Thank Gd, we are all still safe and sound.
The funerals are starting.....No one we know, yet still unspeakably sad. A incoming rocket siren sounded during a lone soldier's funeral at the military cemetery on Har Hertzl. The photos of those mourners flat on the ground are absolutely heartbreaking (enough so that I'm not putting one in here). Another military hero is a young man from our town, a young-20's married man whose funeral was yesterday. I work a few houses down from where his family is sitting shiva. There are no words....
Trying to get used to the "new normal", such as the fact that I now lock my car.....that we lock the door of our house.....that we ask who is outside before opening the door (do we think they actually say, "Hamas?" Or even knock?!).
Another part of the "new normal" is becoming accustomed to grocery shortages. According to some reports, there are not actually any food shortages, just breaks in the production and delivery chains. Arab workers are not allowed into Israel at the moment. The grocery store in the mercaz that I do almost all of my shopping at has a staff that's about 60% Arab (I get it if that word sounds weird to you, but that's the word used even by the people themselves). While the cashiers are all Israeli, the unloading of trucks and loading of shelves is mostly done by Arabs (how to know? They speak Arabic to each other ;)). The store has sent out messages that they are interviewing people and hiring them on-the-spot for open positions and that they are accepting volunteers. The yeshiva in our neighborhood sent 40 students over yesterday to help stock shelves and every day that goes by it becomes more normal for teens to head on up and help get food on the shelves. The store will actually accept kids ages 10 and up as long as they have a responsible person with them. Since kids have no school (some places have started up on Zoom again, but a lot haven't), this is not a bad way to spend part of the day.
The hardest thing to find has been milk. Aside from the distribution and shelving problems, there are issues with actually getting the cows milked. A number of dairies are in the south, in the areas that were attacked. I saw an online plea for people with experience milking cows to come to a dairy in the south for minimum three day shifts. The ad promised that there would be a significant army presence to protect the workers. In the meantime, "which supermarket has milk?" is one of the two most asked questions on my local WhatsApp groups (it switches off with "what do the soldiers need now and where can I bring my supplies/baked goods"). I stared at the almost-empty dairy section yesterday, took the last carton of soy milk and tried to decide if we were desperate enough to buy one of the few remaining containers of banana flavored milk (answer: no). Went to another store this morning: zip on the milk front (even banana flavor).
For now, Penina and Menashe have moved in with us. We are thankful that our wonderful new son-in-law is a very mellow guy because, gee, "happy one month anniversary--go move in with your in-laws and your two sisters-in-law" (poor guy).
I finally went for a run today. First time I've even stretched since this started. After consultation with the runner's group I'm part of, I felt that running on the circular street at the top of the hill/mountain we live on would be safe, as there are apartment buildings the entire way around, none of which are locked (i.e. I could duck into a stairwell [which is an official recommendation of the Homefront Command] if an incoming rocket siren went off) and that other people are pretty much always walking around there so I wouldn't feel alone/exposed/at risk. The last two times I ran last week, I did a 6K loop around our city and it was so much more interesting than just running around that one street, but it involves a half-kilometer stretch of open field and, nope, not doing that.
We're still working on making our little corner of the world a better place. The displaced family of ten from the south was very thankful for our dinner last night, and today we made cookies and muffins for local police officers:
And a final thought:
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