Three in a Row....

For the past three weeks on Thursday night, as it's time to deliver the chesed food, we've had either pre-alerts or actual sirens. Last night was no different. Except it was worse. 

Ilana left to take the food with her friend Fraidy (who arrived last night to stay with us until her flight back to NY on Sunday. Or maybe to move in for a good long while. Time and El Al will tell). They had three different drop-off points and hadn't been gone long when....pre-alert. Which turned into a siren when Fraidy was dropping off cookies. She went in to the "cookie lady's mamad" (which I did once as well, but can't seem to find if I wrote a blog post about it). 

In the end, we had three sirens in a ROW (like not even an "all clear" before the next pre-alert and siren came). Even on October 7 we did not have three is a row. Thank Gd Ilana and Fraidy made it back as the third siren was going off. Talk about stressful....

Thankfully, after that we had a quiet night with no more sirens here (the person who made the meme below had one more, though):

Was at the fruit store in the mercaz this morning when another pre-alert came through. As usual, I jumped and "eek"-ed while none of the other people (five men) did much of anything. Made it through checkout (because we needed that melon and those beets! Shabbat does not take a break!) and then hung around outside the grocery store to see what would happen.

WOOOOOOOOO. Okay, follow the crowds into the store, to the back, downstairs and into their giant safe room. Saw a few people I know so that passed the time until the all-clear.

Davening for a Shabbat of safety and peace for Israel and the world.

Running During Wartime (Part 2)

 

Thankfully, despite a fair bit of concern (and not just by me!), we, B''H, had a pretty mellow night with two sirens back-to-back (so we were already in the mamad and just stayed there).

The BOOMS have been much louder and more intense. It has been hypothesized that the incoming missiles are being shot down closer to earth to prevent the spread of shrapnel ("shrapnel" here meaning giant hunks of metal and not tiny shards, as my brain thinks of the word).

Below are videos that people sent to our local news site (as the saying goes, don't go out and take vidoes during sirens. There will always be someone more stupid doing it):

Warning that you will hear sirens in the video

Got up in the morning and went for a run. 4/5 of the way through my run, a pre-alert went off. Thanks to my background brain noise of pretty much always thinking of where I would go if an azaka went off, I (fairly) calmly reached for my phone and pulled up the code for an apartment building I was near (see, being a nice person and passing along back issues of Mishpacha magazine paid off and I knew the code!). 2 minutes in and still quiet. I ran to the mercaz (MUCH faster than the rest of my run had been). And then needed to decide if I should try to make it down the main street and get home (but those are all private houses so nowhere to pop into if the siren went off). Decided to hang around the mercaz. 

Stopped my run tracker and stood near the grocery store that has a mamad in the back. Still nothing, 3 minutes in (most sirens start between 4-10 minutes after the pre-alert). Had the great idea that I should do some grocery shopping so got the milk, yogurt, etc that we were low on. By the time I was done with that, hurrah--although no offical "all clear" it seemed quite clear that nothing was happening in our neck of the woods. As I was walking home we got the all clear. 

Thanks, CJP Boston, for the gifts!

 

Imagine my surprise to read the Enlish update from our city and find that Boston's own CJP donated portable bomb shelters! How tremendously sad that we need them....

Two shelters (not from Boston but still greatly appreciated) are now at either end of the 3 km shortcut road that goes from our part of the city to the older part of the city (ie, from where I live to where I work). Definitely made my stress level go down to see those; while being in one wouldn't be my first choice if missiles were incoming (wrapped in bubble wrap and in the mamad of my own home wins), it's a LOT better than lying face down by the side of the road with my hands over my head.

The shelters are concrete one (small) room buildings painted yellow. These have doors, unlike the usual shelters that dot the highways of Israel, especially in the southern part. After October 7, Israel learned that we can't just protect from missiles (Hersh Goldberg-Polin was in such a doorless shelter when was injured and taken hostage) and that shelters must have doors as well.

I wonder how dark it would be to be inside one over Shabbat? I assume the paint is phosphorescent and will have a little glow-in-the-dark action to it, but wonder how bright it would be (not very is my guess)?

As the saying goes, "any port in a storm".....

Running During Wartime

 Took me a while to feel comfortable running and figuring out where to run, as my usual start/end point has 1/2 km of....nothing but open space. But I've been back fairly regularly to running....something. My body is struggling to run and 5 km feels like 15.  At least it makes me feel better to know that pretty much everybody feels this way and whenever I speak with a friend about exercising we all lament how hard it was to work up to whatever level we had come to and how easy it was to lose with two weeks of wartime eating and lack of motion....

And then yesterday I had a run that just made me laugh. I was at the top of our part of the city, which is a circle and, as I've mentioned in other wartime running posts, all of the buildings are unlocked, so I can duck into a stairwell if there's a siren (not as good as a real mamad but better than being outside.

As I started my run tracker, it told me "weak GPS signal". I started anyway and then got these for a 1.5 km run:

According to my run tracker, I ran 10 km (not 1.5!) and did it all with a pace of 1 minute and 12 seconds per kilometer (5.5 minutes faster per km than my normal pace!)

This was the best: If you look in the middle, you'll see that I ran from 1.5 km to 5 km in 0 minutes and 0 seconds. I'm faster than Usain Bolt!!

So there really are some benefits to having lots of Air Force planes above, I guess!

Pre-Alert Update

First off, I feel much better after speaking with my sister and aunt who both told me my response to pre-alerts might be a genetic "Shapiro Woman" kind of thing. As a kid, when I would walk into the kitchen and my mother would jump and yell "ooh!" I'd roll my eyes and tell myself I wouldn't be like that when I grew up. Sigh. Nice to know that I have company with the other women in the family....

Second, watching more funny videos has definitely helped. At the least, I'm not alone. This video made me laugh: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DVyH3gbDBXZ/?igsh=MTViNmRwenVuazhmeg==. Pretending to be the Homefront Command, Hila Ben Zaken says, "We should have a sound that they fear more than the incoming missile"

And, lastly, I did this emotional release technique from my Mom, who certainly did not invent tapping, but I love that she wrote it out so simply (and even demonstrated it at my family's "once in a lifetime" family talent show):

Overall, I am, the thankfully, jumping less when I hear the pre-alerts and that's great since we had 3 or 4 of them today.

Best Pre-Alert Video I've Found

In this Instagram video you can not only hear the sound of the pre-warning (in case you're REALLY curious), but you can see someone become friends with the sound! Inspirational!! (The title means, "When You're Slowly Losing It")

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DVVhuBODFrV/?igsh=MXhnbGxtbHZzb3Y4Zg==

We had a nice Shabbat. 3 pre-alerts (one of which was just as I was about the get in the shower 10 minutes before candle- lighting. It was an impressively-fast shower!). two pre-alerts turned into sirens. SO thankful for our mamad when one siren was at 11:30 at night (although I'm *more* thankful at 3 in the morning).

Shabbat Food (but not for us)

 I usually bake 8-9 dozen cookies on Thursday, most of which go to soldiers, with some for families experiencing a medical crisis.

This week we had the usual cookies with more for other soldiers along with a tray of chicken lo mein and one of quinoa brown rice pilaf with lentils (Israel has one of the highest number of vegans in the world so it's safe to assume that there will be some vegan soldiers among the group that gets this food)

We had a pre-alert while Ilana and I were out delivering (ugh) but, thankfully, it didn't turn into a siren and we were able to drop and get home safely.

Shabbat Shalom!