Very Heavy Shellings with Cassete Missiles

The Night

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This morning I woke up at 5 am, from a nightmare, kind of.

The air alert followed shortly after. Drones and missiles, as always. This time, the fired Kalibr missiles at us, with cassettes at the civilian infrastructure.

• In the early morning, Nadia peed herself, again. For the 3rd time for these 24 hours. It’s her who’s sick now.
• Hnat is visiting his kindergarten for a couple of days already.
• Also, we had 7 hours (3+3+1) of blackouts today. Should have been 9, but they (the electricians) gifted us with a couple of extra hours with electricity.

That’s our day today, if being short.

In details, it’ll go like this.

Early Morning

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We, me and Hnat, went to the pre-school in the morning, right after the alert was cancelled. It was 9 am, usually we leave home earlier, at about 8:30. Yet, it wasn’t too late for the threat to be cancelled.

Before that, I wasn’t sleeping since 5 am:

• the nightmare,
• then alert,
• then having some writings,
• then reading some news on what happens…

All that woke me up till the point of no return.

Threats

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I have to say this, we do ignore air strike alerts almost entirely.

• I’m tired of being scared of the thought of how the slightest blast wave would make a shrapnel out of our windows and will kill us all.
• I’m tired of being scared at all. To some degree that ‘you should fear only the fear itself’ attitude improved me, but at the expense of being reckless.

It’s difficult to do something about that, we have this full-scale war for over a thousand of days. It’s too much to be scared for that long.

It was really scary at the beginning, due to the lack of understanding, of no information and the shock. These days, it’s mostly routine.

Bike-Walk

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We were leaving home regardless of air strike alert not being cancelled. I’ve read the news that the missiles, the kalibres and drones are no more. The end siren was approaching us. So we started preparing to leave home. A few months ago, the air strike alert was especially long, so we walked all the way to the kindergarden, and the air strike alert ended by the time we approached the entry door, at that very moment we were heading upstairs.

At that time, according to the information from the air defence team, our region was relatively safe. Sometimes they cannot cancel the alert for reasons. And the alert was since the very early morning, so I assumed it’s going to be ended very soon. Still, that was reckless. I guess, to the people who are not in Ukraine. I’ve read on the internet (mostly Twitter, when I was still active) about people being even more careless, in much closer regions, including Kharkiv. ‘It’s impossible to sit in the shelter all the time, especially when you have air strike alert all day long’ they say. That’s true. At some point you just think ‘oh fuck you already,’ and you go with your usual business.

Me, I’m trying to keep just a few rules: I’m trying to be at home, if possible. Or in some building. Preferably away from windows, windows kill when shutterd. A neighbour showed me one photo once, of her colleague, the refridgerator of theirs. It was shredded by the window being shattered from a blast wave. Their son was injured, his legs, and he was very fortunate, as the body or head, the boy won’t survive. It’s scary, the fridge looked like it was shot with a machine-gun. I’ve read many times, that most injuries and fatalities are of this kind of damage.

Morning Blackout

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I came back, and we had our first blackout upon my arrival, from 10 am till 1 pm. Nadia was sick and hysterical. She had some cartoon on the TV, Solomia started her workday already. And the electricity went off. I’ve sat with her, then I took my MacBook and did some coding and writing work in nvim, turning off Wi-Fi (we have one from our neighbour).

• Interesting fact, the laptop’s battery is in a very bad shape (15% or 20% according to the tlp battery report), and it falls to 7% after 30 minutes of usage. Yet, as I have a highly optimised Arch Linux system, in practice the laptop survived all 3 hours from the battery! Apparently, the new one would work for up to 9 hours, but I’m not buying it yet, I have two more MacBooks, I’ll just take another one. It’s just this old MacBook that I like to work from.

Nadia fell asleep shortly, and I’ve been working for all that time. She woke up half an hour before the end of blackout, so we ate some pancakes-with-cheese of mine, and went shopping, leaving Solomia to work in silence and with electricity.

Then we had 3 hours of electricity, of which I had just two. I went to farm, which is my new office place now. I have my super-powerful computer with 5 displays attached there (and two more standing not yet connected), so it’s a bit better (and faster) than the tiny 13" MacBook Pro from 2011.

Walking Back Home

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Another blackout for 3 hours, since 16 till 19. Hnat’s kindergarden time is till 17, usually. But I went to get him earlier. Early morning he was very angry and pushy to move him on his child bicycle. Which I don’t like, as he knows, he’s either walk, or I help him with his tiny scooter, or he’s on his own with the bicycle. Yet, he was asking me to drive him, which is very intensive physical exercise for me. So, I told him I’m getting the bike back home, which I did. Turned out the greatest idea of my morning, as by the 4 pm we had somewhat heavy rain. So I took two umbrellas, his being pink, and went to the Kdg.

He was a bit hysterical that he must go with the bike, as he just loves to drive over puddles! Today, I’ve managed to calm him down. Yesterday, he was very hysterical, as the air strike alert was since 1 pm till 2 pm, the time they sleep at their kindergarden. When he misses his afternoon nap, he’s super angry by the evening. Like his father.

• Who misses his regular daily nap, no excuses, for like 5 years.

Fucking ruzzians.

Today, we were walking back home, umbrellas in our hands, heavy rain. I offer him ‘let’s go through the forest,’ as we have this option to either walk near the main road, or make a short detour through the forest. A couple of extra minutes while alone, and like 10 to 15 minutes with the kids, they’re slow walkers, as they’re short legged kiddos.

‘No, no forest, it’s dark in here’ Hnat says.

I offered him to take a flashlight. I’m with two iPhones almost all the time, my new one and my old one, small SE.

Hnat laughs, ‘yeah, flaslight!’ Flashlight it is.

Upon approaching the forest entry, I realised the entire neighbourhood has no lights. Forest or no forest, there’s no difference! The whole neighbourhood is in dark, and only the cars’ lights. That’s a very familiar landscape we observe for the 3rd winter in a row.

At least, we can see stars during those blackouts, while outside.

I thought it’s so cool the modern iPhones are protected from the rain (yet, Andrij managed to kill his iPhone X in a heavy rain a few years ago). I used iPhone SE (which isn’t waterproof) as a flashlight, but we were holding it together, half the phone Hnat, half the phone me. Even with the flashlight, it’s difficult to walk past puddles, so I felt my boots being slightly wet, and Hnat was a bit wet upon arrival home too.

There’s some romantic in that indeed, if you have these adventures once a year or two, or ten. Yet ruzzians are still fucking cancer of this planet.

Evening Blackout

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During the evening, I had half an hour of me time at home.

That happens almost never, for that I have to be at the farm, or walking back home from the Kdg.

The kids were silently playing in the room, Solomia was reading iPhone near them. It was so peaceful, I enjoyed that moment. I took my iPad Pro 12.9 to check my newest website projects (including this one) from the iPad, and enjoyed how mostly good they are! I want to optimise some css here and there, but it mostly okay to my eyes. After this short session of reviewing my own work, I got some motivation to write a lenghty (this lenghty) story about yet another day with blackouts.

Tomorrow

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The planned blackouts schedule for tomorrow is since 4 am till 6 am, then 1 pm to 3 pm, and 7 pm to 10 pm, so 7 hours in total. Like today. Although, there’s always chance that we would just die there would be unplanned blackouts too. Which, I hope, won’t happen.

Afterword

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Had some short communication with Tereza’s dad, they’re our local friends, and they’re planning to buy EcoFlow. Their daughter is like our Nadia, autistic too. And she gets very upset when there’s no electricity and water. Nadia is not very upset and hysterical, yet I can relate how difficult it is for them.

We have no EcoFlow yet. We had no plans to buy one, yet I realise it’s a practical purchase. We have our Wi-Fi from the neighbour, and we have many lamps on batteries. Yet, as soon as we get our lights back, I was putting all the devices on charge. It took almost all of our sockets, with all of the cables. It’s just recently that I’ve bought five more micro-USB cables for powerbanks alone. Also, I have circa 10 to 15 usb-c cables, and up to 10 lightning (old iPhones and iPads) cables, and up to 5 30-pin (obsolete iPhones and iPads) cables.

It’s very tiresome to manage all those devices to be charged. I’m thinking of buying the EcoFlow to just not doing all that. Yet, we’ll see how it goes. They’re in very high demand, so the prices are high, and not just that. I think, probably someone else’s may need those more.

It’s 5 minutes to 10 pm, and we’re late to sleep already, as I’ve been willing to finish this story. The blackout was planned since 10 pm, but we’ve got an update that it was shifted for one hour, so we have one extra hour with the electricity. We’ll use that time watching Star Wars Episode 6. We’ve discovered Hnat likes the franchise, and it’s some reveal from those cartoons. I don’t like Star Wars too much, but they’re okay if you shift your expectations to a for-kids product.

I hope ruzzia have not-so-many missiles for this night. I hope they’ll fail apart very shortly. Although, the reality is, we expect very escalatory bullshit from those barbarians till the Trump’s inauguration, Jan 20. It’s 53 days to go. Wish us all luck to survive at least.