Presence, Security

In Fire Season, the Sequel

July 30, 2022

My neighbors took their extra pickup truck, packed it with things that they would never want to lose, and drove it to a friend’s house in Sacramento for the duration of fire season. (Which makes me wonder: What would it be like to have not just one truck, but an extra one, too?) My next door neighbor has suitcases lined up in her hallway; she is taking them to her boyfriend’s house in Davis. I am going to move my massage table into the backseat of the car soon, so there will be room in the trunk for a few of my most sentimental, irreplaceable things: a quilt my Grandma made, memory books with my children’s early art work, handwritten letters from my Mom and Dad.

Welcome (back) to fire season in Northern California.

(Not the first time I’ve written about this, I’m afraid. Probably won’t be the last, either.)

I started thinking about go-bags again today. I have a little one packed, but it’s not complete. And the tricky thing about the go-bag is that sometimes you forget what is in there, and so you start panicking when you can’t find something and you know where it was supposed to be (the dog’s shot records?) but then finally remember that you took it out of the file cabinet and put it in the go-bag, but not until you’ve wasted a lot of time looking for it.

Then there’s this problem: what happens if the fire breaks out when you are not home? Should the go-bag with the passports and passwords and medical records and business records live in the car, too? What is more likely, that the car could get broken into and all of that information stolen, or that the house could get swallowed by a horrific fire when you are not home to grab your go-bag? Also, who is to say that the car won’t catch on fire in some random act of nature one day when you are driving home?

(One of my on-line writing friends suggested that I scan all my important documents and back them up to the cloud. That’s a great idea! I should do it! I think I could do a good enough job just with apps on my phone. So why don’t I do this? What is my resistance? Because clearly there is some strong resistance there, since I haven’t done it yet.)

Bottom line?

I’m not sure that any of us forest dwelling folk feel safe at home anymore, at least not during fire season. Continue Reading…

Presence, Security

Dog Days of Summer

July 23, 2022

It’s hot. The floor is the coolest place in the house. This is where Biscuit is spending most of his time these days.

My meat thermometer says that it is 87 degrees in the house this evening. Apparently, one of the most useful things about having a handy magnetic meat thermometer that hangs on the refrigerator is being able to check the temperature: not of meat but of the inside. In the winter, I could say, “Aack! It’s 40 degrees in the kitchen!” and complain about it here. Sure wish we could bottle some of that chilliness and save it for days like today.

It’s nearly the time of day when the outside temperature starts to possibly feel slightly cooler than the inside. Which means that it is time to open the windows. At least the ones at the front of the house. Our house faces directly east (perhaps not the best planning), which means that in the summer, we get full morning sun and then, a little later, full afternoon sun. This ensures that everything is thoroughly toasted by the time the sun finally disappears.

We don’t have air conditioning.

It surprises everyone when I tell them this. It’s not that unusual for our mountain climate, though. Lots of houses up here didn’t come with air conditioning, because when they were built, it was not this hot. And when it was hot for a few days in the summer, you could always count on it cooling down at night. So you would spend the day at the community pool, and in the evening you just had to open the windows, let in the cool Delta breeze, and all would be right with the world again. I’m used to not having air conditioning; the house where I grew up didn’t have it either. It was a two story house, so the upstairs would get warm, but every evening my Mom would tell me to “go upstairs and open the windows,” and I would, and the breeze would start up, and life would be good.

The problem lately has been that the nighttime lows here are not that low anymore. They’ve been in the 70s the last few nights.  “Normal” is 60. That’s a huge difference. We don’t seem to be getting “normal” low temperatures anymore, at least not in the summer.

Continue Reading…