video game..

id like to dedicate this song to this bizarre war.. though other than the title any connection the lyrics may have to the war are purely coincidental..

this morning my wife was out at the local fish markets and i had one kid asleep and one on the balcony.. they are too young to understand why they have been stuck at home for the last few days..

minutes after she left the sirens busted out.. i grabbed my daughter off the balcony and rushed to the security room visually combing the living area for my phone and ushering us in - i slammed the door shut.. i then smiled at my girls and forced out some laughter and once i established their agreement that this was somehow in fact funny i pressed my wife's shortcut on my phone screen and made sure she was ok.. she had taken cover in some store..

then we heard the booms..

this afternoon the shrapnel reports were quite intense.. much less vicious than what a direct hit could have been but still quite dangerous and disconcerting.. a synagogue was hit in telaviv.. almost ironic that in israel's city of sin even the enemy help eradicate religion.. i wouldn't be surprised if the media and the politicians dramatized some of shack with a star of david on it as being more than it was.. luckily no one was hurt..

my family is collectively wired.. we have been voluntarily drip fed news updates and siren notices.. the phone keeps signalling that we need to either talk or answer or review or read something somewhere..

one of those messages was from close friends of ours who decided to defy the state's instructions to say close to secure areas and to go and have a fun day at a beach further north and asked us if we wanted to join spontaneously.. we often go to the beach together and nothing would have been more soothing on this scorching israeli summer day - but that beach is a 40 minute drive away by highway for us and the last thing i want to do is pull over as the lady did the other day and place my daughters on burning road side under the midday sun and cover them with my body as i wait to hear a boom and then continue to lay there for 10 minutes.. for them its closer but i still couldnt fathom it.. i secretly envied their bravado..  but we stayed home..

and another one of the messages received moments ago was a survey smsd by the army.. yes a survey..

we also sent messages - cancelling our daughter's birthday party.. we planned it for a month or so.. anyway who cares - as long as we're all safe.. that's the least of our worries..

still waiting for the ***game over*** message.. do video games still do that?

frankly id be quite happy to just switch this war off myself if i knew how..