional sendoff. with whiskey, after the wework "crème brûlée" happy hour.

today:

today started off alright. i woke up from a bizarre dream where i was in a meeting with elon musk and suggested using the "right hand rule" to employ magnetic force to help launch rockets. mr smear went to school with a pretty good vibe and gd went to her sewing class. i did dishes and listened to podcasts and youtube videos until about 10am, then took the bus to work.

first order of business: a bit of a fight with my coworkers. by the end of it, none of us were sure who was in the right or who was in the wrong but we were clearly all uncomfortable with ourselves and our behavior. the rest of the day was quite positive. and we went out for lunch together and it was really good (i remembered to take my vinegar bottle).

by the afternoon we'd all agreed on what i was doing and that i was going about it in the right way, but there was a significant amount of bashing my head into walls until i achieved a minor success and launched myself home.

i picked up mr smear, put on my blades, and we went to the climbing wall. it was a pretty good experience overall.

bedtime, not so much - mr smear needs to see a doctor for the hole he's managed to scratch in his leg. he's lost all privileges until it heals because he hasn't been able to get over his compulsive scratching, and he's properly damaging himself.

...

i'm VERY happy we're entering the weekend right now.

big days

yesterday:

after dropping mr smear at school, i went home to send my wife off to her first sewing lesson in israel and then went to misrad hapnim to see if i could find a human being to talk to. i was duly informed at their information booth that there are no human beings to talk to, although i suspect that it wouldn't be in a lawyer's best interests to encourage doing things without them.

it's a lucrative business, immigration lawyering... anyway, i got some helpful information from her, and from the woman that i'd contacted on wednesday, and those two sets of information gave my mother some direction, and relieved a lot of pressure. so that's good.

the work day was mixed, but ended on a really high note - and by high, i mean manic. after hours of bashing my head against a wall, i finally found the missing piece of the puzzle (thanks to a coworker stumbling across a chatgpt answer that was completely wrong, but unwittingly included a hint that i could  make use of) and got everything working smoothly.

then i rushed home, picked up mr smear and my rollerblades, and we headed to the climbing wall. the rides were good, there was minimal resistance from mr smear, and all-in-all we had a really good time.

gd's sewing lesson went really well, and she's extremely excited. which is very exciting for me, as well.

today:

dropping mr smear off at school, then wasting an aggravating hour trying to get technical support from our internet provider. then gd joined me to afeka to pick up the puzzle book that finally arrived: aleksandra artymowska's around the world in 80 puzzles. and buy some nice stuff from the store the post office uses as a front.

then we bussed to the mall, did some grocery shopping while i became progressively hangrier and less patient for all the friday morning mall people, then walked home in the oppressive heat to eat breakfast, then picked up mr smear from school and walked up to do a quick pharmacy / hardware store mission before finally coming home, doing lots of dishes, and then relaxing.

i mean, doing a little work, then watching random stuff and playing a bit of inscryption. act iii is hard.

ending the day riding to meet the mongoose and his daughter and go with them to the beach, mr smear not only riding well in both directions - and appreciating how quickly we got there and back - but also really enjoying a beautiful afternoon / evening chilling in the water.

a big dinner, and delicious dessert (the chocolate halva from the grocery store is amazing), and now we're full and sore and tired and ready for bed.

round twos

 well, last night was rough, after posting i suddenly discovered that my lower back was sore (sciatica, possibly), and i struggled with it until late morning. it's still flashing occasionally, but it seems better. i'm pretty sure i encouraged it by playing basketball in sandals yesterday.

the morning was okay, but i wasn't in a good place. gd and i had a moment triggered by an issue with the new school security guard, but fortunately it was only a moment. then i went to work, and the first part of the day went well.

the second half, not so much. i ended up hitting two brick walls simultaneously, and one of my coworkers came to assist but even he had no idea what was going on. i ended up leaving the office almost half an hour late to pick up mr smear and take him to the climbing wall, so that felt shit.

getting to the climbing wall, and the first half of our time there, was pretty good. i wasn't in great spirits, but we were having a pleasant enough time that my mood was beginning to recover. and then, pretty suddenly, we went from good vibes to shit vibes. mr smear wasn't succeeding on one of the walls, and he decided he wanted to go home.

i eventually got him to move to a different wall and complete that instead, but although he seemed to be in a better mood on the way home i most certainly wasn't. while i showered, he tried to convince gd that he shouldn't go climbing again, and she told him the same thing i did: climbing, or mma.

he chooses climbing.

anyway, after getting him into bed i jumped back into work, fortunately uncovering the source of the problem and being able to move forward. it was a slog, but i eventually got part one of the weekend work done.

why am i working on my weekend? right, because we want to release on sunday and i've been taking much too long on my tickets. even if it had been my fault... good grief. but fine, at least i'm finally feeling like i'm getting a solid handle on the deeper parts of our machine.

i spent the past couple of hours half-heartedly verifying my changes, and playing more inscryption. i've just managed to defeat the boss, and i'm feeling pretty damned pleased with myself! i kinda feel like doing this again has enriched the experience somewhat. it's a gorgeous game.

playing ball

yesterday wasn't better than sunday. it was worse, in fact. it began with a pretty shit moment that just expanded until it consumed the morning, and the rest of the day didn't improve significantly. i spent all day wrangling a variety of unwieldy pieces of code, and generally wallowing. gd's mission to the dentist turned out to be for nought, although the taxi ride was apparently therapeutic (she always has interesting conversations with the drivers), and though not without navigation drama, she took mr smear to his hebrew tutor.

in the evening, i took mr smear out to the climbing wall. not only did the day ending and being outside with my boy improve my mood, but he had a particularly successful climbing session so we were both quite pleased by the time we came home.

today:

i passed out on the couch last night, and wasn't able to get up and get to bed until the morning, by which point i was pretty much done sleeping anyway. the second-biggest event this morning was us going shopping for groceries and to replace the pencil case mr smear lost, during which we bought a couple of books and subsequently fought over them (mr smear says "no" to everything automatically), but at some point i managed to pull a good lever (threatening to delete a minecraft save) and the rest of the day he's been fine.

i mean, aside from fighting about going out to shoot hoops with the new basketball, but about halfway through our session he confessed - entirely on his own initiative - that he was having fun and regretted saying "no" before.

the biggest event of the day was my mom calling to discuss which date was best for her to fly, and learning she'll be here for mr smear's birthday ^_^

(now to figure out what to do about his birthday... speaking of which, he started the day by sending a text to a friend without consulting us; fortunately, he got a positive response, but it's really hard for us to make sure he doesn't damage relationships because he hasn't figured out asynchronous communication and tone yet)

the contractor we've hired also called me this morning, he was inspired by the tale of mr smear getting into gamemaker with me last weekend and wanted to ask what i thought could help him with his own kid (who's a little older than mr smear, but doesn't english too well). i'd love to collaborate with him on a fun game that could teach english and hebrew in an engaging way.

it's been a good day, and now we're heading into shavuot so... chag sameach!

weekend unlocked

 the morning started well enough. i got mr smear to school with a good vibe, i withdrew cash so that we could pay the cleaner, and i finally got my personal project's backend upgrade almost-complete.

then i rollerbladed to work, and it was absolutely fine.

...

oh, right - there's a background to this whole week that i've barely mentioned: i'm finally, after years of not taking it seriously, decided to take being overweight seriously. i'm sticking to my fasting hours a lot more consistently, and i'm mostly avoiding my usual non-stop snacking or replacing the snacks with healthier options. i know it's going to take a while to see results, but i can no longer ignore what i've been ignoring for most of the past decade.

...

i barely worked on my ticket today. instead, my boss dropped a surprise thursday release on my lap (thursday is israel's friday). the initial production deployment went smoothly, but i happened to uncover a bug in production so it was followed by a hotfix. and then another one, during which i made a mistake that led to some drama.

we managed to sort it all out before our "happy hour", with no production downtime, and as soon as i was done shoveling a vegan knafeh down my throat i headed home to pick up mr smear and take him to the climbing wall.

...

i was feeling bloated and uncomfortable all afternoon, and so it wasn't the most comfortable experience. i introduced mr smear to the rollerskating rink next to the climb wall, and he enjoyed riding around in circles. he proceeded, begrudgingly, to have a pretty acceptable climbing session, although he wasn't pleased about the lack of treats at the end.

there was a little girl on the climbing wall who has a stump in place of her right hand. watching her trying to get up the wall was nothing short of inspirational.

it was also a good lesson for mr smear. he was initially very unsettled, and needed to take a break to get over himself, but we had an easy conversation about it and there was no stress, and a few minutes later he was back on the wall and quite focused.

he's riding his bike really confidently, it's simultaneously a source of pride and a huge relief.

...

the evening's been mostly good. getting mr smear to bed wasn't easy, but it was easier than last night, and i'm finally finished with the backend upgrade. now i'm going to either enjoy the rest of the evening, or fall asleep, or both.

13K+ steps

today started off a bit shit. the morning was going okay until mr smear and i left the apartment, and then mr smear got angry with me for trying to talk to him about something he didn't want to talk about and the rest of the walk there was... shit. it could have been a lot worse. we've had worse. i'm not ungrateful that it wasn't worse.

then i went to the pharmacy to pick something up for gd that she'd forgotten to get when she was there yesterday. that wouldn't have been so bad, except that i ended up waiting about 45 minutes as my number kept getting pushed back for priority cases.

then i came home and faced off with a mysterious bug that took me a loooong while to figure out. interrupted by having to return to the school to give mr smear his meds because gd had just done a treatment on her foot. at least mr smear had cooled off by then, so that was a small improvement to the day.

then i came home, worked some more, then had to return again and take him to his hebrew tutor. i sat down (as usual) with a coffee and my laptop, made a little progress, then picked him up and came home. all-in-all, not unpleasant at all.

although it was hot. summer's finally here.

i finally completed and merged last week's task, which was a relief. i then spent the next few hours wrestling with something broken, something that i really don't understand yet, along with a whole bunch of annoying docker issues that effectively burned whatever focus time i might have had. all while trying to get mr smear to do his homework.

mr smear did, eventually, get the homework done, and fortunately in time for us to stick to our new commitment of wall climbing twice a week as a compromise for him quitting mma. added to that, getting there and back on wheels to get him used to the notion of using it for transportation as opposed to "going for a ride".

both the ride there and back, and the wall climbing, were a remarkable success. we had a good time. we got exercise. mr smear got the satisfaction of getting back to the top of the wall.

my only disappointment was discovering that the new pads i waited for are completely useless, so i had to use the ones that got damaged along with my knee. i'll be trying to take those back for a refund tomorrow.

the evening was good, and mr smear and i had a really good conversation at bedtime about what happened during the day and how he could have handled things better. he was also a bit disturbed by the ending of invader zim's bestest friend - which he thought was hilarious aside from the eyeball thing - and i managed to tie in the day's lesson to dealing with that and he went to bed without further incident. so i think we're doing okay.

...

the war + the global success of the BRICS propaganda + the durban jew attacking a muslim family = sheer emotional and psychological exhaustion. now we're even more scared for jewish south africans.

sat/sun

yesterday:

a quiet day, and i was still really tired. i managed to get a fair amount of work done on a new podcast episode, including at our local vegan cafe while mr smear dived into his new book. we watched inu-oh from start to finish and it was both disappointing and inappropriate for mr smear. the artwork was magnificent, the story itself was interesting, the music... the music was difficult to listen to, but the idea was good... but there was something fundamentally lacking.

we also started watching legend of the drunken master, which was apparently less inappropriate. but the movie starts with a bunch of disturbing stuff we didn't remember.

godsdammit.

i wanted to take mr smear cycling, but he was having none of it. he negotiated cycling next week - we recorded him agreeing - and instead walking to the climbing wall. it was a mostly good walk, although there was minor unpleasantness along the way and we arrived just as the wall was been closed due to an unexpected personal issue :(

today:

it was a pretty good start to the week, i got a bunch of paperwork filed even if i do have more to go, and i rollerbladed to the office, discovering a neat bike path that goes through midtown. it was a pretty good work day, even though i needed to snack a lot and there wasn't anything available, and i'm happy with how the first iteration of the tool i've been working on is shaping up.

getting my rollerblades on outside the building was unpleasant, but getting home was pleasant.

my only disappointment today is with mr smear not doing his homework again, which means it's going to start piling on... ugh.

the top of the loop-the-loop

 it's done. the contract has been signed by both parties. this is happening.

i'm still a bit in shock, and i'm mentally preparing for writing up my notice for my bosses in the morning, and then having a very real discussion during my weekly one-on-one.

this is happening.

...

today was a much better day. it began with preparing the captions for the latest graphic novel pages, which are almost ready.

the work day itself was long and arduous, but the last thing i did before leaving the office worked and i spent most of the walk and bus ride home merging code from my phone. then i got home, picked up mr smear, and the two of us hit the climbing wall.

mr smear had a great session, he did really well, and we then walked down to congress basel for really good falafel before heading home. it was a late night for him, but a good one. then i settled in to read the contract.

...

this is happening.

the fix

 i took a puff on thursday night, and it helped. i took another puff last night, and it helped. i'm going to take another puff tonight, and hopefully my sleep clock will stabilize. i'm actually surprised by how little affected i was - aside from the sleeping itself - i didn't feel messed up going to sleep, nor waking up. this is good.

...

right now, my fingers and hands are sore. i'm really excited to report that i finally got on the climbing wall with mr smear this evening, and not only was it a great experience climbing together but i did way better than i thought i would after more than eight years. i had no trouble getting to the top, nor climbing a lot, and aside from the first attempt i made a point of only doing routes.

...

this post interrupted by yet another protest against our new neighbor. i complained about last night's one in the neighborhood facebook group and learned that i'm not alone in not appreciating their shenanigans. i'm actually surprised that mr smear hasn't woken up yet, but some of our neighbors haven't been so lucky :(

...

friday morning went much better than the previous week. gd and i did a quick grocery shopping as soon as mr smear was in school, then watched randy feltface - smug druggles (it's brilliant). then i picked up mr smear, brought him home, dragged him to the istore* and then rushed through to his therapist, picking up a delicious falafel along the way (he was very happy about that).

* where i learned that i cannot trade in or even submit for recycling our old ipad and my "old" macbook that i picked up from sailor

while he had his session i sat outside the coffee shop and worked on an article while three different places (including the coffee shop) competed for the loudest, most annoying music. it was lovely.

yesterday afternoon / evening was pretty chill, as was this morning. we started off the day with home alone, which was actually better and more interesting than i remembered. then, after a significant downtime, mr smear convinced gd to play goodcritters with us, and while the start was a bit rough we all ended up having a great time!

i agreed to give mr smear another chance and we watched some more of the live action one piece. it's just gorgeous!

mr smear and i had an unpleasant incident on the way to the wall this evening, but ultimately we got things figured out and i feel like i got through to him. the fact that we managed to have a great time after that feels like significant progress on both our parts.

T-2

 it's tuesday night, and i've just woken up after passing out during a re-watch (for me) of neal brennan's 3 mics (gd watched the whole thing and enjoyed it) due to what was clearly a sugar-low after consuming too much candy after dinner. after a busy evening after a busy afternoon during which i almost passed out next to one of my coworkers while trying to help him debug something weird.

this evening was awesome, and a bit bitter-sweet because i'm almost sure it's going to be the last mid-week wall climbing for a while. mr smear and i had a deal and we both stuck to it, he had a great time and did some cool things and i didn't set any parameters. he's doing great :)

i had a sync with his new teacher over the phone this evening - hopefully i'll learn how to pronounce her name soon.

we got excellent news this afternoon! the public therapist has a slot opening up, which is going to save us an enormous amount of money (not that we don't feel it's well spent), so perhaps we can get back to reducing our debt sometime in the near future. that would be cool.

...

after a good HR interview yesterday morning, it looks like we're proceeding, although still quite slowly. ironically, i'm feeling confident and settled in my current job for the first time in over a year. i'm working on something that's less of an uphill battle against my coworkers (and part of the core business, as opposed to the ci/cd infrastructure), and the work itself is a lot more interesting.

i had a long chat with an ex-coworker yesterday evening, it was nice to catch up and reassuring to know i have a good reference in hand.

...

gd's legs are hurting. this sucks.

...

mr smear's generally doing really well with mma, and he seems to be making friends there too. this is good. i'm really feeling like this summer holiday has been good for him, i hope his return to school in two days' time is positive.

good sabbath

 today got off to a rough start - i'd gone to bed around 2am, and four hours later i was paged for some nonsense. fortunately, it was similar nonsense to tuesday night's incident, so i knew where to look. by the time i was on the case the problem had already resolved itself, i'm just a bit irritated that things were broken for about an hour before the alarms went off :/

anyway, we all had a nice, slow morning. i completed steamworld heist for the first time, and i have to say that i've really enjoyed it from beginning to end. the final boss kicked my ass the first time, but by the second i had a simple strategy that held up the entire way through.

a little later we all settled in to watch short circuit. i fell asleep for a good chunk of it, but what a surprisingly fun, entertaining and wholesome film! of particular interest is just how similar wall-e is to no. 5...

we then followed that with a full viewing of funny people; i don't know how much was staged or how to identify what was staged, but the upside-down living room is for sure one of the greatest prank ideas ever conceived!

afterwards, it was a bit of a chore to get mr smear to come outside, but we went to the climbing wall, had a great session, came home for him to shower, then walked to our local vegan coffee shop for dinner. mr smear and i had interesting conversations the whole way, bumped into his best friend's mother and sister along the way, and an old friend of mine from rollerblading when we ate.

it really was a good day. i'm tired, and this weekend was very different from how i thought it would go, but i'm feeling really good about it and i think i'm just about ready to go to bed.

the perhaps not so big day?

yesterday was highly anticipated, but was less fireworks and more weirdness.

pharmacy elucidation: i went to pick up my meds, but the pharmacist's instructions were incomplete. so i took a look at the original script, and learned that my skin thing that i've been dealing with for almost a week is apparently an eczema thing...

i went through an architectural interview with two guys, which was fine, i guess? i wasn't feeling super-confident by the end (not unconfident, either), but two of us appeared to be caught off-guard when the third ended the meeting saying that we were going to continue the application process without any deliberation. i was expecting to be told "we'll get back to you", and i got "let's schedule the follow-up for next week", so i'm curious as to whether that's actually happening or whether there'll be a retraction :P

it was a positive workday, i managed to get most of my task completed although i was sadly surprised to learn that both javascript and python amqp instrumentation doesn't register single message consumption which really makes testing unnecessarily complicated :/

too much indian food for lunch - actually, it was more a case of eating too much breakfast too close to lunchtime, and even though the lunch was really good it was a struggle :P

the meeting: by the time the meeting started, i was no longer convinced that i was getting fired, but just merely uncertain. then the meeting began in a surprising and strange manner - my boss took a deep dive into my personal projects (specifically, the sonnet comics and the book), which was a really interesting conversation but after ten minutes i had to ask "so, what are we meeting about today?"

and we continued with an ordinary weekly one-on-one, everything's fine, he's very happy with how things are going, and he's impressed by my improvement relating to his feedback a few months ago. we synced on a couple of task-related aspects, and that was it.

no drama, except for everything that had been in my head. amazing.

our meeting was followed by an all-hands, which i tried to join while doing grocery shopping on my way home. the first issue was connecting to the meeting, because zoom has a thing - desktop or mobile - that you can't join unless your app is up-to-date and it took forever to download. then it kept disconnecting me from the meeting any time i switched to another app (even for a few seconds) or locked my screen. wtf, zoom?!?!

i got the groceries home in one piece, all efforts of the bus driver to the contrary, picked up smear, and we headed to the climbing wall. it was a good session, overall, and he earned himself an "achievement popsicle" for making three real attempts on a new wall :)

the evening was a bit messy; making sure that mr smear eats fruit every day has always been a struggle, and last night the after-dinner fruit turned out to be... not good... and he made a point of eating it and its replacement so slowly that we couldn't get into bed until just before 10pm. for the second day in a row. holy shit.

i had a long catchup chat with vfmp, then found myself too tired to do anything and around midnight i crashed hard.

in an attempt to combat the recent increase in excessive late bedtimes, i woke mr smear up early this morning, and so far it's been a good morning from his point of view (he just got off a video call with my mom where he introduced her to his new lego action figures, he was very excited). gd's having a rough time post-nerve block, so a part of this morning is going to be looking at next steps...