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This will probably be a short report, and I doubt that anyone will complain about that. In many ways it was an almost totally regular day, though that doesn't mean that we weren't occasionally reminded that "regular" also includes war.
We slept through the night and we woke up to quiet. We were even getting used to maybe having a quiet day. "Regular", however, doesn't mean alert-free. We had a preliminary alert at 10:00. Strangely, we heard distant sirens before our phones sounded the alert. Since the sirens weren't for us we stayed put ... and then after a few minutes, as I was about to go outside to deal with a few tasks, "our" siren sounded. We spent about ten minutes in our safe room, and then went on with our day. Though I'm working on writing something for my blog, focus is proving to be more difficult than I expected. So rather than writing I've been digitizing cassette tapes for the archives. It's the sort of job that doesn't demand much focus beyond knowing when to take one tape out and start another. I also had a small bit of college-related work, but that was easily dealt with.
And then in the mid-afternoon we drove to Ashdod for grocery shopping. Until then it had still been quiet by us, but I had the television on while Tzippi was napping and I was reading, and I learned that though it was quiet by us the north, and especially Kiryat Shmona, had been shelled throughout the day. We had no reason not to get in the car and drive the approximately twenty minutes to where we wanted to stock up.I had a substantial sum on my phone - holiday presents from the college - and I've never figured out how to move them to Tzippi's phone, so I was a necessary part of this outing. Of course Tzippi was happy to have me with her. We were alert-free the entire time (altogether about a two hour outing) but it's not the sort of thing she would have liked to do alone.
For obvious reasons she also doesn't want to drive alone. Ordinarily Sunday and Monday evenings are orchestra rehearsal days - Sunday in the Tel Aviv area (to which she drives alone), and Monday in Gedera close to us (with two others from Hatzor). The Tel Aviv area organizer didn't want to cancel, but in the end apparently only nine people showed up. Tzippi stayed home (as she had last week as well). The Gedera orchestra considered rehearsing in the Hatzor chadar ochel (as it occasionally does). Since there are three orchestra members from Hatzor that would have made it easy for them, but others, in Gedera and other not very distant communities, didn't want to make the trip, and that rehearsal was also cancelled for the second week in a row.
I'm not complaining that Trump has apparently changed his ultimatum to an expectation of negotiations, giving Iran five days to see if something (I really don't have a different word for that very vague entity) develops. The 48 hour ultimatum would have ended at 02:00 or time tonight, and I really wasn't looking forward to getting awakened then by sirens when Iran would start retaliating. Of course Trump has succeeded in putting himself in a very problematic position in which it's close to impossible for him to actually win. But since losing face is probably a bigger problem for him than more death and destruction I'm far from convinced that he, and with him many more people, are going to get out of this. Bobby Ghosh again explains this well:
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It seems that Netanyahu is also rearranging history in order to blame others for getting him into what is presently far from the victory that until now he's been boasting about. Now he's telling us that the Mossad didn't give him accurate information. Usually this sort of claim comes with a conspiracy theory. It's not only that the information wasn't accurate, but that it was purposefully inaccurate. He can still teach Trump a thing or two.
Tzippi is on her way to the shower and the television is reporting on alerts south of Haifa and north of Tel Aviv. The map shows numerous areas possibly affected. This is usually the case until the various interception systems determine precisely where the missile (sometimes missiles) is headed, but it's also because Iran has been launching cluster missiles that explode into numerous smaller missiles that then cover a larger area. About an hour ago there was a report of a missile launched toward Eilat, but other than that it's been what we here call quiet.
It's now 01:10 and I just had a quick shower. As soon as I started soaping up Tzippi told me that we had a preliminary alert on our phones. A very short time after that we heard sirens (even in the shower) though still not by us. Once I was out of the shower and dry I turned the television back on. The map shows our area, but mostly south of us, and we haven't gotten "our" siren. We have heard a number of booms not far from us. I'm hopeful that in a couple of minutes we'll have an all clear and I can turn off the television and sign off here as well. It would have been nice to get to bed without this reminder that our normal is still very far from normal, even if we've adjusted to it.
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