Dancing Around the Four Sides

Seder ended up being really nice! There were only two alarms around 5PM for us, after all of us had already made our way home so none were caught on the road or in traffic. The rest of the evening we had no alarms in our area, so were able to get through a whole (admittedly rushed) seder and excellent food. There were lots of flowers, and all of the important foods, and my aunt's rice was a little burnt* but it actually made it taste better - it's this really good recipe of oven-baked rice with mushrooms and chestnuts that I really have to try sometime.

(*one of many downsides to alarms is figuring out how to handle anything cooking while you're going in the shelter for an unknown amount of time. Do you turn off the oven? Do you keep it on and hope for the best? Tough decisions must be made.)

Since I was put in charge of the seder itself, I went over the hagaddah in advance and made a cheat sheet of which parts we'd read/sing/skip in advance, printed out a few copies and placed them on the table, just to have everyone on the same page. It ended up going really well, adults were appreciative, we basically sped through the reading and singing in like 20 minutes before getting to the food.

Sisters and I spent the night there; there were some tensions at some point but situation's got people on edge; overall had a really nice time. My sister and I drove back to Tel Aviv this evening; it was the first time an alert caught me on the road (technically, two). Drove till I found a part of the road with a wide enough shoulder to pull over, got a blanket from the trunk and spread it on the ground by the road to sit on, took a coat since it was drizzling a little. The air was misty and bizarre and apocalyptic just because it happened to be a day with really weird weather, every streetlight enveloped by an enormous halo, and pretty soon we heard the booms, saw some dim lights, saw one interceptor on its way through the mist. My sister had a much more visceral reaction than I did to the sounds and the sights, but then unlike her, I didn't spend the first few months after October 7th constantly going in and out of a war zone on reserve duty :( We sat there, munching on some cucumber-flavored Lays chips my dad brought from a recent trip to China, on the ground with a coat pulled over out heads and yellow flares in the sky, just a surreal little moment. When we got back in the car after, Graceland was playing on the radio.

(There was a second alert about 10 minutes later, but at that point we were already in the city; we just found parking and went inside a nearby building to use their shelter if we'd need to, but it ended up being one of those times where the "heads up" alert never converts into a real alarm.)

When I got home, logged on to participate as a beta in a virtual lecture about the science of BtVS (in preparation for the now-virtual local SFF con taking place next week), which was super fun, and then watched Shrinking, which, my heart, I can't believe next week will be the last episode of the season boo.

This weekend I am planning on:
-visiting grandma
-meeting friends
-IDK, XO Kitty season 3 perhaps?
-writing?? finally?? will it happen?? maybe mentioning it will make it so.