World on fire, pt 2

The madness continues. We are still very lucky, safe in our homes with power (and now) internet. But new fires kept popping up last night, starting a torrent of conspiracy theories - it’s gotta be some California-hating MAGA lunatic, right? - but as of now we don’t know what’s started all these random smaller fires, so I’ll withhold theorizing. Let’s just say we all panicked a bit when fires broke out in Hollywood and then Studio City within minutes of each other, and I’m here alone, sick, with two kids. Our neighborhood could 100% go up in flames at any moment - we’re in a hill, with lots of dry brush. I’m at the very bottom of it on a busy street, but so were many of the homes destroyed in Altadena. Let’s just say if someone chose to fuck with us here there’s really not much we could do, with no water and resources stretched so thin. I slept with the fire extinguisher next to the bed and had the boys pack bags. 

Yesterday was endless heartbreak as friends - close friends - one by one announced their total losses on FB. There are a few who don’t know anything yet. I remember that horrible sick feeling so well during Katrina when I had to sit here helpless, thousands of miles away, wondering what had happened to the property I had just bought days before. Of course that’s entirely different because it wasn’t my personal home with all my stuff in it - but financially, it was devastating; remember, I didn’t technically pay off the debt from that debacle until I paid off this house three months ago (so 19 years later). 

So many landmark businesses and historical buildings are gone. LA is going to look very different after this, and people are going to be displaced for years, or may never come back. Also, the already tentative insurance situation for all of us is going to get a lot gnarlier (I fully expect to just be dropped by State Farm entirely at this point - and with the Orange shit stain in office, nobody’s going to do anything about it). 

Kids are now off school all week, which is nowhere near as upsetting as it would have been a few years ago; honestly, they’re happy as clams just building things together on the VR all day as long as I throw food at them occasionally. And for me, I feel good having us all together and knowing they’re safe. I have tons of boring tax work to do, which has to be done at home anyway, so other than getting 0 exercise I’m living pretty much the week I had planned. Still dieting which is terrible timing (all I want to do all day is stuff my face…but I don’t), but having this dry throat/head cold/whatever bullshit illness I’ve been dealing with the past two weeks plus this horrid air quality has been challenging, to say the least. What I wouldn’t give for a breath of fresh air right now. But I’m afraid that is a long, long way off.

Fires are still raging, winds are still blowing (elsewhere) and we are still in danger every minute. I desperately need to get to a grocery store - I had just thrown everything out after the fridge failed again while we were on our trip - but I’m reluctant to leave the house unattended (apparently many people have left our little hill neighborhood and now thieves are prowling around looting. Awesome) or leave the kids unattended. I tried to get delivery going but the stupid app is having some kind of server problem. Not sure what to do about all that. 

It’s hard to say if even on Monday things will be normal and school will return. I’m profoundly grateful that we even have a home and a school. I realize all of this could be gone in the blink of an eye, and that happening over the next few days, while unlikely, is not impossible. 

The H had a terrible fire years ago in which his pets died, and he often talks about how traumatizing and terrible that was, but yesterday said how he realized if he just hadn’t let it traumatize him as much it really wouldn’t have been that bad. Umm..what? He said the bad part was his reaction to it. Ummm…yeah? That’s what trauma is. Nobody chooses to be traumatized. Your reaction is your reaction. When you’ve had one of the worst things possible in the human experience happen to you, I say you get to react however the fuck you want. And just turning off your feelings about it…well, that’s a reaction, too, and you’re entitled to it, but I certainly wouldn’t be prescribing that for anyone else (which is what he was doing, reaching out to people who just that day found out they’d lost everything). Then a friend who had just evacuated wanted to philosophize about how fascinating it is that nature just clears everything out from time to time…and I just had no patience for it. I snapped that it’s easy to get all philosophical when you haven’t just lost everything. All of this smacks of my former culty religion so I was just extremely triggered. Can’t we just accept that all of this sucks and is a terrible tragedy and leave it at that? There’s nothing more to say. It sucks. Period.