California Wildfires

In case any of my friends outside of where I live are interested, there are a lot of fires going on in California right now.  A lot of them were sparked by a lightening storm that we had recently and I am really frightened about how many will be sparked after 4th of July.

They’ve pretty much banned fireworks around here because of the fires and I am glad of that.

Right now there is a fire raging fairly near my house…not alarmingly near but we can see and feel the smoke in the air and there has been ashes raining from the sky on a couple of days.

It’s disturbing to me because of a couple of factors.

The first is that I quit smoking in August and in the past week I have felt the like I was still smoking given the air quality since the fires.  My lungs have felt crappy and there has been that nasty dry hacking cough in the back of my throat in the morning.  There is literally a haze on the horizon and it is all smoke from the fire.  Today was the first day I saw blue sky before leaving my house this morning.

The second is that locations within 15 miles of my house are now on voluntary evacuation right now.  Rob said it is only because of the back fires they lit to help stop the fire and I’m sure that is true, but it doesn’t make me feel any less safe.

Everyone is reassuring me that there is nothing wrong and it will be stopped before it reaches the point of evacuation…and this is exactly what I will tell my mother if she calls and asks about it, but I’m really scared.

Mostly I’m scared to leave the dogs here during the day.  I know in the sane part of my mind that we will be notified well enough in advance to bring the dogs to my inlaws, but the panic part of my brain says, well, to panic!

I know that I’m being totally irrational but I can feel the anxiety building(it is what I do, after all) and I just want to make it stop.

Okay, that is all.  I know I’m safe and that I will be okay but it helps to vent sometimes.

Thanks for listening Internet.