I’m sorry I’ve left you in the lurch.

We’re back to counting days again.

Only this time, thank G-d, we aren’t counting the days our hostages are being held in hell.

No, this time we’re “only” counting the days of this war. (Which is really more like the continuation of that war.)

And during this particular counting, the numbers aren’t being written on a piece of masking tape, affixed above our hearts.

This time, they are just being loosely accumulated in our foggy, addled, sleep-deprived minds.

So foggy in fact, that as I write this, I’m not sure if it’s Day 22 or 23 or 24.

Whichever it is, somewhere around three weeks ago, we stopped sleeping and started living between obnoxious blares from our telephones.

For the first few days, it was all adrenaline. There was Purim parties in safe rooms and short dog walks (nowhere that I couldn’t get home in less than 5 minutes if I needed to run).

Then Purim passed and my dog walks stretched longer, and I actually did need to run more than a few times, as the siren and my big white dog both barked at me to hurry the heck up.

My kids are home (well, 2/3rds of them anyway). My high schooler is taking her math exams by way of Zoom proctors. And my middle one is getting ready to draft next month and in the midst of ~ waves hand around at everything ~ we’re making a party for him. It has to be before Pesach, he insists, so he can have his head shaved before the Omer (another counting).

The truth is that in spite of my kvetching, I am so very, very fortunate. Let me count for you the ways:

1. We have a safe room in our home. We aren’t tying on shoes and tichels at all hours of the night to bolt down the block to the neighborhood bomb shelter, as more than 50% of Israelis have to do. We just go downstairs and we’re there.
2. My kids are big – and largely self-sufficient. I’m not nursing a newborn or consoling a tantruming toddler or fighting with a 2nd grader to log onto his Zoom lesson.
3. My husband – while he did do about 20 days of miluim (reserve duty) when this war first started – has been home this entire time (his assignment is local). He’s not in Lebanon or Gaza, or G-d knows where doing G-d knows what. I sleep at night (well, actually I don’t – but not from worry about his immediate safety).
4. I work from home (well, actually, as is the point of this post, which I’ll eventually get to, I haven’t been doing much work at all). But nonetheless, I’m not driving the roads, dodging sirens and shrapnel, to get to work.
5. My home and property are, pfut pfut pfut, untouched and intact. There have been several pieces (most of them small) of shrapnel which have fallen in my little town, but no major damage and certainly no direct hits, unlike last night in Arad and Dimona.
6. Yes, we get anywhere from 1 to 12 sirens in a 24-hour period (usually it’s 6 or 7 or 8), but we have early alerts and then 90 seconds once the siren does sound to get to our safe room. Our brothers and sisters in the north have ZERO early warning and ZERO seconds to get to safety. Their lives are unimaginable right now.

So yes, I definitely count myself among the lucky ones.

And yet, I am so, so, so tired.

Like the kind of tired that first month with a newborn, where you try pouring your coffee into the peanut butter jar instead of the mug and can’t figure out why it’s not working. Or when you can’t find your glasses, which are literally on your face as you look for them.

And I also feel guilty. Very guilty. Because after more than 15 years of raising this baby called KOAB, I have completely and totally abandoned it.

I know that this month between Purim and Pesach I have people counting on me. That you/they are looking for not just deals, but also for lists of foods that don’t need a KLP hechsher and also what’s KLP at Costco.

But frankly, I just do not have the bandwidth to even look at my computer.

In fact, writing this post is probably the most focused energy I have had in 22 (or is it 23 or 24) days.

This morning, like 16 hours ago, I forced myself to sit down at my computer for 2 whole hours. And I told myself after I’d found a number of good buys for your Pesach prep, that I’d come back in a little bit when y’all woke up to send out a newsletter and push out the posts to Whatsapp.

Only then we got three sirens and I had to deal with a family emergency, and then I did four loads of laundry and polished the silver. And then at some point, my big white dog and I just completely crashed on a mattress on the floor of the safe room for a good 90 minutes.

And here I am, 16.5 hours later, and I still haven’t sent that newsletter or pushed out those Whatsapp alerts.

I’m really sorry. I know you deserve better, more consistent and certainly more present.

I’d say I’m doing the best I can, but then the bar for my best would be so pitifully low that I’m embarrassed to say that.

So instead I’ll just say thank you. Thank you for reading this. Thank you for being a KOAB follower for forever or for a few months, or however long it’s been. I’m so blessed you are here.

And most of all, thank you for davening and caring, in the midst of all your own stuff (which I’m sure you have, because we all have!), about what is happening here in Israel.

I will try to do better over the next week, but with a massive “BLI NEDER” (no promises!) attached, because my capacity is pretty pathetic right now.

And in the meantime, let me just end by saying: May true peace come soon, for Israel and for the rest of our region. May the Iranians be free, and may we never ever have to run to shelter again!