Another day

 It doesn't get any easier. You don't get used to it. But in real time the adrenaline is doing its thing and I always arrive at the shelter first. A six-year-old boy has already asked me how it is that I arrive first and since then he has been trying to beat me, sometimes I let him win and he is happy.

At six this morning there was an alarm without the advance warning and yet I managed to arrive even though the alarm woke me up from my sleep.

Then I drove my car around the house for fifteen minutes, it had not moved for a week and a half and it was time. Fifteen minutes later the alarm went off again and I ran to the shelter.                                                        Then I took my shopping cart and went with my fears to buy a few things in the little shop here.

I managed to cook zucchini and peppers stuffed with meat and rice, Persian rice with onions, dill and coriander and even took a quick shower before the next alarm came.                                                                        Now I just need to calm down from the great anger I have towards one of the bloggers here.                         In one of her posts yesterday, she wrote that she hopes Israel runs out of weapons soon. This eighty-year-old woman sitting in her room in Yorkshire has managed to upset me quite a few times in the last two years with her lack of knowledge, her inability to generate empathy for anything related to the victims here, and her superficial and distorted opinions that she insists on expressing, but this time it's really extreme. She actually wishes me and all of us here to die soon. That's your true face, T. I hope your wish doesn't come true soon.

Life here

 This is another experience and challenge that life has given me. It's only been three days and it seems like much longer..

You have to be glued to your iPhone because that's where the alerts come from that missiles have been launched from Iran. These are very, very deadly and destructive missiles. Running to the shelter and waiting for the alarm, and the sound of explosions outside.

Several times a day and several times during the night. A kind of Russian roulette when I go to the small supermarket ten minutes away from home, and the shower is also a kind of gamble. No one wants to be caught by an alarm in the middle of a shower.                                                                                                                 I'm fine and will continue to update. Thank you to all the wonderful people who say a kind word and care. You are true friends.

The silence before what?

 I'm scared. It's coming in waves. It's been a few weeks or more, and every headline is even scarier. We're like puppets on a string, dependent on the decisions of people whose minds no one understands.

It could happen tonight, or any of the following nights, maybe we'll die, maybe we'll live, maybe our house will just be destroyed, maybe we'll just get injured, maybe we'll just sit scared in our supposedly safe places. Maybe nothing will happen.

It's impossible to describe to someone who hasn't experienced it what it's really like.

In the meantime, I cooked meatballs in a sauce with onions, garlic, red pepper, and green olives. I added a spoonful of chicken broth and black pepper, and it turned out very tasty.

I also made Persian rice with lots of fried onions. I don't eat that kind of thing, but it was a wonderful distraction and there will be someone here who will eat it.                                                                                              My son, the one who will eat this food, asked this morning if we shouldn't move to Cyprus, for example. For a moment it was very tempting, but I don't think I will move, despite everything, unless I too become like those old Ukrainians I see in the Facebook videos, who people come to rescue from their rural homes that were once the center of their world.                                                                                                     

Thoughts

 I'm really debating whether to write this post. It's been written in my head for a few days now, and I'm still trying to quiet it down. My not-so-simple life here takes place on several levels, I could be the nice grandma who describes everyday life like anywhere else in the world, because there is life like that here too, but there's the extra spice that you know, the danger of life, the fear and the great sadness about what's happening to people like us in the world.

I also don't want to write from a victim's position, we're not like that.                                                                       We are people that the world loves to hate, for some reason, and throughout history they have tried to make us disappear, and here we are, miraculously surviving.                                                                                      But that's not what's been bothering me for a long time, and it's become much stronger in recent days when I read some comments here in Blogland about the terrible massacre that happened in Australia.            I saw it right after the October 7th, during the terrible massacre here, people can't stay for a moment with the terrible things that happened, they immediately seek balance, as if they share in the grief but immediately say "yes but", "yes but Gaza", "yes but Netanyahu", there is not a single moment of true and honest identification with the terrible thing that happened to innocent people, always part of the blame is immediately placed on the victim as well.                                                                                                              And here, in my opinion, is the root of the hypocrisy. Deep within these people sits a small anti-Semite who has not developed enough, fortunately, but that repressed inner being does not give that person the ability to truly identify with the pain of the innocent victim.                                                                                              And it doesn't matter if you had a Jewish grandfather, if you lived in a Jewish neighborhood and they were nice to you, or if you were an educator in the past, if you still can't relate to a hate crime against Jews without trying to create a seemingly balanced equation, it says something about you, and to me it says something bad.                                                  These are my thoughts. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm right, maybe not every inability to identify with human pain is anti-Semitism, maybe it's just some kind of mental disability, I don't know anything.                                                                                                                                                                                             

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

Different types of dangers

 I discovered something strange. I'm more afraid of heavy rain and storms than rockets and missiles. Storm Byron is ending its short life here with us now. Greece, Cyprus and Israel have agreed on common names for storms. They start there and with us they are mainly public relations storms, lots of rain but not too bad, and I'm still scared.                                                                                                                                            A quick and superficial analysis of this phenomenon that I just did reveals to me that the adrenaline generated by the missile threat is the extra spice. An immediate life-threatening danger that requires immediate action doesn't allow much time for thought. Adrenaline wins.                                                   A long, heavy rain that continues for many hours and several days, raises many other thoughts and fears, but they continue for a long time, while I put another bucket over the couch to catch the drops falling from the ceiling.                                                                                                                                                 Of course the storm anxieties are a higher priority, but their duration is exhausting.

And I still sleep with my phone under my pillow and my comfortable shoes for a quick run out in the middle of the night with me every night. That's what happens when you get used to the dangers.

Guest from Singapore

 I need the wisdom of the crowd. What do you think? There is someone in Singapore who has been reading my blog for hours and hours, from the first posts and throughout the years that I have been writing my posts, which I think are mostly superficial, but improving my English has been my most important goal.                                                                                                                                                                                    This has been going on for several months, how do I know? The little flags on the right side of the blog tell me.

At first I was scared, who is so interested in me? During the war my irrational fears took over and I thought maybe the Iranians were looking for something here, it sounds stupid.

But I still wonder who this is and why he is doing this?

What do you think?

Far from here

Facebook sends me videos of people filming in Ukraine. I don't know why, but I click follow on every one of them because it interests me a lot. The videos are very up-to-date, it's happening right now.

Most of them are filmed by men who are going through villages and towns and rescuing people from their homes. Most of the people being rescued are adults and elderly, they leave the house with one or two bags, bags they packed before leaving the house that they won't be returning to. Most of them leave with one or two dogs and sometimes one or more cats, Ukrainians don't leave their animals behind, as much as they can.

Around them you see ruined houses, neighbors' houses that were burned down in shelling, and those who somehow survived are leaving now.                                                                                                                   Maybe I'm drawn to it because I know this place of fear. That feeling of having to act here and now and not having much room for other emotions besides the intense need to be focused on what's right to do here and now. I look at the faces of the old people leaving their homes with their bags and I think I recognize the same feeling.

It's quiet here now.

In the pictures you can see the beautiful and fragrant soaps that my granddaughter makes. It's not the subject of the post, but there's something wonderful about other good things we have here.