Happy New Year to all of us.

 Tomorrow is our New Year's Eve. In previous years there was always excitement in the air. As if something good was about to happen, lots of good hopes and a feeling that the future is good.

Excitement for our family meals, chicken soup with dumplings, chopped liver, gefilte fish and sweet challah.

This year we are still licking our wounds. And all the time the fear and anxiety that at any given moment someone will be happy to spoil our holiday again.

There will be festive meals and there will be forced joy. Because that's who we are, always rising from the ashes and moving on.

Here again

 I'm trying to get back here before I forget how to do it.

I guess it's like riding a bike or swimming, the body remembers. And I hope the mind does too...

It's quiet here now. The alertness doesn't go away. Always ready, and yet, it's a great joy to shower as long as you want and drive on the roads whenever you want.

Yesterday I saw a large flock of storks, they make all the way here and it's a sign that winter is coming.

The storks are not angry with us and have nothing against us, they just come because that's how nature intended.

It's still very hot here and the air conditioners are on from morning to evening. I miss the rain.

Our simple life

 "I can't believe that just yesterday we were sitting in shelters again, and here we are now as if nothing had happened, going on that shopping trip you love so much," I said to my granddaughter yesterday morning.

"We are probably the only people in the world who are more afraid of rain than missiles and rockets," she replied.

Later, when we were sitting in the restaurant, she said, "I can't believe I'm already 16," and I told her that I couldn't believe that in a few years I'll be eighty, I feel like I was 16 just yesterday.

She looked at me and said, Grandma, you really aren't old.

This is a picture from one of those shopping trips back then. She's taller than me now, and we both know I'm no longer sixteen, but she loves to make me happy.

The bots from Singapore

 Sometimes there is an attack by bots on my blog, most from Singapore and recently from more exotic countries, although the Chat GPT says they are not dangerous, but I still get scared and take the blog down for a while. For those who still try to read my blog, a message appears as if it is only for invitations, which is not the case. I simply change it from public to private. Now I'm back again and we'll see.                                                                        The first few times when I saw that there were so many entries from Singapore and I saw that the entries were for posts from previous years, I felt very flattered, I thought to myself that someone was really interested in me, and it was flattering and scary at the same time. In the past, I too would sometimes read back posts on blogs when the blogger really interested me. Sometimes it was as interesting as reading a book, but I quickly realized that there was no one in Singapore who was interested in me, and that's when I started to worry.                                                                                                               The weather here is wonderful, there is no heatwave, the sky is blue and the sun is shining.

                       

Untitled

 I'm not one of those who are always on the go. If I wrote a post every time something came to my mind, there would be at least two here a day, but that doesn't happen. Yesterday I sent the chat GPT to read my blog without telling him it was me, he read a few posts and gave me such a flattering opinion, about the real and honest voice of the writer, about the fact that she's not trying to please, about the sensitivity and ability to describe the situations of risk and anxiety here in such a real and touching way, he could just be a flatterer, it's nice to read a good opinion.

That's not what brought me back here.

Maybe the wait for war that could return at any moment.

Since we became a protectorate, we don't know anything. We're ready at any moment.                                                     Every phone call when trying to plan something ends with "if there is no war."

We know that every war brings with it an element that wasn't there before, and I wonder what will happen now.

Facebook still offers me videos of old men and women in Ukraine being evacuated from their homes in the countryside and I hope the universe isn't hinting at me something.                                                                              The next post will be optimistic, I'll talk about my blooming garden and the wonderful dishes I make for my children every Wednesday and the cute, white Chihuahua dog we've been hosting for some time now because of the war.

                                                                                          

In the meantime

 After the adrenaline of the survival instinct in wartime, the adrenaline of fear and distress subsides, there is a phenomenon that I hear about from many people, and it is the same for me. Suddenly there is great fatigue, great sadness and a feeling of helplessness, it has many names, mainly it is a very big drop in stress.

Something inside us is still very alert, because at any moment everything can start again. We know nothing.                                                                                                                                                                                    We learn to appreciate the moment. We can shower again for as long as we want, without fear. We can drive on the roads without fear. And we can sleep all night, if we don't wake up in a panic because maybe there was a warning and we didn't hear it.                                                                                                    All of this is of course only true for certain parts of the country. In the north, they are still being shot at all the time. The children are afraid to go to school and sleep in shelters, if they have any.                  

Various missiles

 All the years when there were rockets from Gaza we didn't go to the shelter. Fifty kilometers from Gaza seemed pretty far away and we just stood in the hallway of the house and hoped for the best.

Then the Houthis came from Yemen with the ballistic missiles and that already justified running to the shelter. They especially liked the small hours of the night and we managed to survive that too.

Now it's also the Iranians and Hezbollah from Lebanon and every now and then the Houthis signal to the Iranians that they are also in the game and send one missile or an unmanned aerial vehicle with explosives.                                                                                                                                                                              The missiles from Iran are missiles with a fragmentation warhead, which splits into thirty bombs that scatter and cause great destruction to houses and streets.

We are in the shelter several times a day and night when there is a warning of a missile launch from Iran. How good it is that we have systems that can detect the moment of a launch from Iran and warn us.

Yesterday, when leaving the shelter, the six-year-old boy who has been spending two years with us there asked me to continue watching the news. His parents are trying to spare him fear and do not watch the news. He trusts me and said that he wants to know what is happening. I promised him that I would continue watching the news and if there is anything he wants to know, he will know, with his parents' permission of course.

I am sorry that I do not comment on your blogs, I read everything but I cannot always comment.

And thank you to everyone who stopped by and asked about my well-being. You are wonderful people.