54 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 10-19-17”

  3. Happy birthday, indeed. What’s for breakfast? 🙂

    Well, it’s been a wild 10 days.

    We got on the plane in San Francisco as evacuees and when we landed in Chicago, we were home owners again. They lifted the evacuation shortly before we landed. My phone was lit up by text messages telling me we could go home.

    We’re going to stay here a couple days and breathe clean air before returning to a life of masks, cleaning, watering and regrouping. The Adorables and most of the parents are visiting other grandparents and breathing clean air for a couple more days as well.

    My book launch party will go on as planned on Sunday. We all need opportunities to rejoice and mourn together in our community. I’ll be speaking on Biddy Chambers, fire and resiliance. I may have a new speaking gig for awhile. 😦

    I’ve received notification that Mrs. OC is on backorder at both Amazon and CBD. That’s frustrating (I ordered copies myself to monitor this). Several of you will have your books shipped within the week–which makes no sense to me because I ordered them for you as soon as they were available what? a month ago?

    Not sure what this means–unless it means the books were already sold out by the time the book launched? I’m not a publisher and I’m not going to worry about it.

    I’m gratified and so very weepy thankful so many have shared about the book. It’s humbling, marvelous and I’m starting to get teary all over again.

    So many have liked it, but, as my husband says, they’d hardly tell me otherwise!

    So, if you asked for a book, it’s should be on its way, it may be delayed. I know 6 Arrows was one of the delays, and Mrs. PeterL. 🙂

    Still very tired in many ways (not the least an inability to sleep well), and I feel a need to cram–but I’m going to take it easy today, but a few items at Target and meet a friend for lunch at Wheaton. God is good, we are thankful and the stories . . .

    Liked by 4 people

    Reply

  4. When I get permission to share, I’ll tell the story one of our friends went through on the night of the fire. She was actually on 101 when the fire jumped the freeway and I’d be terrified if I was watching the movie (if I wasn’t shouting, what are you doing?!!!!).

    She and her husband are both Navy veterans and that may be why they were so nonplussed, but I tell you, hearing her tell it made my heart race!

    And so interesting. She says one of the reasons she went forward was because of what I said in a text to her at 2:24. All I did was tell her friends had been evacuated from the area she was driving past.

    I had no memory of that.

    I suspect there are many things I’ve forgotten about a wild and crazy (not in a Steve Martin type of way) Sunday night.

    As we’ve talked and talked about events, my husband reminds me the issue for many was incredulity–you simply couldn’t believe what was happening at the time. You had to overcome your incredulity to survive, which is what Marianne did.

    But yikes, having driven through the fire to get to her parents house to evacuate them at 1 o’clock in the morning, I would not have driven home the same way!

    Her father was on oxygen, or as her husband said, “I was very conscious I was basically driving a bomb through a fire.”

    Yikes. They’re all fine with a whopper of a tale.

    It is a mercy only 41 people died. That’s a terrible number for the families, but given that night, it’s a mercy only 41 died. Though, there are still 50 missing and many guess they’ll turn up dead in the Fountaingrove area. 😦

    There simply wasn’t information nor time to get out. One woman woke up to a firefighter in her bedroom telling her she had to get out now.

    I can’t imagine.

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

  5. You know I’ve turned in my evacuee badge, but I may miss it. Virgin American waived our luggage fees yesterday . . .

    Then again, many people react to comfort when you start to cry–some decisions have been too hard to make. 😦

    And the meds situation is still unresolved, but I’m okay until I get home. 50% of the doctors in Sonoma County lost their homes; my doctor may have been one of them.

    20 people at my husband’s company lost their homes. He’s been finding them places to live–which is tricky in our tight market. But, so far, it looks like all will be settled by the end of the month. 20 people will have a place to live. 2900+ homes were destroyed. 😦

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

  6. Let’s see, what else is new, since I’m hogging the page. Tasha now looks like a former kitten–when she stretches, which she likes to do, she’s almost as long as a twin bed is wide.

    She’s also a big hunter–of flies. I took a photo of her clinging to the screen (bad cat!) trying to catch one and my daughter gasped. “How long is she? Three feet?”

    Like many of the growing youngsters in our family, she looks like she’ll be bigger than average.

    My son said, “Mom, you’re raising a Navy cat. This is her fourth home in a month!”

    She’s now visiting his in-laws with his family, will return to his house tomorrow (5th home, 6th home) and will finally go back to where she belongs on Saturday. Whew!

    She’s not afraid of my other son’s Boston Terrier, and was arrogant enough to sneak into the other bedrooms and try to steal cat food from the other cats. She did a fine job keeping the Adorables entertained for a week, and that’s good work.

    I’m just wondering, however, what have we created? LOL

    Or if she remembers she’s our cat?

    Well, she does like to curl up next to us at night and purr away. Good cat. 🙂

    Liked by 7 people

    Reply

  7. Sounds horrific for so many, Michelle. Very grateful you’ve gotten the all-clear and will be able to go home at last.

    I’ve been up for a few hours, most of it spent in the bathroom. Either a stomach virus or something we ate at that massive luncheon speech yesterday — it also was at the cruise terminal (and you know the stories of all those sick cruises, who knows what lurks on surfaces there).

    Then again, I’ve not felt great all week, felt like I was either bottoming out energy-wise or was getting *something,* just no specific symptoms (until about 4 a.m. today, and how lovely that’s been ever since).

    I was supposed to give a fellow reporter in town a ride in this morning and was meeting someone else for lunch at work today — and of course the Real Estate Guy & foundation workers very specifically wanted me GONE for the day and going forward as they work on this house.

    But looks like I’ll be staying home today, will have to just curl up on the sofa with a blanket over my head and try to ignore all the ruckus below. I’ll text people to cancel all the other stuff shortly and let my boss know.

    Fortunately still no jury call for me today, 4th day in a row. Can you call in sick to jury duty? I’m thinking I may finally have to go in to report on Friday.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  8. I’ll need to get the Jeep moved out of the driveway soon, the workers will be here by 7:30 a.m. and will of course be populating all the space out there with trucks, equipment, etc.

    Later I’ll try to dash to the drug store to pick up some Imodium D (?). I thought I still had some from a couple years ago or more but can’t find it, must have tossed it based on expiration date and how infrequently I ever use anything like that.

    Like

    Reply

  11. Happy Birthday, Elvera!

    Reading about Michelle’s fire woes makes me say, “I think I’ll take tornadoes over fires. At least you can shelter in your own home when there is a tornado predicted.”

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

  13. Good Morning! The days are getting shorter aren’t they? It is just after 7 and barely getting light out there. I would guess just beyond these pines there is a beautiful sunrise happening!
    Blessed to know Michelle will have a place to land once she gets home. I learned yesterday that my dear friend’s daughter is in Santa Rosa fighting the fire…she is with a hot shot team and she is exhausted! Her name is Ali and she says she has been cutting down a lot of trees!!

    Liked by 5 people

    Reply

  17. Peter, I’ll also take tornadoes over earthquakes, since with tornadoes you usually have some warning. Of course I might feel differently if I’d actually had a tornado rip through my house.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  18. It was 60 degrees inside at 6 a.m. here.

    Our power went out with a giant pop sound of a transformer shooting last night around 11 p.m. I had to call Georgia Power. They got right on it with a repair crew which got it fixed quickly. The neighbor’s houses appeared to not be affected so that seemed strange. Perhaps it affected houses on the street behind us.

    Cuddles the Cat, Miss Bosley in cold weather, has been especially sweet lately. Her fur even feels cool to the touch.

    Looking forward to receiving Michelle’s book. Several books written by authors I know on Facebook are launching now for the beginnings of the Christmas season.

    Does anyone shop at a Sprouts grocery store? I do not know if it is a nationwide chain. They seem to have mostly organic foods.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  19. 2900 homes? I cannot even imagine.

    It sounds like the kitten has been a blessing to your whole family.

    And last night I finished reading the book “before” yours in line, so yours is up. (Actually yours leapfrogged over a bunch of others, but it’s in line next regardless of how it got there.)

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  20. Janice, we have two Sprouts stores in the area….one of them newly built closer to me…only takes me about 15 minutes to get there! I like it but I like Trader Joe’s better…it takes me about a half hour to get to Trader Joe’s 😊 And we also have a Whole Foods which I prefer over Sprouts…I think Sprouts seems too “warehouse like” for me.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  21. Re the header: that is not two birds, just one (tree swallow, I think, or maybe a phoebe or something of that sort) and its reflection. It’s at our favorite local state park. I set up the camera to get the nice reflection, and just as I snapped it, the bird flew in.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  24. Daughter is safely in the care of others for now. They were trying to get her all excited about her time at camp. We get together in groups and talk about things. I like to be alone. We think you have a lot to add to the groups. I like to be alone. Welcome to my world, people.

    Liked by 7 people

    Reply

  25. How long will she be away, Mumsee? Does anyone know? Can you tell us which camp in Utah?

    A friend’s sister was sent to one; the school district paid for it. This girl, too, was adopted and loved by a family here in town. She has an older sister who also was adopted–older sister had her rebellious moments, but is working and living on her own very successfully now.

    Younger sister got more of the mom’s addictions into her system and has had a rocky life all along. Loving, kind, financially sound parents brought her up in our church and have loved her all through it. No happy ending, yet. She’s about 27 now.

    I think her parents are heroes.

    Like

    Reply

  26. I fell into a deep sleep at around 5:30 and woke up with a start at 8 a.m., deciding it was really too late then to make all those arrangements with work, person I was picking up and lunch person to be sick all day. I felt OK, not great, but the worst of the symptoms from earlier seemed to be gone, from what I could tell in my grogginess, and I suspect it was food related — so took a quick shower, fed the dogs and got out of the house to pick up co-worker on time.

    Guys were pounding away under the house when I left — BANG. BANG. BANG — so it’s all probably for the best. I feel like I’m in a fog and all I want is some oatmeal and a nap.

    Found my book from Amazon on the front porch when I left. 🙂

    Liked by 5 people

    Reply

  27. Sprouts is OK for many things, it happens to be one of the more convenient food stops for me in my neighborhood as I’m coming home (which is when I do most of my grocery shopping). Produce is good, they have some interesting ‘health’ cereals, good bread section. Not huge selections on things like meats, etc, though.

    Like

    Reply

  28. Michelle, she is not really at a camp. I had told her it was kind of like camp or a spa when all she had to do was read and color and write and they fed her and told her to take a shower and a walk. She is in a mental health facility in Orem. I don’t know the name of it. They said any where from three days to a week or more. Not very definite. Husband told them he would like three days notification so he can arrange to get her picked up.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  30. Happy Birthday, Elvera!

    Welcome to the Midwest, Michelle! I wish I lived closer to Chicago…

    Glad you have the all-clear to go back home.

    And no problem with the book on backorder — I’ve been so busy with the usual routine, plus preparing for concerts in early December (Christmas music) and late January (a fantastic and technically challenging Schubert duet to commemorate his birthday), and trying to get things organized around here to maybe host Thanksgiving at our house, that I have precious little time for reading lately.

    I am certain I will love reading the book when it is in my hands. 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  31. Natural disasters — wouldn’t want to go through any of them. We did have two small tornadoes in our town since moving here. One was this spring, a few miles away. The other came within a half mile of our property, in September 2005.

    There is a town in Wisconsin I heard of, named Siren, that, ironically, had a tornado hit when the town’s only siren was not working. Fatalities with that one, tragically.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tornado_outbreak_of_June_18,_2001

    Like

    Reply

  32. One little mystery solved! As I drove into the driveway, I saw a dead opossum directly under our telephone pole with the transformer on it. I had wondered last night if it could have been that creature since Art saw it in our carport when he drove in. Some people get coyotes. We get opossums. And pity it’s the opossoms and not the coyotes that climb poles with transformers attached. That was a big kaboom last night when everything went dark in the house.

    Thanks for info on Sprouts. We have a new one near us, but I will have to find out where. It is hard to believe how much everything has been changing in our area. Some areas seem to have lost all their landmarks.

    I returned the ring to J. C. Penney. Now to have a hunt for Art’s ring to see if it is feasible for me to use it.

    So thankful that Michelle is cleared to go home ☨Thanks be to God that the majority of lives and homes were saved considering the magnitude of the fires. I know many are in mourning, but God deserves praise through it all, too.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  36. A squirrel once killed power to our old newspaper office. He was killed, we named him Sparky, and a little memorial soon sprouted up, after which Sparky became the topic of a column someone wrote for the paper.

    Good news on the foundation; Apparently the bottom, in-the-ground concrete layer of my 1923 foundation looks good, very solid — it’s only the layer on top of that, apparently an improvised mixture at the time made of

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

  37. sand, big rocks, random stuff. That’s what was crumbling. So we are taking that out as planned, obviously, but Real Estate Guy says that bottom layer looks like it can remain in the ground, making the job less expensive than we thought it might be as concrete apparently is very, very expensive.

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

  40. I have seen severe tornado damage. We drove through a town in Kansas a month or so after a tornado almost completely wiped it out. The trees looked like broken toothpicks. Only a few brick buildings downtown were still standing. But I still would rather be here with occasional tornado warnings and a blizzard once every 20 years, than face the possibility of earthquakes and wild fires, or hurricanes.

    Like

    Reply

  43. The new header photo is from the fair, too, believe it or not, although it was not entered in any of the events. But while we were watching the horse pull, this red-tailed hawk flew across the sky. I zoomed in just in time to get a fairly good shot of it putting out its talons to land.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  45. Officially excused from jury duty, no need to report Friday either, so I’m absolved. 🙂

    I can hear the sea lions barking at my house at night, wonderful sound that travels up the hill from the harbor. But they’re not very popular with fishermen or others who make their living on or near the water.

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

  48. DJ – In my town & the surrounding area, there are lots of homes with crumbling foundations. They were all poured by a certain company that used some bad ingredient in their concrete that is now, after about 15 years, causing those foundations to crumble apart. The cost for fixing them is something like $100,000, or close to it (probably depends on the size of the house). As you can imagine, it is a big news story, & the affected homeowners are angry.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  50. Kizzie, wow, that sounds like a scary, expensive mess. I figure my foundation lasted nearly 100 years and survived a couple major earthquakes, so it hasn’t done bad. But the one layer of weird stuff probably was an innovative mix before the days when cement mixer trucks were easy to come by. So the guys threw in what they could, including some very large rocks. The leak from the bathroom along with some natural settling took it’s toll it’s done its job.

    Got home after 7 when it was dark so hard to see out there but I went out with a flashlight to check it out (Real Estate Guy warned me it’d look awful, like nothing is supporting the house on that side). There’s just a huge void on that that side, under bathroom area mostly for now, with the smell of dirt. I’m sure annie’s been in the explore a bit.

    I’ll get a better look (and photos) in the morning, I’ll have to get up early to get the trash cans out, the guys left their hauler here filled with all the old foundation scraps so it’s a tight squeeze out in that driveway right now.

    Cheryl, we’re counting our chickens (or were an hour ago, haven’t heard how the game is going or went since then). our entryway palm trees were all lighted up with Dodger Blue LED lights tonight (our cop reporter joked “Yeah, right behind the yellow police tape.”)

    Like

    Reply

  51. Anyone see the movie “Express”? It’s making the rounds on cable this month, the story of Ernie Davis, the first black player to earn the Heisman Trophy (in 1961). Good film and a reminder of how very difficult life was for African American families in the not-so-distant past.

    Like

    Reply

  53. I said something to Adan, the foundation/all-around worker from Guatemala this morning about “old houses” when we were chatting about the foundation. But he said he’d been working on a house built in the 1990s with worse problems, major leaks, etc., so there you go.

    Like

    Reply

Leave a reply to kathaleena Cancel reply