As I settle down to try to sleep, late at night, I realize that I can't find my phone. I know it's somewhere in my apartment, but I don't see it. I'm not worried. I figure that it will tell me where it is if I need it.

I'm right. At 2:30 AM, it blasts out the signature chocketa-chocketa of a missile alert. I follow the sound to the kitchen, where I had put the black phone down on my equally black apron. I scoop it up, put on my filp-flops, and head down to the shelter.

More alerts follow, at 5:30, 6:30, and 11 AM. One of them has an alarm and booms without an alert. I stay in the hallway for that.

After either that one or another, I wake up sitting in a chair. It's oddly quiet. I wonder why the people and dogs in the shelter have stopped making noise. I open my eyes and once again realize that I'm back in my apartment. I must have immediately forgotten that I had come back from the shelter. Or maybe I never went down there. Or something.

When I come into the shelter for the 11 AM alert, I find an exercise class in progress. A couple of dozen residents sit in chairs facing a leader. They all hold rubber balls between their knees and wave their arms according to her instructions. They try to keep going as people flood in for the alert, but have to give up. Some of the dogs want to play with the balls, but the people don't let them.

There's one more alarm after lunch, at about 1:15. The alert sounds just as I enter the laundry room, ready to put my weekly bag of laundry carefully on the right shelf. That doesn't happen. The laundry worker grabs the bag from me, tosses it into the room, and shouts "Go!" I go.

As I come out of the elevator on my floor after the alert, I hear an unfamiliar sound above me. It takes me a moment to recognize it: heavy rain against the skylight. It's our first rain in several weeks. I hope the neighbors who don't live in the House got home before it started. Like most rain here, the storm is heavy but brief, lasting ten or fifteen minutes. I'm reminded of the powerful short thunderstorms that we would have in Texas. (I thought they were called "Blue Northers," but Wikipedia tells me that those were something else.)

Some more things are opening up in the city. Many of the House's cultural events will resume tomorrow. The municipal WhatsApp announces various activities, either online or in public spaces that are near shelters. Yoga sessions will be held, free of charge, throughout the city. There will be first aid classes, story hours, musical activities for parents and children, and a SpongeBob movie in the Cinematheque, shown first dubbed into Hebrew and then in English.

On Tuesday evening, the Cinematheque will be showing Dr. Strangelove. The WhatsApp post makes sure to note that the showing is "not connected to the current situation."

The House's CEO posts a long note to WhatsApp explaining how the distribution of meals is working. She points out that, due to the ban on gatherings of more than fifty people, they have to keep the dining hall closed. I think she may have heard complaints from residents and their loudmouth relatives.

When they deliver the suppers, I'm told that the entrée is a burekas. I find it indistinguishable from a sweet cheese danish. I don't complain. But I'll see if my blood sugar does, when I get it tested again in the morning.