4 In The House, 1 In The Dorm - Day 3

Day 3

I awoke on an old mattress, in the living room, around 7 o'clock, children of all ages milling about, having their morning snacks and terrorizing one another.  It took me a few minutes to piece together where I was and what I was supposed to today.  Today is Tuesday.  Tuesday is my day off from work - the day I don't go into the office, usually spent running errands and trying to finish off old side projects that I still owe people.  The morning routine went smoothly, but the little ones weren't being super cooperative, so we only got out the door at 8:27.  Par for the course.

I made my way from the gan to a so-called minyan factory in nearby Bnei Brak, but much of the service I was peering and poking around the various rooms, hoping to recover a much-beloved siddur that is MIA as of last Friday.  I believe I went to morning minyan in that very place on Friday.  I had no luck with the siddur, and returned home slightly dejected.

The first thing I did at home was look at my phone to see if there were any urgent notifications.  I had a missed call and two Slack messages from my co-worker who had caused me frustration the other day.  He urgently needed my help sorting out a small mess he got himself into when trying to do a routine operation with git, the code versioning system we use.  I spent over an hour with him on the phone, connected remotely to his computer, alternately trying to calm him down, berating him for invoking git commands without understanding their full import, and encouraging him to invest real time in understanding the underlying assumptions and structure of the code versioning system.  In the end his code was restored in full, we had an actionable plan for preventing such blunders in the future, and he apologized for taking up so much of my time on my day off.

Then I spent another hour finishing off the blog post from the day before, and ending up wrestling with the iCloud Photos app for way too long while trying to transfer photos Avigail took at the party to my computer so I could feature them in the blog.  Binyamin called to say he had made himself an eye exam appointment for 1 pm, and would stop by the house beforehand.  I was glad that he was taking care of it, and sent a text to his class Rabbi to excuse him from school.  All of sudden, it was almost noon, and I had gotten zilch done so far.  Par for the course.

The afternoon was characterized by various members of the household going in and out of the house.  First it was Binyamin, who popped in before rushing out to make his appointment.  40 minute later he was back.  He volunteered to pick up the kids from gan, which they certainly found surprising.  After they settled in and began eating lunch, Chanania showed up, but left an hour or two later.  Avigail also came in at some point and then left shortly thereafter to attend a piano lesson and go see the middle school's end-of-the-year theater production.  

I was left attending to the two little ones throughout all of this, feeding them and goading them along to do whatever it is I thought they should be doing.  After they finished eating, which in itself took far longer than it ought to, since they couldn't stay seated between bites, I tried to just sit down at the computer and ignore them.  This strategy oftentimes works, as the children take out a game or make some other form of entertainment for themselves.  But today, perhaps due to the fact that their brackets - immediately younger and older siblings - being away, they wanted nothing more than to sit on my lap, or better yet, cling to my back or climb on my head.  This was not conducive to writing code or debugging UI glitches.  I tried offering them to go to the park, but there really wasn't anyone around to take them there.  Since Tuesday was officially my day off, and since my parents were on afternoon duty the rest of the week, I told them they weren't needed today, and they'd taken the opportunity to enjoy some of the touristy parts of Tel Aviv.  So I couldn't invoke them for help, either.  In the end, I took the kids to the park myself.  

When we got to the park, the kids disparagingly remarked that there was nobody to play with, by which they meant they didn't have any friends there (at least a dozen kids were playing on the playground equipment).  After trying to convince them to play with each other for a few minutes, I gave up and invited them to the nearby outdoor gym.  There I invented fun challenges for them, using each other as weights (I had to help Elisheva lift Noam).  As soon as we had made the rounds on all the machines, Binyamin showed up.  He was heading back to yeshiva, and had just come to say goodbye before leaving.  I gave him a hug and bid him well.  We'd been in the park for only about half an hour, but I was running out of ideas and the kids were already losing interest, so I decided to head back home.

Avigail was home, briefly, which provided a distraction for Elisheva while I gave Noam a long overdue haircut.  After that I leisurely fed the kids and eased them into bed.  Chanania was anxious to gather props for a school play he was participating in, and since I had just received a text from my parents saying they were back from their outing, I sent him over there to try to nab a pair of extra reading glasses from his grandfather (he had been cast as an old man in the play).  After he left, a woman called saying she could send a pair of glasses without lenses with her son to school in the morning (apparently Michal had sent a note on the community WhatsApp group for women requesting help with the props).

I took care of a few more things around the house, and then planned to go over to my parents myself.  Just before I left the house, I got a Skype call from Amiel.  I told him I'd call him back from the other apartment.  When I arrived there, I found Chanania and my father on the patio, constructing a bamboo cane to embellish the character.  I told them that the reading glasses were no longer needed, and then went off to find some of my mom's scrumptious cookies.  The cookies were residing in a brand new glass cookie jar, which had been inaugurated only the day before.  I grabbed the lid to open it, but the jar came with it.  Before I had a chance to put it down, the lid released its hold and the jar shattered on the countertop.  I felt terrible, and promptly cleaned up all the broken glass, carefully brushing off each cookie from shards before setting it aside.  They were delicious, indeed.

I then placed the cookies in a plastic hummus container.  Later, when I was leaving, I searched everywhere and couldn't find the container with the cookies.  Finally I looked back in the cupboard with the empty containers, and there it was - I'd replaced the container to its original place, after filling it up.  My dad remarked that I seem to be short on sleep.  I laughed and said, "You have no idea!"

I returned the Skype call.  Amiel (and his mother) needed help tuning the violin.  Again.  After making some general suggestion which were not well received by the people on the end with the violin, Amiel concluded that they just need to follow through with the plan I voiced before they'd left - to bring it to any music store and ask someone there to do them the favor of tuning it. 

Amiel with his pesky violin

The call didn't last very long, and I opened my computer and began to work on a project from last year that isn't quite finished yet, working on adding glowing arrows to the app in order to hint to users to move an animated smile with their finger.  Chanania went home, and us adults were having a screen party -

I was on my laptop, my mom on her iPad and my dad on his laptop.  The room was silent, but for the clicking of the keys on the keyboard.  Around midnight I finished the glowing arrows and said goodnight to my folks. 

Back home, I was very sleepy, but after brushing my teeth I perked up a bit, and felt the need to stick to my guns and send off the blog post.  I sat down, added two paragraphs to what I'd started in the morning, and succumbed to my exhaustion.