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We woke up this morning at 05:00, but rather than to an alert, it was to see Phil and Debbie off. Eitan arrived to take them in his car, and a bit after 05:20 we climbed back into bed. They were originally scheduled to fly to Rome on the 10th and spend a few days there, and after much effort finally found a flight to Prague which is well worth seeing before returning to Canada in a few days. As I'm sure I've already noted, they got a very different "Israel experience" than what they originally planned. I woke up a couple of times through the early morning, finally crawling out of bed at 10:00. So far today has been quiet, and we'll start adjusting to our presently still very abnormal normal.
I don't think that the present quiet in the house needs being adjusted to, but it is a bit strange. We've had four people in the house for the past two weeks, with some days with Hila here as well. And though Eitan has his own apartment while Phil and Debbie were here he's been by us more than usual. So a Shabbat where I read the paper and catch up on numerous items (mostly concerning education) in my RSS reader, which was once very regular, now seems a bit extraordinary. So I guess that Iran is trying to ease me into our new/old routine. How? By sending a missile, of course. A couple of minutes ago, at 15:00, we had the first preliminary alert of the day. For the time being I'm sitting still, continuing to read - and this latest alert has passed without causing us to move.
As was to be expected, I dozed off while reading. Tzippi was semi-binging on a television series. I think I slept from close to the end of one and woke up to the end of the next. When I asked who did it she explained that it was already a different episode. But what woke me was an alert. All around us there were sirens for getting to safe rooms, and we don't know if it was a mistake that we didn't get one. Either way, we continued to sit in the living room, wondering if we should have acted differently.
And since then? Well, the television has been on throughout the evening, but we were involved in various tasks and weren't focused on the news. Numerous times we saw that there were alerts in the north, but for us it was quiet. I succeeded in catching up on quite a bit of reading, though because I focused primarily on educational stuff there are still parts of the Shabbat paper that I didn't get to. That, of course, should be the least of our worries.
And now for some suggested reading (sorry, without guests I have more time for this):
Ofer Ilani (HaAretz) - The Israel-U.S. War of Opportunity Against Iran Sets a Destructive Precedent (https://archive.li/5Jz5n)
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And while I'm at it, Tzippi sent me this from NBC News - In Gaza, Palestinians feel forgotten as Iran war captures attention and ceasefire progress slows. The sub-headline - "We used to live in palaces. Now we live in graves," one man living with his family in a cemetery in southern Gaza told NBC News as he tried to make food for his children - really is a bit strange. Weren't we told they were living in an open air prison? That "palaces" description is pretty strange, perhaps especially to someone like me who thinks that the prison description wasn't far from the truth.
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