Here I am, back again.

 Thank you to the few readers who read this blog regularly and have nudged me to write by saying things like: "Are you okay?" or to be more blunt "Are you alive? Or not?"  Or being kind: "Are you home yet from the evacuation?"  (Which was lifted ten days ago.)

I thank every one of those peeps.  Thanks for pushing me to post on this blog again.  So here I am.

Got home several days ago. Being evacuated was fine (HA!) because I have lovely family that will put up with me, my dog, my anxiety and my brother Steve, his dog, their anxieties, idiosyncrasies, all the invasive properties one carries with one living in someone else's house. It was safe and at the same time fraught with many moments of awkwardness and weirdness. Gabe and Annie's house is so lovely and they are so gracious but I know that we (me, Steve, Cooper and dog Random) are not. We probably overwhelmed them. I am sorry about that but we did the best we could. (Well, maybe we could have been quieter!) 

Gabe and Annie gave us a place to be safe and to decompress for 4+ nights and then we left for Jenn and Dar's. 

I cannot explain how much I love the tolerance my two kids and their mates have for me, Steve, dogs, oddness, loudness, imperial thoughts, perceived righteousness,  and all the other baggage we carry with us.  While I was ready to kill a dog or a human, everyone else just carried on. I know that Gabe and Annie probably felt invaded;  they both work from home for at least 8 hours a day and we were a bit of a disruption for them. Jenn and Dar were lucky because they got us on Friday and the weekend meant no work via Zoom, via the phone, via anything that needed us to be quiet. Plus their house has distractions:  a pool table, a dart board, a full-on bar.  (Steve doesn't drink a lot.  I do. So that helped me.)

We are now home, Thursday night, with a new Red Flag Warning, high temps, high winds predicted, and let's see what happens tonight. My "go bag" is ready.  I will again sleep with the windows open so I can hear if the wind picks up and be ready to leave. 

Thank you everyone for checking in as often as you did. It meant a lot to me and Steve.  We are living the mantra "No Wind. No Wind." And we are hoping that's the case.  How great would it be to see the end of this month with no more destruction from fire? Knocking on wood and don't want to jinx anything but hoping out loud is a shout-out to the universe.  

Over and out for now.  Be careful out there. Be kind. To Everyone.

xo