Fears

 By midnight I was already tired but I was debating whether to go to sleep. According to my calculations, which are not based on anything logical, only my feelings, an alarm was expected soon and I wanted to be ready. It didn't come and I went to sleep.

The phone alerted me almost every hour about alarms around me but not here.                                                           At 5:30 in the morning there was indeed an alert here. The missiles from Iran arrive only four minutes after the alarm, I had enough time to run to the shelter and meet the neighbors and the children who arrived asleep, carried in their parents' arms.                                                                                                          A missile from Lebanon arrives without warning, it lands and blows up everything in its vicinity. I was very surprised last week when one of these arrived, traveled 160 kilometers and exploded with a tremendous noise a kilometer from my house. It was precisely aimed at some strategic facility here in the area and hit it precisely.                                                                                                                                                                  How strange that I should be afraid to go to the hairdresser, the road is mountainous and narrow and there is nowhere to stop if there is an alarm. I have already made an appointment several times and cancelled because of fear, I made another appointment for Tuesday and I think it might be stupid to get injured or die because of hair dye. But there are things that are stronger than me sometimes.

                           I found a picture of my granddaughter a few years ago when I took her to the hairdresser before Purim. She wanted to dye her ends blue.                                                     

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.