After alerts and alarms at half past midnight and 4 AM, I get caught up in a dream where I'm walking through midtown Manhattan. The street names and numbers seem right but everything else is probably totally inaccurate. Other than walking the brief stretch between Port Authority and the foot of the High Line, where I would catch buses to Cleveland, I haven't been there much in a quarter-century or so.

The 12:30 AM attack is disconcerting. We're supposed to have a minute and a half between alarms and actual booms. This time, they're simultaneous, and the booms seem really close. Later, word has it that a missile fragment fell on a school near me.

As I wait outside the nurses' office at 7:30 for my blood sugar test and morning medications, a couple of residents (one of whom is a brilliant nature photographer, whose pictures adorn the walls of the ground floor) walk past me. A few minutes later, they walk past me again in the same direction. And again. And again. I wonder if this is a glitch in the Matrix, then realize that they're getting some early morning exercise, walking a repeating path through the House.

There's another alert at about three in the afternoon, just as the nurses are checking my blood sugar again. They're thrown off their pattern when it sounds. I have to signal to them to give me the small gauze pad to staunch the flow of blood from my finger. They do. Then we all go down to the shelter.

At around 10 PM, just as I'm forwarding a news headline to a friend from Detroit about an attack on a synagogue near there, another alert sounds. Back to the shelter.

After I've been there for a while, an older man from my hall who rarely comes down shuffles in very slowly with his walker. I'm sitting near the entrance, so I stand and offer him my seat. (It's kind of hardwired into us. Many buses have a sign near the front quoting from Leviticus: "You shall rise before the aged.") He tells me to sit back down. "There are plenty of seats here."

The cranky know-it-all son of an even crankier resident complains to me at length about the dining hall being closed, with the staff bringing meals to our apartments. He thinks they're just doing that because it's easier for them.

It's not. I can tell that the staff delivering the food is tired. They have to do that in addition to all their usual tasks. And what we're getting each time is changing. They may be having trouble getting deliveries. They also didn't know, of course, that this war was coming. They shifted into this mode smoothly when it started, probably having standardized procedures for these situations by now. But there's no telling how long the war may last. (Well, actually, many people, from multiple governments, keep telling us what they think. But no two agree, even with themselves, from day to day.)

Much of the kitchen staff, as well as much of the medical staff, is Muslim. Many are observing Ramadan. And there are far fewer shelters in Arab towns. (This, like many inequities here, needs to improve -- but that would probably have to wait for a change in our government.) I'm told that one of our senior medical staff can only duck under a staircase in his house when there are alarms. The workers don't complain. But it can't be easy.

I eventually get back upstairs, finish sending the WhatsApp message to my friend from Detroit, then get back to writing this.

I may or may not get to sleep a little earlier than usual, but it probably won't matter. I don't know how many times or exactly when I'll be blasted awake tonight, but odds are that it'll happen sometime. I just have to hope it isn't when I'm in the middle of a good dream.