Under Fire, part 17

Yeah, it was: Long day, that is. The sirens start around 10:00 and by 20:00 we have counted 12 instances. Some come clumped so closely together that we get one foot out of the meimad and then have to go back inside. Lunch, started at the table in a reasonably civilized fashion, ends up a picnic consumed while squatting on the floor in the shelter. Karmiel takes more strikes, including a direct hit on a house. The last barrage sounds like six (or is it seven?) strikes.

This is day 15.

I'm tired of being inside. I'm tired of not being able to focus on my work. I'm tired of being tired. So yesterday I take decisive action and invite a friend, also stuck at home, to hang out with me today. Shortly after noon, in between sirens, I jump into my car and drive the five minutes to her apartment. The aren't many of us on the road, and we are all driving very fast, trying to get to our destinations before that fateful ketusha. I honk as I pull up to her apartment building, and she runs from the relative safety of her entrance-way. I'm shifting before she even has the car door closed.

Safely home, with the doors and windows shut and the AC blasting, the sirens become a ghostly wailing in the background. My friend, helping me get a handle on several years' worth of messy office filing, pauses and cocks her head. "Siren?" I stop rustling papers and listen.

As the day progresses, we plow through masses of paper. I throw out four large garbage bags of, well... garbage: notes from long-forgotten meetings; ideas scribbled in margins; presentations so old that they are on transparencies. All find their way into the discard heap, leaving me feeling lighter and calmer, as if taking charge of my messy office is the same as taking charge of this messy situation.

It isn't. We watch the news feeds sadly as the residents of Metula and Kiryat Shemona are evacuated. We keep calling back and forth to other friends and neighbors. "Was that one by you?" is how many conversations start. Over 1400 rockets have been fired across the border at communities in the north by Hizbullah since this started. Today, eight IDF soldiers are killed in fierce fighting near Bint Jbeil.

Yes, a long day indeed.