So things are still - fraught. News just broke that there's going to be a 72-hour (meaning a weekend-long) ceasefire, during which representatives are supposed to meet in Egypt to negotiate further. Honestly though, I don't see this ending in the next week; can't imagine the IDF pulling out without destroying as many tunnels as they can find. Maybe, maybe it'll mean the airfire will stop. If this break even lasts the weekend.

The news has basically been nothing but despairing, whether it's listening to accounts from Gaza, or seeing the injured and killed soldiers toll climb here, or hearing about more tunnels being discovered (which, let me tell you, if that had been an actual danger when I was a kid, I would have grown up terrified), or seeing just how much hatred there is on both sides, and the growing hatred and anger between the Israeli "left" and the Israeli "right".

It just kind of weighs on you all the time, in the back of your mind. Well, mine. And I get accustomed to it, to watching the news at night but also finding time for TV, to casually switching between tabs with breaking news to work tabs to LJ and tumblr.

There are just all these little moments that remind you that things aren't quite normal. Like how the light signs in public parking lots now blink "IDF - WE'RE WITH YOU" instead of "92 AVAILABLE SPACES". How signs over freeways now say "In case of sirens, carefully stop at the side of the road" instead of "don't text and drive". How there are cardboard boxes sitting outside so many supermarkets, collecting donations (underwear, undershirts, deodorant, but so much underwear) for the troops. How all of the main radio stations constantly reassure you that they will be announcing all alarms in real time, so you can be listening to talk radio or to a playlist, and mid-sentence, a calm, soothing female voice will murmur, "an alarm is sounding in Nir Oz, Eshkol, Ofakim and Kisufim", and fade back into the upcoming chorus.

And then there's the moment it hits; when you get to work, to find a black-framed obituary hanging by the front office door, because the younger brother of a guy from IT was killed in action yesterday, and the funeral is this afternoon. This wasn't a guy I worked closely with at all - hardly ever, in fact, but I'd just sent him an email yesterday morning, and god. I didn't go to the funeral, didn't really think about it much during the day, but at night I watched the footage online, heard his sobs as he delivered the eulogy, and almost started crying. It was so, so heartbreaking. There's not really much to say other than that.

*

And meanwhile, the rest of life is the rest of life. Work is work. Masters of Sex this week was terrible. Hockey fandom continues to provide awesome fics and pretty fun canon. Dira's PTSD-baby-GK fic has epilogues! (You'd think I'd have had enough of soldiers, and indeed I could not stomach looking at a hockey military AU this week, but apparently this fic is absolutely an exception.) Middle sister and I are trying to coordinate our schedules to be able to go to Edinburgh if her vacation days are approved, and baby sister is home on leave until Sunday, and we are planning on Guardians of the Galaxy tomorrow morning. If I manage to make myself wake up early, this will also be post getting a haircut. Chances of that are... let's face it, slim.

*

And oh, hey. It's August 1st, which wow - makes it a year already, dear god time, a year since I flew to the US for work. It does feel momentous; overall, I spent five and a half of the past 12 months in New York, and I do miss it. Since I never posted photos - and I do still think I will, at some point, but don't take my word for it - here is an image still burned into my mind, from a November day that started with a super-light snow in the morning, and ended with this: