Exhausted

I am mentally and physically exhausted. I have never before had to make life and death decisions, literally, just to be forced to re-evaluate them 30 minutes later. This involved the decision to leave or not to leave. If so, how? When? Via which route? What about just riding it out? All the while, the sounds of war are growing louder. The bombs are getting bigger and getting closer. The kids, bless ther hearts, are taking it well. Except they don't understand why we keep telling them one thing, then doing another. Bottom line thought, we are all in good health and have all our basic needs satisfied thank God. So the suitcases are packed, but we are waiting for a lull in the action before we make another final final decision.
The feeling on the street is that the taking of the hostages may have been very foolish and miss guided, but that Israel's reaction has grown very disproportionate in terms of punishing the Lebanese population as a whole. Everyone is also very disappointed in the world community's failure to secure a quick cease-fire. Meantime life goes on. I saw people stopping their car at the edge of a blown-up bridge, crossing it on foot and exchanging car keys with people coming from the other side. I have to believe that they knew each other, but it struck me as an ingeneous solution to an impossible situation.