the break

 i dont think i had enough coffee today, because i suddenly crashed a little while ago and needed another cup. i'm used to two strong coffees at the office (after my initial morning coffee), and today i had a black tea and an instant coffee instead. so i'm now making up the deficit with another instant and hoping it tides me over until i get home tonight.

i say "i", because i had to cancel the babysitter and i'm going to nystire's alone... gd did me a favor and picked up a bottle of wine when she was out, but miscalculated how far the liquor store was and ended up hurthing herself in her rush to pick mr smear up (late).

  .-'---`-.
,'          `.
|             \
|              \
\           _  \
,\  _    ,'-,/-)\
( * \ \,' ,' ,'-)
 `._,)     -',-')
   \/         ''/
    )        / /
   /       ,'-'

workwise was weird. after a 45 minute meeting arguing over YAML vs JSON, i began building a test app in the language i thought i was supposed to be evaluating. then, an hour before i was supposed to sync with my boss, he asked how it compares to the other language... godsdammit. anyway, the rest of the afternoon has been startlingly unproductive and i'm feeling a bit shit.

i should have gone to pick up the mattress topper earlier.

...

last minute pre-publish edit: my coworker got back to me, and i'm now glad i didn't waste time on the other language because it wouldn't have made any sense.

it's raining tacos

 well, our sunday is monday, but still. i had a good workday yesterday, and the only issue with mr smear is him not doing is homework (and fighting about brushing his teeth in the morning, gods help us).

we got a surprise invitation to nystire's wife's birthday party tonight, and we miraculously managed to secure a babysitter. if we both manage to get there, i think it's going to be the most spontaneous thing we've done in about ten years :P

mr smear was singing it's raining tacos over the weekend, and it's got stuck in my head. i prefer it the way he sings it, though.

the weekend was mostly good, though i took mr smear out for a walk that was also mostly good, but had some rough parts. and then we were "urgently recalled" because he needed to take his meds on schedule and we were far from home with no public transport :/

yesterday was a good work day. i got a whole lot done that i'm happy with. i'm a bit anxious about potential on-call duties, though i'm sure it'll be better than my previous experiences.

i completed the video for signs in the dead of night yesterday, i'm very happy with it.

after a long chat with vfmp last night, i didn't get much sleep but it was at least good sleep. our mattress topper is ready, now i just need to pick it up.

...

this article on the origins of the bible is really intriguing.

a good friday

 firstly, starting off the day seeing a video about elements of purim having pagan origins, and then looking it up and finding all sorts of weird stuff (eg. this). so that got stuck in my head today.

i spent some time updating drivers on my windows machine while waiting for my family to be ready, which took a long time. we eventually set out to the furniture store, where i explained the problem and fully expected to be dragging us through a huge ordeal involving selling our current bed and buying two new ones, but i was stopped short.

"do you know what a mattress topper is?"

no, no i did not. and now i do. and i've tested one out, and i've ordered it, and i was so relieved to be presented with such a great (and inexpensive) solution that i was on the verge of tears.

so that was a good start to the day.

we then walked up and down the street until we found the place we bought our couch, and ordered two additional cushions for it.

then we bussed to dizengoff center and picked up mr smear's new prescription, as well as really good food for breakfast (and later lunch) - i had really good vegan cholent, it was glorious.

we missed the bus home, so we strolled up dizengoff and picked up coffees and had a variety of tel aviv / purim experiences before getting to the dominator store - mr smear has been asking to go there for months - and then we hopped on a bus back home.

i've played a lot more bloons adventure time than i should have, but i did claim the martian throne when it was already claimed at a stupidly high level. i even napped in the middle.

it's been a quiet afternoon, listening to good music and doing dishes while mr smear plays spider-man, and putting a little bit of effort into sprucing up an old poem of mine inspired by godspeed you! black emperor. now i'm enjoying a glass of whiskey and gathering thoughts.

thursday

 yesterday was pretty intense, but ultimately (including some effort after mr smear had gone to bed) saw me entering the weekend having cleared my desk in preparation for next week's operation. in the late afternoon we had a very serious all-hands where everyone got things off their chests, which ended with a round of rather nice desserts.

which reminds me, the fries i ordered as an excuse for salt and vinegar were rather disappointing. 

mr smear had had a good day, but it didn't end very well. last night was hard.

i watched the season finale of unchained. i say "i" because gd was next to me, but passed out for half of it. it's an excellent season, from start to finish.

...

i slept on the couch again last night. consistently much better. now we're off to re-negotiate with the furniture store...

i unfriended/blocked vfmp's brother this morning over his continued anti-israel posts.

"It isn't even Friday."

canada's seeming like a lost cause these days, i don't believe they realize just what they're signing up for.

almost-weekend stress

 it's going to be an intense day today. on my way out my boss and i synced on how out-of-sync we were, so today i'm going to do what i can to achieve all the stretch goals before the weekend so that i can start something new on sunday and help him feel ready for his parental leave.

my scalp's already feeling much better after three days of shampooing, but i'm going to pick up the treatment on my way to work today anyway.

mr smear's definitely on the mend. hopefully he'll be back at school soon.

i slept on the couch last night. i slept well. i'm now confident that most of my sleep disruptions over the past years have been due to sleeping on the wrong beds. like, i'm actually feeling functional today.

holy shit: yesterday i suggested to a coworker that maybe one day someone will figure out how to remove herpes using CRISPR. this morning i opened my browser to look for something and this article on removing HIV with CRISPR popped up out of nowhere.

(my) back

the dryness in the hospital split the skin on my thumb again. it really hurts.

the full-day-of-youtube hospital experience wasn't good for anyone, but we did have some good moments and on monday evening mr smear did some great drawings and we read a bit more diary of a wimpy kid in hebrew. it's blowing my mind how mr smear can't remember simple things we tell him or whether or not he's brushed his teeth, but he remembers most of the books he's read verbatim and consistently helps me with or corrects my translations.

monday was hard. working on a chair in a hospital with a single screen was hard, dealing with mr smear dealing with youtube / other people like doctors and nurses / well-meaning purim revellers etc. was hard. not being able to go anywhere because he was in quarantine and attached to a drip was hard.

monday night was pretty much a repeat of sunday night. lots of sleep interruptions, but the actual sleep on their fold-out bed was pretty good.

yesterday morning was okay, a lot of the same from monday but mr smear's eye was looking much better. while gd got settled in and the doctors determined whether or not he was ready to go home, i went to the office.

the first hour or two in the office were considerably more constructive. lunch (a hummus run with my boss and a mostly full house at the table) was good. what followed was a mix of going to a three-minute dermatologist consultation - he doesn't think i have psoriasis, and believes everyone in israel should be shampooing daily - speed-walking back to the hospital ward to grab the toothbrushes gd forgot when they vacated, crashing in front of my desk while trying to avoid having more coffee, and a late evening struggling to debug something but finally walking out with a sense of accomplishment.

dinner in front of gravity falls last night - the last of the "special" days before getting back into a routine - and then a really hard night realizing that the last three sleepless months are at least partially, if not mostly, due to me being uncomfortable on our new mattress. i shifted to the couch in the middle of the night and slept much better.

now it's cleanup time, including dishes and grocery shopping online and taking laundry to the laundromat, before heading to work.

hospitalization

 an hour or two being bounced between offices until we gave up and went to the clinic, where they took pity on a miserable-looking mr smear and sent us up to the nurse who gave us the referral.

we did the ER thing from about 11am until around 9pm, it took half the day to get the PCR results from thursday and for a professor of infectious diseases to come and take a look at him: the diagnoses did end up being herpes, and he hadn't been responding well to the meds we were giving him, so we took him through for another eye examination before he was hospitalized for a couple of days' infusion.

i was already very sore and tired by then. around noon i'd had to rush home and back for medication, in the evening i rushed home and back for a t-shirt and underwear for mr smear and to pick up dinner for all of us, which gd really didn't enjoy, and for most of the day we were either walking around or sitting on uncomfortable chairs.

once we got him settled, i went home to shower and brush my teeth and pick up a couple more things and returned to relieve gd and let her go home.

it's been seven years since our last hospitalization, and it's much easier this time around. if it wasn't for a night full of alarms for IV occlusions waking me up during REM sleep it might've been the most comfortable night's sleep i've had in years.

i was a wreck after being woken up this morning, but i'm feeling okay now. and mr smear is happy because he's hooked into a bed with a screen that lets him watch youtube...

... gd just arrived, it's coffee and breakfast time.

continuation

 how does a saturday spent playing video games, watching movies and reading comics end with us feeling more exhausted than when it began?

while a lot of the day was nice (reading american splendor: our movie year, being mr smear's wingman in word factori, watching half of inu-oh, urchin's visit), it was constantly punctured by his suffering and it was capped off with him fighting with us about brushing his teeth.

*sigh*

gd and i managed to watch two more episodes of unchained before crashing, it's really, really good.

i'm the only one who got up "on time" this morning, i took out the trash and picked up some coffee and sat down to try and figure out how to get mr smear's PCR results, take care of a few little items, and watch some of the war on children. i've only managed to get through about twenty minutes of it, but so far it's all worrying stuff we're already aware of.

mr smear got up with an eye much more swollen, so we're now trying to get a referral to return the ER and it's proving really hard.

...

oh, and with everything else going on i just realized that neither of the recommended babysitters i reached out to responded to me, so between that and the eye situation we're going to have to cancel our tickets to watch my friend's documentary the shoshani riddle on tuesday :(

outbreak

 thursday:

i don't remember if it was wednesday or thursday, but there were hours of work spent hunting down bugs that were introduced by copilot. copilot certainly helped me get the code written faster, but that's the first time i've had to deal with a real bug hunt for a mistake i would never have made had i written it all myself...

early in the afternoon, gd took mr smear to the clinic to get his eye checked out - he'd been suffering from an outbreak for a day or two, we initially thought it was just a scratch and by wednesday evening it was starting to look worrying. the doctor wasn't sure, but she thought it might be herpes and i immediately became anxious - i've been nervous about herpes keratitis since my officer's course teammate developed it.

i sent off some photos for an online consultation with a dermatologist, and in retrospect it's pretty amazing how quickly one got back to me. by 4.30 i was on my way to meeting gd and mr smear at the hospital with a referral for the children's ER in hand.

it took about an hour before we got to see the triage nurse. after another hour in the waiting area with the kid with a scary cough who refused to wear his mask and a row of vending machines with exactly zero products appropriate for children, i approached the receptionist and asked how long the average wait was post-triage - one hour? two hours? she was immediately offended that i would ask such a vulgar question, and of course it would be less than an hour...

... mr smear's number finally got called another hour after that. the doctor examined him, and then sent us to an opthalmologist in a different building, where we waited again, but fortunately not for too long.

after the opthalmologist, we returned to the ER as instructed. after another half an hour of waiting, i approached the counter and asked if we'd been forgotten: "no, we're still waiting for the opthalmologist to enter the summary". holy shit, we could have waited until the next morning for that, and gd was starting to freak out because she wanted to get out of there in time to pick up whatever medication would be prescribed.

so they contacted the opthalmologist, who eventually did what he had to do, while i sat entertaining mr smear with random jokes from the internet and gd paced up and down. then we went around in circles between the doctors and nurses while they tried to figure out what to do about the four or five different possible diagnoses they'd come up with, and took a couple of samples.

it was just about 11pm when we finally left, all three of us completely exhausted.

yesterday:

we all needed to sleep in a little bit yesterday. mr smear woke up complaining that it was getting worse, and we were all in a shitty mood and totally over the day before it began. we (slowly) got moving and went to the clinic, where we were fortunate to find his paediatrician in her rooms. once we'd all figured out how we were proceeding, gd went to the pharmacy and mr smear and i went to get breakfast bagels.

i'd been talking to the guy at the counter for a minute when i turned around to find mr smear furiously rubbing his eye with the edge of his glasses, and while i want to say "it took everything i could not to freak out", the truth is i absolutely freaked out.

holy @#!$.

i rushed him off to gd, who thankfully had something to wipe his glasses and his face with, but it's been twenty four hours and i'm still not really over the horror.

i returned alone to apologize and pick up the bagels, then met up with them to eat breakfast. then pick up a treat for mr smear - the 14th diary of a wimpy kid book, the 13th wasn't available [though i just picked it up on kindle for him] - and then come home to try and get some rest.

by sundown i managed to put out the article i'd been fiddling with over the course of the week, so that was a relief.

today:

we're still trying to get some rest. we're just breathing into the day one moment at a time.

mr cat sent me the first draft of the dedication for the comics, and it's looking great, so today i'm going to try to get him the margin notes i promised i'd send "in a bit" yesterday :P

located

 my mother did manage to find the song! i'm not just impressed by her getting her hands on the books, and relieved that one of the books was the right one, but i'm also proud of her for reading through both of them well enough to find what i was looking for ^_^

it's called "אני מחכה לאחי החייל" and i've no idea who wrote it, but i definitely got the first verse right. i also didn't expect it to hit me right in the feels, i tried reading it to gd this morning, but at some point just couldn't speak through the sobs.

אני מחכה לאחי החייל

יש לי אח גדול,

בן עשרים אולי,

הוא יכול לעשות הכל,

וקוראים לו שי.

אחי שי הוא חייל,

הנה הוא פה בתמונה.

שי הוא חייל גיבור

ושומר על המדינה.

אם שי הולך למלחמה -

אמא נורא דואגת;

אבא שומע רדיו כל שעה

וכולם יושבים בשקט.

והנה בא מכתב

משי שלנו - הטוב;

"אני בריא וחזק

להתראות בקרוב-בקרוב".

אלוהים, לך אני מתפלל -

לגמור את המלחמה ודי.

תן שלום לישראל.

שיבוא מהר הבייתה שי.

...

tuesday:

i'm struggling to recall tuesday. i vaguely remember that there were at least a couple of points of interest, but i'm at a loss right now.

one thing i do remember, though, is that at bathtime i explained to mr smear how our ears downsample and we only hear about a third of what's said to us, and that we complete what we hear with context and expectations. with the implication being that we literally can't hear what other people are saying when we're upset.

yesterday:

yesterday started off scary: i woke up fine at 5am to go to the toilet, but on my way back to bed my back began to spasm. with some help from gd i miraculously managed to stave off the full spasm and by the time i got to the office i was more or less okay. i'm still nervous about it, though.

also, it looks like i might well have psoriasis.

it was a busy morning. gd and mr smear were both upset because gd, tired and in pain, spends forty five minutes every morning preparing breakfast and lunch and mr smear doesn't want to eat what she puts in front of him. the conversation that we'd had the night before came in handy: i asked mr smear if he could make himself calm enough to hear what we were saying, and he said "no". so i stopped trying, and on the way to school we managed to talk everything out.

this morning went much better.

i spoke to my mom, who informed me that uncle hate has shuffled off his mortal coil and that she was asked not to fly to montreal right now, which i guess is a bit of a relief. i sent my aunt and her kids condolences, glad that gd's supportive of me playing nice in spite of how they treated us.

i managed to get an authorization sorted out at the clinic, then picked up my favorite onion bagel, then went through to one of the clinics at the hospital to find out if and when gd had an appointment, and went on a side-quest to explain to management that their signage is insufficient. they were shocked, disbelieving, and i'm not 100% convinced they're going to do anything about it.

the work day went well, it was long but had some good moments.

the south african foreign ministry appears to be serious in threatening south africans who've served in the idf. assholes.

in the evening i watched another episode of unchained with gd, then tried to write an article i'm been stewing over for days, then crashing.

today:

mr smear was good today, breakfast went well. gd's on a mission to gather her thoughts about our cape town community, i'm going to help her put out an article (on whatever medium) in her own voice because she's really upset about how woke jews around the world are behaving when they have no clue what's going on over here.

a better day

 the bug from the sunday continued to drive me crazy until the early afternoon, when my boss told me to just do what the AWS representative advised. i didn't think it was the right thing to do, and i expressed my opinions, but i began implementing it as instructed.

just one last test.

fortunately, my tests were pretty solid and i finally had some real data to work with - and i discovered that the "fix" suggested by the professional would have opened a massive security hole! while i struggled to wrap my head around what was actually happening, i managed to find a solution that appears to be not only viable, but correct, and i'm now waiting to see the proof in the puddingproduction environment.

i was more shocked by how backwards the AWS implementation is than relieved that i've found a solution...

...

on sunday night, i scratched my head a bit, and a bit of my head came off. last night a dermatologist called me back and advised that i go see someone in person. gd (and dr google) think i may have developed psoriasis. i hope it's not psoriasis :(

mr smear had a much better day yesterday. the day started off awkwardly because we were both invited to talk with the school councillor; mr smear was in trouble for skipping classes on sunday (when we were having a tough morning), and i was in trouble for not warning his teacher that he was having a tough morning. gd managed to get him to his hebrew tutor and through his homework.

so: winning.

on sunday morning, i managed to install the ceiling attachment points for the shower curtain rail, but i accidentally pushed one of the screws through the ceiling and needed to wait 24 hours for the "putty" i used to fix it to dry. yesterday, when it was ready, i finally set about putting up the curtain rail... only to discover that in the month or two since i bought the damned thing and haven't been able to put it up, some of the parts went missing.

#$@!.

so now we have to wait for a handyman to swing by and see if he can help us out.

gd's really having a hard time psychologically, primarily with the war and the international response to it, on top of her daily struggle with pain which seems to have gotten worse since she's been coughing so much in the weeks we've been dealing with covid.

my mom managed to track down a couple of copies of the hebrew workbooks we had when i was a kid! it's been so long that apparently on one or two teachers even remembered the name (מדרגות or madregot), and i'm hoping that the song i still have stuck in my head is in one of them.

יש לי אח גדול

בן עשרים אולי

הוא יכול לעשות הכל

וקוראים לו שי

שי חייל והוא גיבור

אמא נורא דואגת

right, it's time to get moving.

not really

 i didn't sleep well. again. i'm tired. apparently i need to learn to sleep on my back.

and then mr smear woke up inexplicably in fight mode. things got bad, and he crossed a few red lines. so we all had a shitty start to our day.

in the evening, i came home to find him still in fight mode, but less, and over dinner i think i managed to get through to him a little. the rest of the evening was mostly positive. he was very excited to be introduced to the idea of eating with chopsticks.

the morning's work was a bit stressful, but with a bit of help i got the job done. then three of us went off to the schnitzel place, where to accompany my usual falafel and chips i picked up a bottle of vinegar. i regret nothing.

in the afternoon i started working on a bizarre bug that seems impossible to reproduce and that doesn't make any sense. i left the office a bit late, irritated by the potential problem and hoping that somehow i'll wake up with some kind of direction...

quiet

 it was a peaceful shabbat. after so many hours invested in bloons adventure time, i decided to pick up the three characters that unlock all the levels and i regret nothing. while mr smear playing human fall flat, gd and i started watching unchained last night, and we watched another episode today, and it's really good so far.

my favorite parts of the day were

1. getting sandwiches at our local vegan cafe with mr smear reading a book at a different table while we just enjoyed being there and doing nothing

2. mr smear and me putting together the free warhammer figure that he received yesterday

3. getting the original dedication pages to the illustrator and putting out the latest pages, only a month and a half after receiving them

4. mr smear and me playing rain world, first taking turns and then vs in the arena mode

i've spent most of the last few hours watching random youtube videos, overall not the greatest use of my time. now i'm regretting starting a macos update on my work computer because it's taking much longer to get to some kind of checkpoint than i was expecting...

...

my back's been hurting me a lot the past few days. i hope i manage to sleep better tonight.

define success?

 today's tom nash report is both encouraging and discouraging. it seems militarily sound, but what about the hostages? we leave them there for another month? that's just insane. though no less insane that any of the events that have brought us to this point.

i'm very glad i'm not in a position where i need to make these kinds of decisions.

...

as evidence by my last post, i didn't sleep very well last night. getting up this morning was hard. i'm grateful that mr smear eventually got himself sorted out because i had zero energy available to deal with the usual morning stuff.

gd and i began the day watching the secrets, which i just realized i've seen twice before. i recalled the scene that i'd been uncomfortable seeing while sitting in a movie theatre with my mother (not as bad as i remembered), and i recalled the ending, but everything else was like a nice surprise seeing old friends :)

during a break (one of the main reasons i like seeing movies at home... i know, imma gettin' old and cranky) i managed to bend the shower curtain rails and it looks like i did a good job. i'd planned on putting them up, too, but i was too tired by the time we eventually got back from our errands so i'll try again on sunday.

we picked up mr smear, dropped his school bag off at home, then jumped on a bus to dizengoff center. we got most of the new lens prescription story taken care of (we just have to go back early next week), we managed to pick up an inoffensive purim costume he's excited about (a non-threatening knight's helm and a sword and shield), i got some cool anime stickers for my work computer, and we had a really good lunch from our favorite vegan food stall.

i napped on contact with our couch, then later got mr smear through a page of hebrew reading, spent a good chunk of the afternoon / evening doing not much (doomscrolling, watching random things on youtube, and purchasing a volume of american splendor), and now i've done all the dishes and posted this and we're about to say kiddush.

thursday

 the day started pretty well. on the way to dropping mr smear off at school i recounted a story about a bunch of my officer's course platoon laughing in the bathroom, and i'm praying that i wrote down what initially triggered that laughter and that i'm able to find it. [was it this? that can't have been it, surely?]

the work day was very relaxed, my boss and coworker returned from their trip and had lots of stories to share. my yemenite coworker unwittingly putting loads of carolina reaper hot sauce on his food right after i started calming down from my own intense experience with it.

a video chat with our community rep and gd, and offering to meet with the rest of the leadership and the offending parties. just offering set off my anxiety, and i'm now writing this after getting up in the middle of the night - an hour or more ago - and tossing and turning while imagining addressing them.

the CEO forgetting me when ordering sweets for our "happy hour" and feeling really bad about it.

my nostrils hurting - both of them - because i can't clean them properly while working on repairing the tear. my stomach doing a number on me all day.

dropping my gear off at home after work and walking to mr smear's best friend's for a sushi night, which was both social and delicious. eventually getting home with a very full belly and getting mr smear into bed around 10.30pm...

upgrade

 the looney tunes show episode 25, muh-muh-muh-murder, is literally jaw-droppingly shocking. and not even slightly funny. holy fuck, i was horrified, and not in the least because everything about it was completely inappropriate for an eight year old.

wtaf.

mr smear and i both simultaneously agreed that we're done with that series.

...

yesterday:

another work from home day, gd was (and still is) feeling terrible and needed me to handle some things. also, i started off the day (again) at the clinic, this time to see a doctor about the tear inside my nostril. the doctor wasn't particularly phased about it, though, and i've been using a cream which seems to be helping.

gd finished watching walk on water, and although i wasn't really paying attention i did see the ending; i totally didn't expect it to trigger a catch in my throat.

the work day wasn't hard, but it was a struggle nonetheless as i really didn't know what i was doing, nor supposed to be doing. having said that, i did learn quite a bit and established a good starting point for today's labor.

today:

another difficult night. they've been difficult for a long time.

today i returned to the office for the first time in two weeks. we got to put the protocol i established to the test, and so far it's looking pretty solid. i got really good support from my coworkers in that and the confusing task from yesterday, and i'm pretty sure i've plugged an important potential security hole.

my nose is still hurting, but less.

we have new office chairs! and they're good chairs. even though i've been at home for two weeks, sitting down on my new chair was a physical relief.

it was a pretty good day, but i (we) got hit with a shitty feeling just before dinner when i checked my messages and learned that our community in cape town is under attack from within, jews who are very angry with the leadership for not taking an anti-israel stance.

i can't not think of the jews during the holocaust who voluntarily collaborated with the nazis.

...

mr smear and i have been having some really good conversations the past couple of days. however things play out, i'm a lot more optimistic about how he's coping.

dethpicable / the hole

yesterday:

morning compassion for gd after hearing a comparison between daffy duck and her brother, then an afternoon go-fuck-yourself over homework, leaving us with a pretty deep sense of betrayal. the evening was kind of okay, though.

gd finishing mivtza savta, i'm very glad she enjoyed it!

a long workday being walked through a complicated process and formalizing a protocol to upgrade a blockchain node, seemingly successful.

a fun game night with vfmp, we discovered sudoku moyo on yucata while trying to install magic the gathering arena (i didn't know it was on mobile!)

today:

gd's alarm pulling me out of a nightmare in which i'd rescued some girl from a couple of guys who'd used some kind of drug that had made them zombie-like, and they chased me up a flight of stairs. when the alarm went off i'd just realized that my attempts to kick them down the stairs were utterly futile and i woke up with a deep sense of despair.

this morning we authorized mr smear's evaluation for attention issues.

this morning i gave our landlady a stern talking to when i realized she'd managed to misinterpret the plumber's very specific and clear explanation of the work he did last week and the need to do the bigger work. smh

it was a good morning until i discovered that the upgrade yesterday had broken something in monitoring, and it was really hard figuring out what because i've been spoiled by good observability tools from my previous employer.

gd watched zero motivation this morning, and i'm very pleased to report that she enjoyed that too :)

gd's still really struggling to breathe, and so i picked up mr smear, had a good chat with him, dropped him off at his tutor and went to the coffee shop to work over a cup of coffee for half an hour.

the only coughing fit i had today was at the coffee shop, surrounded by other people.

i picked mr smear up - he received good praise from his tutor - rushed him home, and eventually managed to figure out what the problem was. overall, it was a successful day, and mr smear was happy to do his math (prodigy) homework after learning that he didn't have to do additional hebrew after his lesson :P

discovering the hole in my nostril wall before bathtime. like, a proper hole. i need to go to the clinic tomorrow :(

gd upset about me "over-sharing". even if i disagree with her i get where she's coming from.

mr smear's in bed, and i've written this, and we're about to settle in and start watching walk on water.

clearer

 a bit clearer, at least, but still suffering coughing fits and frequently blocked sinuses.

this morning had some rough edges, but it was okay, and we discovered professor kliq (there are two accounts [1] and [2]).

around noon we took the bike and my blades and rode to the pump track, meeting cm and his kids there (i kept my distance). it was a loooong slog to get there, as mr smear was struggling more than usual, and about halfway back i realized that mr smear's bike was stuck in a high gear. brought it down from sixth to third, absolute gamechanger, but he was already exhausted.

we both enjoyed a really nice rest stop, sitting on the grass at park hayarkon listening to a busker playing along to relaxing songs.

we stopped off for ice lollies on the way home, then jumped in the bath when we arrived, then chilled for a while, then wrestled a bit of a dent in one of the couch cushions, then investigated dnd character creation, and then watched the the float episode of the looney tunes show.

holy crap, that was an amazing episode! mr smear was so cut up about daffy duck being so utterly repulsive and detestibly mean to porky pig, that it served as a perfect platform to tie in with all the lessons we've been trying to teach him over the course of the past week. that being good parents is making sure that he doesn't end up a daffy duck, and that we'll know we're doing well if he's got a good heart, and is capable of following his dreams and dealing with whatever life throws at him.

it was truly a huge relief being able to have a calm, comforting conversation like that. now for the bedtime battle.

off

 i took yesterday off. i wasn't planning on it, but i needed it. i'm still not used to taking sick days, even if i now officially have covid. having said that, gd and i both did RATs yesterday and hers came out negative.

*shrug*

yesterday:

the wake up was not good. mr smear messed around until i carried him out his room, then insisted on claiming that he didn't know how he got from his bed to the corridor, and neither of us believed him. maybe he was telling the truth. either way, not a good vibe to start the day.

at some point on wednesday one of our main water pipes developed a tiny hole, and we began our day with unexplained flooding around the washing machine. we assumed it was the washing machine, and resolved to take care of it as soon as we returned from dropping off mr smear and taking care of some stuff at the clinic. on the way out of the building there was a distinctly unpleasant smell in the stairwell.

about an hour later, as we arrived at the entrance to our building, we noticed the source of the bad smell - our building's sewerage tank had clogged up and was leaking. i then wondered if the cause of our flooding wasn't the washing machine per se, but rather that the pipes were backed up all the way down.

then gd opened the (literal) water closet for the first time since we moved in, and we found ourselves looking into an absolutely revolting portrait of landlords' neglect. panicking, i tried to put insulation tape over the hole using chopsticks so as not to scratch myself on the mildewed rust, but the pipe was completely inaccessible.

it would take another three hours for the plumber to arrive, and the hunt to figure out how to turn the water off at the mains was more complicated than it should have been.

i interpreted each and every syllable out of the plumber's mouth from the moment he set eyes on the closet as "ka-ching!". he needed an assistant to patch the hole for the weekend, and he was nervous about it. we were (and are) exceedingly grateful that he'd arrived in time for us not to be stuck without water for a whole weekend.

i was feeling much better physically than i had in a week, but i was still struggling very much with the runny nose and coughing.

as the plumber left, i rushed out to pick mr smear up from school. i happened to see our neighbors - the ones with the neurotic dogs who left our building a couple of months ago - wheeling a stroller ahead, and i didn't want to get close but was happy to be able to send them our congratulations :)

mr smear came running to me when i arrived, and unfortunately our joyful reunion was marred by the fact that his teeth accidentally met my shoulder and it really hurt him. otherwise, we had a pleasant walk home.

the afternoon, just like every afternoon this week, involved long, drawn-out discussions and arguments about mr smear's homework. once he gets himself over the "i don't wanna", he does just fine, but getting him over the "i don't wanna" is really hard.

today:

woke up still not good in the nose and throat and chest departments. mr smear's wakeup went much better. after dropping him off at school, i came back for gd and we headed to the clinic to see if there was a nurse on duty who could help her out - we were worried she'd developed bronchitis again.

the clinic took a long time, but it looks like gd's (relatively) okay and we hopped over to the pharmacy to pick up meds. that took a long time too.

we picked up a breakfast bagel and a sandwich along the way, then came home and settled in to watch some of mivtza savta, which i'm very glad that gd is enjoying so far. then we went to pick up mr smear, and came home for a very relaxed day. at least until homework time, where we repeated the now-daily dance, but there wasn't a lot to do and he eventually did it well.

the sun has set, and i'm about to do the dishes. i really hope that i'll be clearer tomorrow.

...

today i completed all the free-to-play levels in bloons adventure time. i took the opportunity to sync my phone with my copy on steam, and ended up writing a review. that led to me looking up how many hours i've played, and it turns out that after an entire month averaging 2.5 hours a day, i'm on about 75 hours. and this is my second time playing, because i got pretty far in 2018/2019 when i first discovered the game.

huh.

worse, or better?

 omg, i feel awful, but slightly less awful than when i passed out a few hours ago. and slightly less awful than the first half hour / hour after i woke up again. my sinuses, my nose, my throat and my chest are really messed up.

it's probably covid. i should go get a RAT tomorrow.

getting mr smear up and at 'em this morning was work, but slightly less than for school. gd and i continued our "homework" listening to wired for love, and she had a revelation similar to mine regarding its application to one's relationship with one's children. honestly, if ever there was going to be an official guide to parenting, i'd recommend this book being the one.

we all went to the hospital for mr smear's allergy test this morning, but i soon sent gd home because she was coughing incessently and uncontrollably. i was snotty, but not coughing, except for two occasions: the first coughing fit was exactly as the skin prick test started, and the second was while waiting in line for food.

so that was embarrassing.

we were there for almost three hours, and we were bored out of our minds. well over an hour waiting for our 9.40 appointment that we'd arrived on time for, the a five minute chat with the allergist, then a wait for the test, then the test itself plus fifteen minutes plus review, and then at least another hour waiting for one mom to finis her conversation with the doctor so we could get our two minute send-off.

and - and i cannot stress this enough - i was feeling like absolute dogshit.

on the way out mr smear decides he wants a laffa, so we head into the food court. as we're walking in, a mother is wheeling her clearly very sick kid out in a wheelchair, mr smear looks at him and gags loudly in an exaggerated way and at the top of his lungs goes "that kid! that kid!". i wanted to die. i rushed him inside to explain that that was really cruel, but it's still blowing my mind that i needed to explain that 🤯

i tried to go to the clinic on the way home to get authorization for - oh, yeah! so from the results it looks like mr smear might not be allergic to dairy any more! or dogs, or cats. having said that, gd made a good point that it was less than a year ago when he last had a reaction. i think i may have forgotten to mention that to the allergist...

... shit.

anyway, we tried to go to the clinic but the queue was ridiculous, and i was falling apart.

finally, we arrived home, and i declared that i was going to lie down for a bit, before taking mr smear to his therapy session. we had yet another argument about him doing his homework and chores, but it included a very constructive moment of us talking about and forgiving each other for the saturday/sunday blowouts and our responses to them.

things were fine when we left the apartment, but something triggered him into being angry again and i'm still not sure how things calmed down by the time we got on the bus.

i dropped him off, feeling a complete mess, then sat outside with a decaf coffee and updated my mom / listened to an interesting article about dune and seven pillars of wisdom.

i picked up mr smear, who'd drawn an intriguing picture of slenderman that looked like it might well be a portrayal of me during the tantrums.

we returned home, where what *should* have happened was me continuing to feel like shit while mr smear took care of his homework.

ha, ha, ha.

it was another difficult evening, though we did (thanks to gd's input, though she doesn't remember doing anything) finally manage to get through some things. and then it was dinner time, bath time, bed time, and i have to say that as the days go by i'm becoming more and more convinced that he does have some kind of attention issue, or perhaps is on the spectrum as a really high-functioning autistic.

...

the nose / chest thing is coming in waves. i'm so fucking tired.

bbq bailing

 last night was rough. today was rough. gd and i were both suffering from much worse coughs than we had been before, it's now been about two weeks of feeling sick and almost a week of that with a sore throat and speedrunning through the facial tissues.

it really sucked bailing on ze germans' barbeque, we were all looking forward to it :(

we did go vote today, though. i'm praying that we made the right choice, because it's really impossible to tell. and it's very hard to not be nervous about all the religious groups trying to wrest control of our city by any and every means.

managing mr smear was a full-time job today, although i guess that's not entirely true because i did manage to complete and publish the article i was working on. as the days go by, i'm becoming more and more convinced that he's... neurodivergent, i believe the kids call it these days.

i don't know how i managed to get him through a homework exercise that he clearly didn't want to do. nor how i managed to figure out the reason why he was confidently arguing with me about how many hours there are in a day and find a way to explain day vs daylight hours to him.

good grief.

i've been managing my bloons adventure time addiction better. and my emotions, too. i'm still feeling pretty dysfunctional, though, i've been having a really hard time doing All The Things that need to get done. and tomorrow's mr smear's bi-annual (twice-yearly) allergy update appointment...

the balancing act

things got worse before they got better. but who knows what tomorrow may bring?

yesterday:

the day began alright, although i was still sick and i'm still sick now. i'm praying i'll be feeling better / less icky by tomorrow because i really want to take my family to the election day barbeque with ze germans. i dropped mr smear off at school, and i managed to get some work done before picking him up from school.

i wasn't able to cancel gd's allergy test by phone - we didn't just have a problem with authorization, and we didn't just have a problem with her being unexpectedly sick, but we also had a problem with her forgetting not to take antihistamines for the week before the test - so i dragged mr smear along to the hospital to do it in person. the receptionist admitted that when she's alone she never answers the phones. it got a bit awkward. but not as awkward as a couple of hours later when she called me back from the morning and figured out who she was talking to.

mr smear was really hungry - it didn't occur to me to check his bag and see that he hadn't eaten his lunch - and we went past our favorite bakery where they made him up an excellent bagel, i grabbed a ciabatta and the two of us sat on a bench in the sun, enjoying them and a conversation about mindfulness.

for a couple of hours things were going alright, and then it was time for homework. i warned him beforehand, to give him time to prepare, but things immediately started going awry and then suddenly we found ourselves back in tantrum town.

it got really, really bad.

again.

i called the therapist, who was able to call back very quickly and we talked while there was an ongoing situation, with gd and i taking turns to go check in on him. it was madness, and i admit there were steps i took that i keenly regret.

"we should try not to pathologize his behavior" was unfortunately said after i'd made the observation that his behavior was demonic.

the therapist tried to assure as that his behavior wasn't extraordinary enough to warrant panicking, and suggested some possible mitigation steps, but i'm pretty sure an eight year-old throwing a full-on tantrum isn't normal, and those mitigation steps seemed mighty similar to what i'd been doing in the first place when all the shit started.

eventually things calmed down, and the remainder of the evening was... bearable. we put him to bed as usual, but when i wished him a good night it was with a heavy, heavy heart.

today:

today started off well again, although i was still sick and i suspect it might be getting worse. i know gd's was definitely worse today, and she was in a particularly bad way yesterday and saturday. i hope she doesn't have bronchitis again. hell, i hope i don't get it. i'm becoming pretty confident that this is covid.

no, we're not testing, because the protocols once you're tested are completely ridiculous.

anyway, the morning was mostly good even though mr smear was a bit upset when i dropped him off at school - he doesn't like how the world works, he just wants a dog - and i had a pretty productive workday until picking him up early from school to take him for an introductory session with a recommended hebrew teacher.

the plan was to pick him up fifteen minutes prior to the session, which took place about a five minute walk from the school. that seemed like a great plan, at least, until he took more than ten minutes to get to the gate.

*sigh*

we rushed across to the teacher, and then i went and picked up a coffee (good coffee, uncomfortable toilet and i needed to pee). i sat thinking about mindfulness and yanis varoufakis on neo-feudalism until the smoking outside started bothering me, then called my mom for a quick chat on my way to pick him up.

he seemed to have had a reasonably good time (she has a dog, that definitely helped), we came home, and things were calm until homework time.

DUN DUN DUNNNNNNN...

i tried to do things a bit differently than yesterday. there were some touch-and-go moments. i invested heavily in something that i've obviously been developing unwittingly: manipulation. and heavy compromise. and more manipulation. whatever it was that worked, the two of us managed to get through a bunch of questions, one of which he initially flat-out refused to answer, and i got him onto the prodigy math game for a lot longer than i told him he had to without any actual fighting whatsoever.

gd's impressed, i'm still in disbelief.

good dinner, good bathtime, good bedtime (we're reading harry potter and the prisoner of azkaban). post-bedtime has been a struggling with the runny nose and the coughing, but i've put together a good chunk of a first article on the tech i've been playing with and gotten this out, while listening to our neighbors struggling to deal with their little kid (it's almost midnight, holy shit) and pondering whether my own child has attention issues / some mild form of autism.

what a weird fucking week so far.

and tomorrow's municipal election day. i know who i'm voting for (the incumbent), but i'm not sure about the party (why are their parties involved?) and i'm worried that with our booked car and supply of vegan meat alternatives we might end up bailing due to illness :(

further down

 today was hard. firstly, i woke up with a sore throat, and while it was kind of alright for most of the day i'm already feeling like tomorrow morning's going to be more of the same. i wasn't feeling good, but gd was a mess.

secondly, mr smear threw the mother of all tantrums this morning because we didn't agree to him using the ipad while eating breakfast... and for context, he'd literally spent the entire morning up until that point (it may have been early afternoon already, i just don't remember) playing with LLMs and watching adventure time with us.

i'm relieved but surprised that the neighbors didn't call the police on us. holy shit. he lost his goddamned mind and it took a loooooong time and extreme levels of patience and tolerance before he calmed down.

he said some really awful things. like, really awful. at one point i found myself standing outside his door, [redacted].

today was hard. on the one hand, i feel like i've failed him in a big way. on the other, i feel like i pulled out some mighty fine parenting in spite of that.

once through that, the rest of the day was okay. i took him out on his bike and he had fun, the afternoon / evening was peaceful, bathtime / bedtime were both positive.

i don't know how i managed to stay even remotely "online" for an hour long chat with horseman, and i'm now in this weird space where i know i have a ton of things that need doing but not so much as an ounce of motivation to do anything, and i'm tired but wired and i don't feel like going to bed, and i don't feel like watching anything either (i did some doom-scrolling earlier, it definitely didn't contribute anything positive).

fuck.

down

i don't feel so good. i'm starting the think that i've been sick for more than a week, and that i've got whatever mr smear's been having. possibly gd too. and what we think he's been having might be covid... but according to the doctor it might also be streptococcus.

joy,

also, my nose hurts :/

yesterday:

a long day at work, and it started with an emotional rollercoaster of a phone call from mr smear's therapist. i was occasionally functional over the course of the rest of the day.

today:

a slow start to a day of rest. i did some filing, we activated gd's new bank card, and we sat down at our local vegan coffee shop for sandwiches and a pleasant chat with a swiss oleh. once we got home, the rest of the day was spent with mr smear on chatgpt (including a period of enforced hebrew which ultimately yielded positive results), i watched the rest of nausicaä of the valley of the wind, which is hard to watch but beautifully made, and i played quite a lot of bloons adventure time.

oh! and i was very frustrated for most of yesterday waiting for super meat boy forever to be free as promised, but eventually they dropped the price and i had a fun time getting through a couple of nasty levels this morning. and i played a bit of love at some point, too. good stuff.

the chop

tuesday:

another infuriating waste of time at the clinic on the way to work, improved somewhat by a breakfast bagel.

i got my hair cut on tuesday, gd was so upset she refused to let me leave yesterday morning without fixing it :P

but it was overall a pleasant experience.

yesterday:

i began my day with a mindblowing conversation: the end of the 90 day window for me purchasing my options from my previous employer is fast approaching. i messaged my previous boss - the one who was laid off during our second round - to see if he's purchased his yet. he purchased some of them, giving an interesting reason of FOMO, and i asked if he feels that their 2024 is off to a good start.

he proceeded to inform me that my boss (originally my team lead) and the company's star researcher both left right after me.

HOLY SHIT.

so the first takeaway is that i'm not going to purchase my options, and i'm going to feel confident that they're not going to do anything amazing. the second takeaway is that i left just in time. the third, that that's the second time in a row that i've left a team and it's immediately fallen apart. i know it's not causational, but it feels... weighty.

...

on the way to work, i managed to clear one of the two authorization hurdles at the clinic. then i had another breakfast bagel.

i had to skip lunch with the team because i was in an awful meeting with the school about mr smear, but apparently the lunch trip didn't go very well either. mr smear's struggling, in particular with hebrew language, which is taught by the decidedly incompetent teacher he despises.

it's really not fair. our alternatives are to either try to switch schools - that doesn't seem like a smart move right now - or get him up to speed in spite of them. and that means a tutor, which is more money we don't have, and less chance of getting gd into sewing classes which she's been begging for for ages.

aside from all that joy, mr smear and i had a good conversation which was followed by an absolute meltdown last night. in retrospect, i could easily have avoided it, but once it was on it was on. thank fuck this morning started off on a better note.

...

nystire sent me an update yesterday, after NINE LONG YEARS his wife / mother of his two israeli children finally got cleared for permanent residence! we're so pleased and relieved for them, it's nothing short of miraculous.

aches

 i'm still excited about finally publishing the article this morning! i'm also still very sore - or should i say i'm very sore again - from yesterday's pilates class.

mr smear was far too sick for school today, poor kid spent most of the day in bed :(

the workday was a bit of a bummer, i consulted with our devops specialist and ended up dragging him into a rabbithole that he ended up stuck in while i got moved to something else. falafel for lunch at tamir was pretty good. the workday ended with a bit of success on both ends, but i was suddenly so sore and hyper-aware of all of my individual muscles that it became a race to get home as soon as possible.

watching news - the fact that eylon levy has to explain so much of this stuff and it'll still fall on deaf ears is just beyond me - reading some more mathilda* to mr smear, passing out on the couch, getting up to shower, read a little bit more of john dies at the end to gd, and now getting ready for bed myself.

* apparently gd does the voices better than me

i'm excited to be getting a haircut tomorrow.

i ******* did it

i'm starting to write this just before 2.30am, so the morning's going to be painful, but ZOMG i finally managed to get my CDK project to deploy a static website with an API reverse proxy and i'm so freaking relieved / excited!

additionally, i just managed to send the next pages description to mr cat. even though they're very simple, i've been somewhat out of it for over a month, and it was a big deal just to hit the "send" button on anything, really...

yesterday evening was pleasant, i started watching nausicaä of the valley of the wind but just wasn't as into it, probably because of my general mood and still not feeling great.

this morning started off with a bang, an unpleasant fight that took so long to untangle and resolve that i had to jump straight to work.

*sigh*

the workday was pretty average, i guess? in a good way, i guess? i did share an idea of mine with my boss, and i wonder if that might (ever) have any impact...

i stayed late, and finally joined a pilates class. it wasn't as tough as i expected, but i also wasn't expecting it to be as much of a struggle to walk to the bus / from the bus home. also, in retrospect i probably should have showered there rather than hop in the bath when i got home, the yoga mat i used seemed a bit... damp :/

mr smear seemed to have a pretty good day, although he had a really bad cough. hopefully he'll be better tomorrow. his teacher indirectly reprimanded us for taking him to school, after his previous teacher reprimanded us for not taking him to school unless he had a fever. make up your freaking minds, people!

i'm very happy to hear the latest tom nash report saying that it looks like hamas is effectively done, and in spite of the speaker being a royal piece of garbage i hope that people hear netayahu's speech at the US jewish leaders conference.

unplayful

jesus fuck. mr smear's friend just left a short while ago, and we had to have a talk. i don't think he realized how mean/unfair his behavior was, even though he eventually did listen to us... parenting is hard, man. trying to raise a kid who can function in a society is just hard.

...

in the evening i had a quick chat with horseman - who very excitedly reported the first real success in the investment enterprise he's been working on - and then watched some of the looney tunes show over dinner (it's really good).

i crashed early last night, and i crashed hard. i woke up feeling a bit better, though still a bit stuffy, and spent most of the day reading scrapper's war-outbreak journal (he copied it into a doc for me to be able to add comments), playing bloons adventure time or napping. or running interference on my son's unwitting attempt to lose another friend.

oy.

all wet (again)

it's friday, i'm tired. my world is full of crazy things and people. i started a sinus infection last night, i strongly suspect i'm coming down with something. a cold? coronavirus? the flu?

one of those crazy people is my son, but i seem to be getting into a groove when it comes to handling him (or, he seems to be getting into a groove of being easier to handle). mostly.

work-wise, the week started off smoothy and i managed to get the "meat" of my task done in short order, but the rest of the week was consumed by writing and rewriting tests that continuously bumped up against bizarre brick walls. fastapi dependency caching: i see you. i don't understand you, but i see you.

monday:

skipping the clinic admin session because their ticket system was stuffed up. i was initially going to work from home, but then our neighbors started some construction and i bolted.

tuesday:

the second attempt at the clinic, and dealing with the unhelpful woman again:

"i can't just give out your family's details to anyone, do you know how many cases we have against us?"

and then she couldn't understand why i was angry after she made me coach her through the steps of identifying me and finding my family's records. good grief.

wednesday:

my first quarterly feedback session: very positive.

the bloody baron: it was not the easiest of days.

valentine's day - non-vegans ate the vegan offerings, and then i received a special gift pack from management to make up for it! and the only potential allergents were pecans and walnuts, which gd had tested out of on sunday... so i had something to take home to the wife ^_^

yesterday:

an uneventful pain clinic morning, except for the bit where we needed to convince the receptionist with the simpsons lips that what the doctor wrote down was what we wanted to book. good grief.

birthday lunch: people who piss you off live rent free in your head. people who behave like lunatics, though? i ended up walked away from an argument with a crazy soldier who wanted an apology for us taking his seat even though there'd been absolutely no indication that the seats were taken.

at least the frena was great.

a whole day lost to fastapi dependency caching shenanigans. then a fun-but-very-loud "happy hour" before coming home.

today:

dropping mr smear off at school, proudly remembering that electrical tape is called isolierband on my way to the hardware store, playing more - oh! have i mentioned my completely engrossing addiction to bloons adventure time? - bloons adventure time, a quick-ish shopping (i was dragging my feet and my body the whole way), picking up mr smear, heavy napping, and then watching whisper of the heart (perfect). then two rounds of overdue dishes. now...

who cares.

home safe

friday:

i picked up mr smear from school, and thought we go grab a bite. he wanted to ride his bike, but i was still recovering from thursday and told him i wasn't up for it - he decided he just wanted to go home. i wasn't going to force him to spend time with me, but that did sting a little.

i continued on to azrieli center, where i picked up an enormous potato from "teeras". i probably shouldn't have finished it, but i regret nothing.

i went back to the hostel for a couple of hours, then hopped on the "sababus" to go visit nystire. we had a nice catch-up, and i'm very impressed by how built up that little part of not-tel-aviv is. unfortunately, the weekend bus takes an hour each way and i was completely done by the time i got back to the hostel.

at which point i encountered my new neighbor - a very big, very disturbed man in the capsule next to me, who didn't give a shit that everyone around could hear him yelling into his phone after midnight. being fairly confident that i didn't want to get involved, and that he'd suspect me immediately if i asked the management to step in, i just did my best to ignore him and eventually fell asleep.

saturday:

i woke up early, and the first thing i noticed was that the bathroom had been turned upside down - or, at least, somebody had gotten angry with all the toilet paper. fortunately, there was another bathroom in which i could brush my teeth and fortunately i didn't need to use the toilets, but i high-tailed it outta there and walked home with my heavy backpack.

i'm still not clear on whether i've actually paid for the week, nothing's off my card yet but the hostel claims we're square.

weird.

anyway, i got home and woke gd up and we synced, it was a lot to sync about but we're in a good place. over the course of the day, we all went out for breakfast at our favorite (local) vegan coffee shop, and in the evening we ordered pizza that we all enjoyed (our usual source wasn't available, but pizza porto had two delicious vegan offerings and mr smear thoroughly enjoyed the broccoli and zucchini one).

yesterday:

a good start to the day, gd and i starting our "homework" together, then at 8.30 gd remembering that she had an allergy "challenge" at the hospital at 9am. then i got out the appointment slip and we realized it was actually at 8.30. we arrived at 9, and got sent off to get authorization, which needed special authorization so that took another half an hour or so. then we finally got to see an allergist, and she asked us where our challenge supplies were - we'd been expected to bring our own. so i rushed off to by fresh pecans, and then returned to find gd about to start chewing on some old ones they'd found in the fridge. then the lady administring the test made it clear that there was exactly 0% chance of gd getting to do a strawberry challenge as well, and that the pecan challenge would take until mid-afternoon.

so i went back home to work from there, so that i could easily pick mr smear up from school.

just prior to picking up mr smear, i discovered that i'd been working on the wrong thing all morning. i picked him up, but it took so long (between him dawdling and syncing with one of our friends along the way) that i was in a massive rush to prep for a meeting with my boss. then gd arrived, much earlier than expected, with a box of strawberries - the doctors are convinced there's no pecan or strawberry allergies! this is really, really big.

so we celebrated by eating the strawberries together, then i took off for work.

i worked late, but managed to make big progress. dinner was nice, but bathtime turned sour when mr smear and i had a misunderstanding and he went to bed in a bad mood.

gd and i finished watching freaks and geeks. we both loved the rewatch, it was awesome ^_^

...

this morning started off grumpy, but i managed a miraculous rescue with mr smear and i sent him off to school with good vibes. gd and i had some work to do to sort out our own feelings and miscommunications, but we eventually got through it. now that that's taken care of, along with some medical admin and posting this, it's time to resume homework, and go past the clinic on the way to work.

the weather's really nice today.

humble still-fast

if anyone ever feels like i'm overdue a nice, warm slice of humble pie, just remind me that i once took a shower in a public bathroom while a party was going on, and only realized once i was completely done that i'd forgotten my towel.

that was not a pleasant conclusion to an otherwise very pleasant shower.

i slept, although that's about as positively as i can put it. i woke up early, walked across to the fit house cafe to pick up a coffee. their schtick appears to be that those training have to keep running loops out and around the building, i'm guessing because the warehouse footprint is tiny. it's a lot of very serious, rather unfortunate-looking people running laps between the coffee shop patrons.

i sat in the hostel lobby with my coffee, putting some more work into my article on SPA hosting, then eventually went back to the capsule for an hour or two. listening to the wired for love audiobook and playing more bloons adventure time. i realize that my brain's skipped over some parts, and i think gd and i should try actively listening to it together as "homework".

eventually i got up, packed up and took a walk towards the school to pick up mr smear, after giving up on a few different places (sick patrons, no vegan options, and a packed supermarket full of the mentally differently-abled), i just sat down at a nice little coffee shop in spite of the lack of edible options.

i'm exhausted. but the weather's nice for the moment.

the birthday hum plus

 yesterday:

after sorting out a grocery shopping, and working more on an article i'm putting together, i bussed through to our apartment and gd came downstairs so that i could drop off my laundry and pick up shampoo. i hummed the birthday song tune loudly as i climbed the steps, it's definitely the weirdest way i've ever wished someone i love a happy birthday.

it was a funny sort of workday, i spent a good chunk of it completely puzzled and then slowly the puzzle pieces began falling into place. i had a very long chat with sailor at one point. i ended up leaving very late, though, because we were trying to put together a release and a bunch of things i'd touched went wrong for a variety of reasons. we were all a little smarter by the end of the evening, and i must admit that i learned quite a lot.

on the way back to the hostel, i synced with vfmp on his relationship, my relationship with gd, and everyone's relationship with his brother

then i had a sync with nystire while looking for food, which ended up being a mindful pea soup and cider in a cloud of cigarette smoke.

today:

i went to bed pretty late, but slept alright, having a weird dream in which i waited on a bench for hours before the sun set and then i woke up. then i hurt my neck a bit by playing more bloons adventure time than i should have. i did a grocery shopping for gd, but didn't have energy for much else so i put on the audiobook of stan tatkin - wired for love (sailor gifted me a copy after our conversation) and walked to work, picking up a suspicious coffee and later a suspicious banana muffin along the way.

so far, it's very, very interesting.

the work day would have been just fine, but after lunch my stomach started doing a thing at the same time as my brain just shut down. like, the coffee and the sugar i tried to treat myself with did nothing. i was basically vascillating between moving quickly to the bathrooms and passing out awkwardly at my desk, until eventually i just got up and left. i'd just started feeling safe enough to get on a bus, but not very safe, and i came back to the hostel to lie down for a while.

i suspect a part of my suspicious breakfast was to blame. but maybe it was lunch? who knows.

eventually, i felt well enough to go outside, and i had a long chat with my mother followed by an excellent pita za'atar before returning to my capsule, where i've been lying on my tummy and playing more bloons adventure time and feeling much better.

i had a really nice goodnight call with mr smear, it was very gratifying to see him light up when i told him i'd pick him up from school tomorrow ^_^

the hostel is crazy right now, packed with revellers and filled with loud music and accompanied by a surprising array of smells, and i almost feel awkward about going to take a shower with all these drunk people in and out of the bathrooms.

re-stabilize

 well, yesterday was a day. a very different day. i was still wired and weary, still feeling quite icky, but a bit less.

the work day started off strong, and i'm very excited to have figured out all the finicky cloudfront / s3 configurations i needed and am now very confidently writing up an article explaining all my learnings.

the officer in charge yesterday approved gd and i joining a zoom together with mr smear's therapist, and we ended up having a very positive session even if some of it was quite uncomfortable and difficult.

in the evening, she left the apartment for a few minutes so that i could go up and change out of my boots and coat (my coworkers were laughing at me for arriving all dressed up for the wrong weather yesterday, and after a particularly stormy and wet week it's not supposed to rain for the next few days), and then mr smear came with me and i took him to rainbow burger for a really nice meal.

we made gd a nice card for her birthday today, and picked up a couple of donuts. apparently that all went down well this morning.

by the time i got him home, i was pretty worn out, and i returned to my capsule. i showered, slept fitfully, woke up in the middle of the night for an argument with vfmp's brother who's all-in on the pro-palestinian propaganda, and then got up this morning to make arrangements for the day (including grocery shopping online for gd and agreeing to let me drop off laundry on my way to work), and after a little time spent working on the aforementioned article, i'm about ready to move.

gd and i are definitely in a good-ish place, but saying that from a hostel lobby feels somehow disingenuous. but hey, we're totally normative, right?

the capsule diet

i got in over 22K steps yesterday, on a dry bagel and miso soup. and i'm sitting writing this in the lobby of a capsule hotel. tomorrow is gd's birthday.

yesterday was not an ordinary day.

it was a very wet, very cold day.

it all started with another shitty wakeup (gd, not mr smear), which i managed to de-escalate. i put some chilled techno on, grabbed a coffee, and everything was fine for a few minutes. then gd came in raging about how i was deliberately playing music she can't stand in the morning.

wtf.

now... this is the point where i should have shrugged, turned off the music, and tried to move on with my morning. but the "deliberately" really got under my skin, and i went to argue. things got heated, she said some very ugly and untrue things which mr smear overheard. we "agreed to disagree", and i took mr smear to school.

half the walk to school was fine. the other half was him regurgitating the shit gd had said. seeing him off at the gate wasn't quite as pleasant as usual.

i got home, and gd reacted as if nothing had happened before disappearing for a while. then she came back, and we had a massive fight. for the sake of brevity, let's just say that neither of us believes that the other's narrative makes any sense.

we could have sullenly left it at that.

[redacted]

and she called the cops.

from that point on, everything that follows is accompanied by shock and anxiety and sadness. i'm still processing all those feelings right now...

they arrived, took our stories, tried to keep us away from each other and sharp objects (i don't think that was really necessary). then they put me in the back of a van and took me to the station. it felt like forever sitting on a chair in a freezing corridor waiting for them to finish talking to her, and then finally it was my turn. i gave my version of events, feeling very uncomfortable with how i was doing all the things one probably shouldn't be doing if their partner might be capable of playing dirty, like not lawyering up. after my polygraph experience so many years ago, i was very nervous about signing off on the statement before being sure to read and understand every single detail.

[redacted]

in the end, our versions of events matched and the detective informed me that gd had expressed regret for calling the cops, and they informed us that we have to be separated for five days - the minimum possible - and that all communication must be through a third party. they were very specific about not violating those terms, and about how much trouble we'd both be in if they hear from us again during the next two years. and that they might be calling me back for further questioning.

apparently, they find us very "normal" people. i'm honestly not sure what to do with that piece of information.

they let her go so that she could pick up mr smear, while they took me for processing (apparently they were supposed to process her, too, but let it go for the sake of picking mr smear up on time). i booked five days in a capsule hotel, and asked the mongoose and my mother to be third parties while informing my boss that i needed the day off.

i arrived at our apartment just as gd was bringing mr smear home, she waited outside while i went upstairs with him and packed a bag, which gave me an opportunity for a quick chat (i don't remember what he was telling me about, to be honest, but he was very enthusiastic about it) and to explain that none of this had anything to do with him.

and then i was off to find the capsule hotel, and then meet up with the mongoose for a coffee, purchasing a bagel on the way because although i wasn't hungry in the slightest, all i'd consumed until 3.30pm was a turkish coffee in the morning and a really shit coffee at the station and i was feeling faint.

exhausted, i returned to the capsule hotel to try and rest, but between the coffee and the anxiety and the general not-exactly-comfortableness of the capsule bed* i just lay there for a couple of hours feeling shit.

* i mean, it's not bad. but it's not exactly luxury, either.

it was dark by the time i walked out, thinking i'd get food or something along the way but not really feeling up to eating. the mongoose reported that he'd checked in on gd, and that she was stressing that i wasn't going to come back, after i'd spent the day carrying the feeling that she wanted a divorce but wanted to make me the one to ask for it. codependence for the win.

anyway, it feels like we're going to be fine. like, we both need to do some more work on ourselves, obviously, but fine.

while waiting for the mongoose to put his daughter to bed, i chatted with my mom, and wandered under a tree where a bird shat on me. on my phone, my hand holding the phone, on my jacket. in the ensuing panic to remove the bird turd, i managed to misplace my nice new umbrella.

*sigh*

fortunately, someone else on the avenue had misplaced theirs, and when the barista realized what i was frantically searching up and down for he shoved that one into my hands and sent me on my way. it's not in great condition, but it works. fine.

i joined the mongoose and his wife, who subsequently went out for a walk and got caught in a downpour. so i took my "new" umbrella and my galoshes and went to deliver her her own umbrella, and we caught up on the way back. they insisted on getting me something to eat, and miso soup was on the menu, so i did that. it was a good idea.

i eventually got back to the capsule hotel around midnight. i figured out a tooth-brushing protocol, and then a showering protocol. it was a bit complicated, but okay, and i have to admit that it's a much nicer shower experience than i'm used to.

i didn't sleep well, but i did sleep. now that i've churned this out, i'm ready to head to the office and grab my first coffee and try to be functional.

here goes.

weekend shift

 none of us wanted to go outside yesterday, it was miserably wet and cold. gd and mr smear weren't feeling great, either, it seems like they picked up some kind of tummy bug...

i spent the day alternating between napping, and working on the simple-regex-builder package. in the evening i felt it was ready to publish a v1, and then write it up and go to sleep. today, someone with a similar package got in touch with me and asked me if i might be interested in collaborating.

i just might :)

it was a bit of a struggle, but mr smear completed his "dear buggy" homework last night. not gonna lie, the "graffiti" dinosaur he shouldn't have added was really cool :P

this morning it was decided that mr smear wasn't well enough to go to school. and as usual, this turned out to be an incorrect assessment... but i digress. he had plenty of homework to do, and for most of the day he apparently did quite well.

for me it was a busy morning, dealing with another outbreak of mold, and a suspected ceiling leak, and a grocery shopping, and a pile of dishes, and something else i can't quite recall at the moment.

then i went to work, to resume the battle with the github fails. a couple of hours in, and a coworker and i ascertained that the damn things had been broken the whole time, and a relatively short while later i had everything up and running. the stuff i was deploying (surprisingly) mostly worked the first time, but now i'm in the thick of the cloudformation jungle and every issue i resolve is raising another one right behind it...

i came home in good spirits, tried to help mr smear with his homework and that triggered a very unpleasant and ugly tantrum on his part - at the same time, gd hadn't been feeling well and the expensive meal we ordered wasn't delivered - as in, the delivery guy marked it as delivered without delivering it - so it was all very dramatic for a while. then gd asked him to get out of the bath so i could get in, and he refused, and the two of us had a very serious and constructive conversation about my role as a parent taking precedence over being his friend; the evening went smoothly from there, but a nagging little part of me is wondering how much of it was staged just as an pretext for homework avoidance...

gd and i watched some more freaks and geeks, i finally published the hi-res pages that mr cat delivered two weeks ago... and played some more bloons adventure time... and i think i'm past ready to go to bed.

the day

 i finally got back to sleep an hour or two later, and felt completely broken when my alarm forced me to drag myself out of bed. gd put a plaster on my sore thumb, and it was very frustrating not being able to use my phone properly all day.

after dropping mr smear off at school, i sat down to work on the regex package and i've been working on it on and off the whole day. it's going well, i think. it's already feeling a lot more polished (what i have locally, not what's published).

gd and i bused to the mall, on the way getting splashed at the bus stop even when we were hiding behind it. we grabbed a coffee, then i purchased a pair of pants. it was only after i was done that gd decided that she needed stuff too, and by the time we eventually got to the cashier there was a line of infuriatingly slow people.

ugh.

from there we did a grocery shopping, which also took a lot longer than i've become used to, and then we picked up a small box and ribbon for mr smear's homework assigned by the teacher he detests. i gotta say, now that i've seen what the assignment is based on, and combined with our experiences with her over the past year and a half, i'm feeling pretty strongly that his teacher's an asshole. or, at the very least, that she has asperger's.

the book says to imagine the gift, and maybe draw it. not to bring a physical gift. FML.

anyway, we got home barely in time for me to go and pick up mr smear, who'd had quite a day - incidents in both his classes, kids put glue on his jacket in one class and another kid messed with him at the end of the other.

*sigh*

i passed out on the couch for a while, eventually becoming functional again.

in the afternoon, with some cajoling and a break in the middle, i managed to get mr smear to do his homework. he thought it would be cool to right a letter and send a(n imaginary) giftto buggy the clown pirate. i guess this is going to be interesting...

after bathtime we discovered that he's made himself afraid again, but this time it was 100% his own fault: he admitted to us that earlier, he'd muted the ipad and watched a scary thing on youtube that he knew we wouldn't have approved of.

fuck.

so we're back to a blanket ban on youtube, and no roblox without an adult present.

gd went to bed before we were able to finish watching episode 16 of freaks and geeks. i've spent the hours since watching things about and engaging with antisemites, working on the regex package, and sinking ever-deeper into the bloons adventure time hole. i started playing the who's lila? demo the other day, i really should get back to that. maybe i'll do that now before i crash.

the crack and boom

 it's the middle of the night, and as exhausted as i was when i went to bed i just haven't been able to sleep for a while now. we're in the middle of an incredibly intense* thunderstorm, and i'm very busy being grateful for each moment that we have a roof, windows, doors, running water and electricity.

* as in, mother-of-all-thunderstorms kind of intense

...

the plumber came in this morning, so far it looks like he's done a great job (for the landlords he looked at the leak, for us he sealed the bath taps and replaced the bathroom sink tap).

i woke up this morning feeling inspired - or being distracted - by an idea i had ages ago for a human-friendly regex builder, so i started the day putting together the simple-regex-builder and i've already got some great feedback on how uncomfortable the interface is. a big part of me sitting down at my computer right now is a few ideas i've been brewing on how to improve it.

some of the workday was successful, some of it frustrating. lots of github action fails.

it looks like mr smear had a good day at school. we definitely had a good evening.

the no-longer-so-tiny cut on my thumb from the other day has really, really been hurting. i hope it's not infected.

the rollercoaster

it's been a day. a very wet and emotionally rollercoastery day.

it started off with mr smear getting up late, but in a better mood. we actually had a pretty good morning.

i dropped him off, returned home, and helped gd get laundry to the cleaners in anticipation of the plumber coming in. he didn't come in today. maybe tomorrow.

we proceeded to the clinic, submitted the request we needed to, then moved on to the hospital. we got steered very wrong at first, and ended up being refused entry into the psych ward (which really isn't where we wanted to be in the first place). i peeked through the door in the window, it looks like a very sad place to be.

the directions we got were terrible, and there was precisely no signage whatsoever, but we eventually found the reception and submitted the other half of the request.

as we were walking out, the detective from yesterday called me and asked me to come in. i said goodbye to gd and walked to the light rail station, eventually arriving at the police station in pretty good time. only the princess i needed was in a different castle. i walked around looking for the entrance hinted at by the first sign i saw, then noticed a second sign making it clear that it was the wrong building, then noticed a third sign suggestion where i might find the right building.

but the building numbers are out of sequence, so no. 14 (the one i was looking for) isn't next to no. 12 (the one i was at), but rather behind no. 16 (the auto-dealer whose employees are clearly used to helping out confused non-visitors).

giving my statement to the detective wasn't unpleasant. it unfortunately took a long time, though, so i had to rush to get to my office when there aren't easy bus routes (or walking routes, i almost got lost along the way) and i was wearing my galoshes the entire time.

i eventually hopped on a bus, only to get stuck in traffic that seemed to be much slower than walking, only to get through said traffic quicker than if i'd walked. i then proceeded to be stopped by each and every remaining traffic light.

it was emotional.

i arrived five minutes late to the meeting, having foregone picking up a coffee along the way (because i'm not an idiot), only to discover that the meeting had been deferred.

...

the barrista cracked me up. there were three people ahead of me in the queue, he sorted them out, then me out, then said "watch their faces" and smiled and waved at the long queue that had formed behind me as he made his way to the bathroom 😂

the workday went pretty well, even though the meeting took much longer than planned and i fell asleep in my chair facing everyone else while my boss stood next to me. they all found that funnier than i did.

at lunch time i received a concerning message from mr smear's teacher, and after a back-and-forth i asked her to call me and we had a proper sync. it turns out mr smear's been lying to us consistently about doing his homework, and he's been really defiant with his old homeroom teacher. his current teacher was worried that he might have a learning disability, but after we talked further we're pretty sure he doesn't and that he just needs proper motivation. additionally, it was a relief hearing that socially he's managing himself quite well, when he isn't scaring his classmates with gory drawings...

speaking of which, he had a visit from a "play therapist" this afternoon, which apparently went well. it does, however, bother me a teensy bit that one of the games they played was a drawing competition, and the contest in particular was "who can draw the goriest picture". he was apparently very disappointed by the therapist's effort 🤦

...

on the way home, it was drizzling and dark and the bus rode straight past the stop. i chased after it, knocked on the door with my umbrella, and had a heated argument with the bus driver which apparently neither of us understood*. eventually he let me in, and when i asked him why he did stop he said he didn't see me, even though i was waving like mad. 

* we continued to barely understand each other even when i got on the bus, he has a strong accent and he speaks softly and quickly

this irritated the crap outta me, so i told him to give me his name or number so that i could report him.

"i don't have to give you anything."

so i took a photo of him, paid my fare, walked through to the middle of the bus and called my mom back to resume our conversation.

when we got to our stop, he refused to open the doors. there were a bunch of people stuck in the bus trying to get out, and there were a bunch of people outside the bus in the rain trying to get in, but he came up to me to take a picture of me. i'm still not sure what for, but i happily let him take a photo and then followed him to the front of the bus hoping to be able to get off and go home.

but when he opened the doors, something seemed odd and i registered that he was telling the story to the random man who'd just got on - then i registered that it wasn't a random man, it was a conductor. the conductor tried to make peace, i explained my side of the story, and he explained his, and i suddenly realized a) that he was upset about me taking a photo of him and b) that he was offended that i hadn't thanked him for doing me the favor of letting me on the bus and c) that he had apparently been worried that i was going to break the glass door by tapping on it.

along with the conductor's previous encouragement, i figured that none of this made any sense and that none of it was worth a fight, so i apologized, i thanked him for the favor (in spite of my vehement disagreement on that point) and i showed him my screen as i deleted the photo (it's not really deleted, but whatever). he calmed down, offered me his hand, i shook it and wished him a good evening, and left - only it would take a while for my nervous system to relax after all the excitement.

...

and then my mom asked me for some information, which wouldn't have bothered me but it included some confusing** context that involved one of the thugs from high school that threatened my life in grade 10. i guess i'm still traumatized from being threatened immediately after being elbowed so hard that my throat was too swollen to talk for days, and then chased around on rollerblades by a bunch of vehicles carrying gangsters wielding baseball bats (amongst other weapons) until i finally managed to lose them (and they knew where i lived, because they waited outside my apartment block for ages before eventually getting bored).

** and unnecessary. love you mom!

...

the remainder of the evening's been pretty cool. mr smear and i discussed All The Things, dinner and bathtime went well and there was no complaint about not reading because it was too late. gd and i've got three episodes left of freaks and geeks, so much of it is just soooo hard to watch, but so good!