My two friends and I dared to drive together to the shiva of a third friend’s mother, but it really felt like a daring deed – As trivial as this trip was, we were in such a state that we could barely keep from fighting about the directions.  We never know when the rocket will hit us or where, and everything is much more stressful than normal.  As I write now, I know I’m going to be interrupted to run down to the shelter.  We haven’t had a siren all day.  This time I’ve got to bring down some scissors to separate the water 6 pack so people can drink to calm down.  After all, Ezi is the only one functioning on the apartment board and it makes me feel just a bit responsible for all the old widows in our building (and they are the majority).  

This is the way Hammas is playing with us nowadays.  Rarely does someone get hurt, but everyone is shell-shocked, and we run around like headless chickens (and not even spring chickens).  ….

So there’s no rocket in our neighborhood yet, so I will continue.  It seems that most of the public underground parking garages are open and free, so when we arrived, there was no room, and after we waited for more than a quarter of an hour in the long line outside the closed gate, I went to speak to the guard and asked him to open the gate so in case there was an attack, we can at least be undergound.  He let us in, and we continued to argue about where to go, where to park, how to walk to the apartment building.  I was the worst of them because I just walked ahead through the park very fast (fast because rockets are not shot down if they’re going to fall in open areas and my friend’s apartment, next door to a park, was badly hit by the shrapnel of a rocket that fell into the park).  Anyway we go there all together and said the right things.  Only when I returned home did I see how dissheveled and demented I looked.

There was no rocket but the damage was done, and now I heard a boom right next to us (probably a kilometer away) that must have fallen in an open area.  That iron dome is really expensive and can’t be wasted.

Now that Israel has eliminated a few of the major players in Gaza, Iran will enter the fray and the warfare won’t be only psychological.