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Honey is Sweet

Taking alerts seriously - 2009-01-04

I'm grateful for: feeling a little more sane; finally making it to the new week; U.S. tax forms already filled in - I'm waiting on one set of figures and I can send them in. Yeaaa!!!

I'm listening to the booms, and the artillery, and sometimes automatic gunfire. It's kind of like a WWII movie, but not quite.

We've gotten all quite serious about running for cover when the colour red alerts come. Getting a sleeping S3 out of bed to the centre of the house hallway where we all collect is a bit of a challenge - he sleeps the heavy sleep of a child who uses his energy up during the day. I'm very impressed with how D3 and S2 automatically run to get him. Usually it would be TH, but sometimes they are closer, and they just go get him.

We grab pillows and a blanket for him, he's barely awake enough to understand what is going on, and it is pretty cold here. It's not at all cold like New England in winter, but there is no heat. The houses are built to stay cool, for the impossible summers. So, it's cold.

Then we all sit or stand crushed a bit together, counting booms, and beeps, until it is safe to move out. We also try to keep the dogs from killing each other, or rather, from killing the blind dog. The stress is starting to show in the dogs, and they are growling and snappish at each other. Not at people, never at any of us, but at each other. And the cats.

The booms are constant. Every few seconds there's another one, sometimes closer or further, louder or quieter. Some of them are ours and some of them are theirs and when we are in our 'safe' place in the middle of the house it's hard to tell.

There was a really tremendously big boom while I was sitting on the toilet (of course, isn't that always the way), and I couldn't tell if it was extraordinarily close or extraordinarily big. The ground leaped, and so did I. A little more excitement than one is looking for at moments like that.

The kids were guessing they'd found some ammo, so I guess it was one of ours and far away. Relatively far. It's six km to the Gaza fence from here, which is (for those who count in miles) about 3.5 miles. Many of the rockets they are sending at us fall further away from us than that.

I got a very nice phonecall from a woman who befriended us when we first made aliyah tonight. She wanted to tell us they had settled (finally) into a new house they'd started building a couple of years ago. And offered us yet another place of refuge. I would NEVER go stay with her for any extended time, she is really whacko about food and drinking water. No, really. She'll keep her kids from drinking if they run out of the specially approved bottled water she buys for them, despite the fact that the dangers of dehydration (here in the desert) are far, far worse than those of drinking a few glasses of tap water. She made her kids not drink for more than half a day once while I was visiting. Not good.

Besides, we couldn't abandon the goats.

There was an article posted in the Jerusalem Post, I guess it was yesterday, that was written from an interview with the completely insane woman BZ who lives here. She lies, oh, how she lies, and in the article she went so far as to call us 'fellow travelers,' us and the other Americans on the opposite end of the moshav. I understand that five people wrote talk back comments, but I haven't read them all yet. I wrote one (I was first, I think) and wasn't aware that others had done so. It's not that she made such a bad misrepresentation of us - although she said some pretty bad things about the moshav in general - but the reporter couldn't even come and TALK to any of us? While he was already here? I mean.

Shabbos was quiet, if you don't count the bombs. We did get a visit from the mother of three who came over when we made fondue. That was really pleasant, but I was so tired I didn't enjoy it as much as I might have. The M.S. is kicking my butt again. No surprize, but not fun either.

D3 is having a terrible time with her braces. Tomorrow TH gets on the phone (I really wish I could but I am simply not proficient enough either in Hebrew or in coping on the telephone), and finds us an orthodontist for an emergency appointment. If we have to drive her to Be'er Sheva or Ashkelon we will. What we will NOT do is subject her to that incompetent orthodontist trainee who put the braces in her mouth in the first place. Bad, bad, bad, bad. She'd have been better off leaving her teeth the way they were than going through this. Now it's too late, though, they've extracted two teeth on the bottom, and something has to be done so that she can eat.

AAaaarrrggghhhh!

The problems you have to deal with while being bombed. I mean, really.

TH and D3 and S2 and I watched The Honeymooners tonight, two episodes. I've had it for quite a while, more than a year, and never finished watching all of them. They are amazingly good still. I also finally finished that anthropologist's book. Phew! I'm glad I read it, but if I'd known what a slog it was going to be... well, anyway, I've started reading All The King's Men, which is an account by a member of the Royal Marines and published in 1919. I think I'm six pages in, and already sucked in. Should be a good antidote for all those anthropologists.

I desperately need my hair washed, and either I've been unable to cope with the cold, or we've been too busy with other vitally necessary things, and it is just disgusting. With taking D3 to an orthodontist tomorrow I don't know when it will get washed, and I am having fantasies of having it all shaved off again. I won't do it, it was so frustrating last time waiting for it to grow back, and it never got quite as long again. But, I can't help thinking...

I'm listening to David Kernan: In Praise of Women from A Little Night Music. Oh, yes, and the booms.

0 bleats so far

:: Yesterdays : Tomorrows ::

~~~Last Five Entries~~~
Hi and goodbye - 2010-10-15
I'll be moving on - 2010-10-10
Gold membership and stuff - 2010-10-10
Decisions, decisions - 2010-10-07
Days to go - 2010-10-06