Yesterday was the last time Nadia visited her Kindergarten. Solomia decided to give her a short break before our little (not so little now!) girl goes to school.
Morning
Coincidentally, sadly, she’s got some virus or something. Yesterday, in the morning, she threw up, right when we were leaving home to Kindergarten, I left to the neighbour’s empty apartment (where the farm is), to take Hnat’s bike.
And he started yelling me something, I came back home, and here they were, both in front of the door. He’s outside, she’s inside. Nadia threw up, but luckily she was (almost) clean, so all I needed is to clean the floor, change her T-shirt, and we were good to go.
Midday
When I was leaving my home half past noon, at that very moment Air Raid Alert happened. So they, all the kids, were in the shelter. It’s Mig, so theoretically, no threat for us (the kids are ought to hide, yet we grown ups here in Lviv, we mostly ignore it).
Migs bear Kinzhals, which can fall on Lviv within minutes, but practically it never happened till today. Plus they (the anti-air defence guys) write about missiles launches, so usually those threats are preventive.
Exactly by the time I arrived there, the air raid alert was cancelled. And we had this super-loud siren just above our heads. Which made us unable to talk, me and Nadia’s assistant.
That was it, her last day in the kindergarten. I took her clothes. And we headed home.
Notifications
Today, I was walking with Hnat to the Kdg, and I realised that I need to change my automation shortcut. Previously, it had three options, asking who’s in the Kdg, Hnat, Nadia, or both. If Nadia or both, auto-timer till 12:15 and 12:30 was triggered, so I could get prepared at 12:15 and leave home by 12:30, to get her before 13:00. Also, a special message was formed. Like ‘{Hnat,Nadia,Kids} {is,are} in the Kdg’ which I send to our Kids group in Element (Matrix).
Now, there are no options left, only Hnat there is. It feels a bit lonely, to always walk only the two of us. We loved walking with Nadia. Now, apparently, I’ll walk him to the Kdg, and Solomia would walk Nadia to her new school, as they’re in different parts of the town. Or, vice-versa, sometimes I may walk her to her school, if Solomia’s pressed on time.
Arriving home, approaching midday, there’s another set of reminders I faced. I have this event ‘Walk Nadia home,’ which is planned for 12:30 … 13:30, and it fires notifications every 15 minutes, starting one hour prior to the event. So I’d be calibrating my work. They aren’t very invasive, by the way. Just a technical moment of interrupting every 15 minutes, so I have a set of 3 sessions, plus one session to get ready, from 12:15 till 12:30. The 12:15 and 12:30 notifications are reduntant, since there are these two timers. Yet, I kept them on, just because I’m getting pinged at my wrist by them, plus to cover the edge cases. E.g. I wasn’t walking kids in the morning, and hence didn’t fire the automation. Or I could forget firing it. Or I just want to be really distracted by both, timers increase the warning, and that’s a good thing in here.
Middays
Now, there’s no such thing as a forced midday break to get the girl back home. Which was not always a pleasure — ‘I have just started doing something!’ — but still, is a pleasure to do. I like walking with her. She loves knowing her route, and so we engage in the same routine walk, with visiting swings on our way home. She loves swinging a little bit. (Sometimes for longer, up to an hour!) Most times I talk with my imaginary friends via the Monoolooog project (async voice communication platform we develop). I hope it’s a good thing for her, since it’s super difficult to talk to her. She doesn’t understand most of the words, she doesn’t listen, and I cannot push her to listen, and be the guy who cannot stop talking when he’s not listened. Talking to my phone creates this illusion someone is actually listening to me, and so I’m talking about different things.
I’d like to swap from imaginary friends to kind of public podcasts some day later. Maybe. I’m not sure yet, I’ll see how it’ll go.
There’s this feeling of life-changing event. I hope this school would be as good as we expect (and hope against hope) it to be.