I meant to post earlier, but I got distracted what with the war and all.
Being where I am, we haven't had to run for shelter, which is good, because one of the laws of going anywhere with young children is that the more children you're traveling with, the slower you go, until at some point you're actually traveling backward. Which would make it hard to reach the bomb shelter in time.
So my main source of stress, beyond worry for everyone I know (including those of you on the east coast of the USA - what if there are more freaky stray tornadoes??) has been reading the foreign media. Which is basically:
title: DEAD PALESTINIAN BABY
subtitle: Parents wail in anguish over the body of their child, killed in an Israeli airstrike.
article: Israel continued its aggressive retaliation Saturday... blah blah blah.
Which sounds pretty anti-Israel, until you get to the comments, which make it look positively Kahanist.
Not that I'm bitter. Not that I think they're complete hypocrites who would expect Israel's support in face of 1/10th the aggression Hamas has displayed. Not that I think all of the reporters who wrote the last 15 articles I read have the collective IQ of a squid that was somehow, in defiance of the laws of physics, dropped on its head many times as a baby.
Anyway. All this state-of-emergency-ness has me thinking about our emergency preparation. So far we have stocked up:
- A six-pack of water, which, in case of emergency, I will presumably remain incapable of carrying for more than three feet without dropping, immediately tripping over, and then cursing.
- A four-pack of tuna,which makes me sad not because of how it symbolizes the fear of war that is perpetually lurking in the background and the inevitable need for my children to be exposed to the cruel reality that there are people - a lot of people - who would love nothing more than to destroy all of us, but because holy crap, tuna cost just 18 shekels when I bought that. That was, what, three months ago? And now it's like 24 shekels! What the heck happened? I miss tuna.
I did hear that they might lower the VAT on tuna, so at least there's that.
- Crackers. Because why not?
- Matches. Which, in case of emergency, I will leave untouched. There's no emergency so bad that me with a pack of working matches can't somehow make it worse.
That's pretty much it. Unfortunately, it won't help with my main concern, which is shoes. It takes us 30 minutes to get everyone in shoes on a good day. On a bad day, I imagine everyone else would be evacuated, housed for several weeks in a facility in a different part of the country, and returned before we would all have appropriate footwear.
I though of taking the shoes we can most easily do without and putting them in a pack somewhere. Unfortunately, aside from the fact that sparkley pink slippers are probably not the most practical footwear for a war zone (/post-earthquake pandemonium/ zombie apocalypse), there's also the issue that I don't recall ever, in all of my (nearly 30!) years of existence, remembering where the totally smart place that I put that thing so that I would be sure to remember where I put it later was.
Oh well. My shoe dilemma will remain for the time being, and will give me something to puzzle out in between inviting friends from Tel Aviv to come visit (they won't come. all that yoga keeps them calm even under rocket fire. Tel Avivians, what can you do) and cursing out the BBC (and AP. Jerusalem is Israel's "self declared" capital? What exactly makes a city a capital other than the leadership of that country declaring it to be so? Did we miss the capital fairy coming to dust it with her magic pixie dust? Please clarify, AP).
Being where I am, we haven't had to run for shelter, which is good, because one of the laws of going anywhere with young children is that the more children you're traveling with, the slower you go, until at some point you're actually traveling backward. Which would make it hard to reach the bomb shelter in time.
So my main source of stress, beyond worry for everyone I know (including those of you on the east coast of the USA - what if there are more freaky stray tornadoes??) has been reading the foreign media. Which is basically:
title: DEAD PALESTINIAN BABY
subtitle: Parents wail in anguish over the body of their child, killed in an Israeli airstrike.
article: Israel continued its aggressive retaliation Saturday... blah blah blah.
Which sounds pretty anti-Israel, until you get to the comments, which make it look positively Kahanist.
Not that I'm bitter. Not that I think they're complete hypocrites who would expect Israel's support in face of 1/10th the aggression Hamas has displayed. Not that I think all of the reporters who wrote the last 15 articles I read have the collective IQ of a squid that was somehow, in defiance of the laws of physics, dropped on its head many times as a baby.
Anyway. All this state-of-emergency-ness has me thinking about our emergency preparation. So far we have stocked up:
- A six-pack of water, which, in case of emergency, I will presumably remain incapable of carrying for more than three feet without dropping, immediately tripping over, and then cursing.
- A four-pack of tuna,which makes me sad not because of how it symbolizes the fear of war that is perpetually lurking in the background and the inevitable need for my children to be exposed to the cruel reality that there are people - a lot of people - who would love nothing more than to destroy all of us, but because holy crap, tuna cost just 18 shekels when I bought that. That was, what, three months ago? And now it's like 24 shekels! What the heck happened? I miss tuna.
I did hear that they might lower the VAT on tuna, so at least there's that.
- Crackers. Because why not?
- Matches. Which, in case of emergency, I will leave untouched. There's no emergency so bad that me with a pack of working matches can't somehow make it worse.
That's pretty much it. Unfortunately, it won't help with my main concern, which is shoes. It takes us 30 minutes to get everyone in shoes on a good day. On a bad day, I imagine everyone else would be evacuated, housed for several weeks in a facility in a different part of the country, and returned before we would all have appropriate footwear.
I though of taking the shoes we can most easily do without and putting them in a pack somewhere. Unfortunately, aside from the fact that sparkley pink slippers are probably not the most practical footwear for a war zone (/post-earthquake pandemonium/ zombie apocalypse), there's also the issue that I don't recall ever, in all of my (nearly 30!) years of existence, remembering where the totally smart place that I put that thing so that I would be sure to remember where I put it later was.
Oh well. My shoe dilemma will remain for the time being, and will give me something to puzzle out in between inviting friends from Tel Aviv to come visit (they won't come. all that yoga keeps them calm even under rocket fire. Tel Avivians, what can you do) and cursing out the BBC (and AP. Jerusalem is Israel's "self declared" capital? What exactly makes a city a capital other than the leadership of that country declaring it to be so? Did we miss the capital fairy coming to dust it with her magic pixie dust? Please clarify, AP).
When the siren went off in Jerusalem, we grabbed phones, chargers, and the Important zip-bag (with all of our ID's, passports and papers- something I've had prepared since living in the US (in case of emergency)) oh and most importantly we put on pants first!!
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