Days on Edge -or- Normalcy Through the NELP

Hundreds of firefighters have arrived in town. They are headed upriver to fight the monster Holiday Farm Fire. We have been in Level 1 since Tuesday and holding tight. The cars are packed with stuff and ready to leave within minutes if need be. Thankfully the smoke (which is so thick and heavy the air quality warning levels end far before the level of particulate matter) has changed the weather and it is 20 degrees cooler than it was forecast to be this week. So now we wait.

Quite a few people we know have lost houses, their possessions, and whatnot to the fire. A few of my clients have had to evacuate and some are being evacuated from their evacuation spaces due to the other fires across the state.

We spent today getting things together for people who had lost everything and now I am trying to just maintain the state of normal life by fighting against the most nefarious beast known to mankind. No, not a video game villain, but the NELP. The Never Ending Laundry Pile. A monster so vile and unyielding that it can continue to spawn new heads every time one is severed. (Yes, like a Hydra) So sneaky, it can pile up several feet high in a single day. (Why do kids change their clothes so much when they don’t even go outside?)

At least that’s back to normal.

Maybe the Last Post from my House

The fires are getting close. I know anyone who has gone through a natural disaster like a tornado, fire, etc knows what this is like. Looking around at the things you’ve had for your whole life (not much), your adult life (more) and that you’ve worked very hard to get and knowing that it may be the last time you ever see or use them.

It’s trite, and we should think instead in terms of, “Well, we are all getting out with our lives, and that’s what is important / that’s why we pay so much for insurance” but still. As an American, consumerism has been driven into our psyche and I think, “I have thousands of dollars worth of video games in my garage that I cannot take with me. I have 65+ pair of sneakers I cannot take with me.” It’s a lot easier to part with the TVs and things that there’s already a new model of, and that you can just roll into a Costco on any given Wednesday and pick up. The baby blankets and photo albums that aren’t already scanned are in the car already.

Listening to the police/fire scanner is a double edged sword because there are so many alerts and so much going on yet the majority of it does not apply to us. The kids aren’t scared. They were just upset that the emergency alerts kept on beeping in while they were watching Glitch Techs.

Be safe everyone.

A Controversial Opinion

I really just do not like mangoes. They are bottom-tier fruit, they really are.

Fruits that are better than mangoes:

  • Apples (all types)
  • Pears (all types)
  • Grapes (all types)
  • Pineapples (especially Hawaiian)
  • Pretty much all berries and I’m including things that are actually berries, but are commonly referred to as berries such as strawberries because if you want to get technical about it, berries by definition are a single-seeded fruit such as avocados. So I guess that makes guacamole technically a fruit spread, but I digress…
  • Tomatoes in the right circumstance (re: sauce or diced in specific foods)
  • Apricots
  • Peaches
  • Nectarines
  • Bananas (thank you Gwen Stefani for ensuring I can spell it)
  • Kiwi
  • Starfruit
  • Oranges
  • Lemons
  • Limes
  • Tangelos
  • Tangerines
  • Figs
  • Watermelon, etc.

Things that are in the same tier as Mangoes

  • Grapefuit (excluding grapefruit-flavored things that are better)
  • Cantaloupe