Like the stereotype of a New Yorker, I’ve never turned on an oven and our fridge had zero food when the war started. Famished, I went out to find takeout (i.e. felafel), but everything was closed, the streets deserted. The only stores open on the first evening of the war (and tonight too) were the 24-hr minimarts. At last, I realized I’d need to buy groceries. When I got inside, I also realized I was late to the game: there weren’t many vegetables left. I grabbed hummus and, per Yoav’s request, a cucumber and tomato to make an Israeli salad.

While walking back, the sirens blasted over the dark street. I started running for home, but I wasn’t going to make it in the minute and a half needed to find “a protected room.” Two teen girls, running toward me, yelled to follow them. I scrambled with them into the nearest building’s bomb shelter, while its own residents were rushing down the stairs for it. In the small dismal space, we stood, glancing from our phones at each other, listening to the loud explosions. A young guy voiced what everyone was thinking: “So near.”

Once a few minutes had passed without an explosion, everyone left the bomb shelter, and I hurried for home. I was a block away from my building when the sirens wailed again. I ran with the grocery bag for the front door, where I was joined by a man, who had come bolting with his dog from the dog park across the street. Unfortunately, I couldn’t let the man and his dog inside because — and I realize I’m coming off as a goofball in this post — I couldn’t find my key. Frantically, with sirens warning of an incoming rocket, I searched my bag, but I must’ve forgotten them.

Just in time, the door guy buzzed us in and we hurried into the building’s ground-floor shelter. Again, I waited with the grocery bag for the explosions to stop, and then headed for the elevators.

I’d barely made it to the 19th floor and into our apartment when the sirens sounded again. Yoav and I rushed with the dogs for our bedroom closet that doubles as a bomb-shelter. In preparation, Yoav had furnished it with chairs, dog beds, and water. Once again, we listened to the explosions.

At last, three bomb shelters later, we were in the kitchen and it was dinnertime. Yoav took the grocery bag, pulled out the cucumber, and said, “This is a zucchini.”