Good Morning

Craaaaakaboom!
is the sound that woke me up this morning almost immediately followed by 'Eeemma!' - Mummy in Hebrew.
Before I was fully conscious or even had my eyes open I bounced out of bed and yelled at my daughter to run into the security room, more commonly known as my son's bedroom.

Yes, this morning I was snuggled under the cover trying to ignore the annoying rooster alarm tone from my mobile phone that does its best to irritate enough to get us out of bed every morning.
Today it wasn't having much success. Both yours truly and son were tucked under the covers though my daughter had managed to get up and dressed.
The thought was just passing through my dreams that if I didn't move soon the children would be late for school when a great cracking noise ripped across the sky above us.

I had no problem recognising that sound having heard similar almost every month since we moved to Shlomi in 1996 and with a much greater intensity during the summer of 2006.

My body leapt into action even before my brain was able to process the recognition.
Of course, my body was still in my nightclothes and I hopped around my dark room trying to drag on something decent while yelling at my concerned daughter that she must stay in the security room and I would be with her soon.
After a while I realised much of my clumsiness was due to the fact that I had forgotten to put on my glasses or switch on the light.
Finally, after a couple of extremely long minutes I joined my children sheltering behind 55cm of reinforced concrete. Then I texted my husband and phoned my parents so they would know we were OK.

Everything was so familiar from 2 and a half years ago: exiting the safety room after waiting the required amount of time, phoning friends to check they are alright, checking the news on the internet and TV, trying to recognise where the missiles have landed from news photos.

My daughter stayed calm by phoning all her classmates to exchange a few words of comfort while my son relaxed with the Sims.

After I had contacted my local friends and compared notes with my parents about the people they had contacted I received a call from my father in law who had just stepped out of the shelter at his work in Naharia. He joked that my phone had been busy all morning.

Then I began to reassess our plans for the day.
School was cancelled so I insisted the children tidy their rooms.
I work at the local library which was closed and nobody had phoned me so they obviously didn't expect me to take part in any emergency measures. Despite this I felt perversely guilty about staying at home!

I warmed up a snack to replace the breakfast the children had missed in all the confusion and then prepared lunch. I made an effort to tackle the laundry that has piled up since our broken dryer and the damp weather had combined to make drying laundry Mission Impossible.
Basically a normal day at home except for our dash into the security room when the sirens went off just before midday

Then there were our plans for the afternoon. Obviously I wasn't going to be walking around Naharia in the company of my children in order to visit friends but before Lebanon II there were frequent 'love' missiles from Hizbollah and after an hour or so we would all return to our routine.
Was the new reality that we now expected every 'booming' to turn into Lebanon III?

Not quite - life still goes on in a limited fashion; ballet was off, the bat mitzvah party was on.

So as soon as I finish writing this I need to get ready for a party