Okay, we have ordered a car! 2024 Corolla hybrid, butt warmers

Holding Out For But Warmers! That's my new mantra.

Poking my head to Timelies! y'all, and send all good vibes and ~ma all over.

Still as OK as possible here. Still in a strange sort of routine that is extremely fragile and unexpected in all sort of ways (I've been volunteering, among others, in preparing pancake dinners for several families with an enlisted family member, so I won't be surprised if one of the dominant memories for my kids from this war would be that they've had pancake dinners several weeks in a row, on a regular school night).

That sounds like a best possible outcome for your kids, Nilly.

Go butt warmers! My sister in Michigan has had them in her car for years. When she picks me up at the airport for Christmas it’s like a little extra welcome for my butt.

dominant memories for my kids

Have they learned to make the pancakes themselves, yet?

That is one of my fond memories from my own childhood.

In neighborhood news, there is a pop-up store across the street blaring Christmas music, meanwhile one of my neighbors is a tenor who is practicing his arpeggios. It’s very surreal to hear them simultaneously.

even sober as I am(sometimes monotonously) that would make me feel high, Scola. Nilly, good wishes and syrup, I guess. (Is that what you put on pancakes? Can't imagine you've got maple trees.) When I had stimulus money, I bought some special syrup from Vermont...it was better, even on toaster waffles. Messy, though. i remembered why I don't eat it more.

And just to say that I'm OK and safe as I can be here, too. This war is heartbreaking and devastating in so many different ways. It takes effort not to think of many of these things for long enough to concentrate on anything, and I'm slowly finding ways to do that. It's... what it is. May it end soon.

May it end soon.

Yes, this. And not only cause I won't be going to Zooms about it anymore(Which I know is a minimal sacrifice, much like reading the occasional whacked-a-vist quitting on us at work for seeking peaceful solutions. They are lucky I am fairly unmotivated because on Daily Kos the pointing and laughing used to be intense at times like that.)

I don't think there's a peaceful solution until at least one government is replaced and can steer this thing in some direction that won't gurentee a destruction of at least one group of people. Sinwar is truly a genius and found a way to bring back many intergenerational traumas in a single day, and both sides react to them accordingly. If he weren't a murderous psychopath I'd wish he'd be on the Israeli side. It's like watching a national suicide bomb explodes in slow motion (pogroms for the Israelis, Nakba for the Palestinians, 1947-1949 in the middle, and just when Netanyehu secured enough horcruxes to last at least for a while).

Adding something extra because I think the context is lost in geography: this situation will change. It's the Middle East. I don't know how and in which direction, but things change here quite fast. Though in this case, not fast enough.