Quick Update

For the moment I am still in Paradise-- though judging from all the smoke it feels like we're scratching at the armpit of hell (OK not such a pretty image, but this isn't pretty).

Smoke wakes me up at 5:30 a.m every morning. The air is brown and thick with ashes falling like rain. My youngest carries an umbrella whenever we go outside.


A fire is burning a couple miles from our house. We aren't in danger-- yet-- but if the fire makes a run tomorrow I'm out of here. My mother-in-law is afraid the fire will make a run toward her house and calls me with "fire updates" every couple of hours. I think she wants to just evacuate and get it over.

Today I considered granting her wish because I knew she was really worried and needed support. She kept asking if she should just pack everyone up and come to my house. I wish I'd been a better daughter-in-law and said come over, but the thought of five adults (my mother-in-law, he mother and her neighbor), three kids and some crazy number of pets just made me nervous. I thought maybe we could all go to Butte Meadows. My parents have a cabin in that small mountain community and to me it's "sanctuary." It's smoky there, but at least a fire isn't breathing down our necks-- or so I thought. No, I turned on the news and learned Cal-Fire had just evacuated Butte Meadows.

I wished I could call my husband, but all I get is the "Verizon" lady.

My husband is on the front lines in Fall River Mills-- though I suspect he's really in a town called Cassel and doesn't want to tell me. Cassel is located near Fall River Mills, but he knows it would break my heart if I knew the little town was on fire. He forgets I can learn all these nasty details on the news. I learned to fly fish on Hat Creek in Cassel. It's just a special place to me.

This series of fires worries me. My husband has only slept four hours since Friday because there aren't enough firefighters to fight these fires. I know that as other fires get under control, more help will come-- but it's just so dangerous. I don't understand how he can go on the way he does without any sleep. I guess it's just that special firefighter training.

More lightning is coming on Thursday. I just don't know what this state will do. We don't have the resources or manpower to fight this mess.
I know everything will work out in the end that's what my husband keeps saying in our short 15-second conversations -- those rare moments when he moves his crew to another location and can manage a short call.
It's just, "Hi, I'm alive. Just wanted to hear your voice. Love you, Bye."

"Love you."

Home at Last

When I last left you, I was fleeing Paradise for greener pasture. The Humboldt Fire was whipping up the side of the canyon and chewing up everything in sight. From my vantage point on Skyway, our canyon looked like a black ashy cauldron with orange, red and black marbled smoke hissing out of the pot and choking the sun of its place in the sky. Every once in a while a house stood solitary-- alive against a backdrop of destruction.

I left thinking out house was safe, but as I traveled down the canyon the wind whipped the fire into a frenzy and it jumped onto the ridge and rattled toward my house.

"Ben, it's on the upper ridge," I said into my cellphone, but to him I sounded like a scuba diver talking under water.
"What!' he shouted.
"The fire-- up on the ridge," I said. "We need to turn back."
"What? No--" He said. "What do you want to do? You can't do anything. Let's go. If the house is still here when we get back, then fine. You can't do anything."
"But my cat," I said.
And then static.

We drove on. My fingers clenched the steering wheel with white knuckles and marital frustration. How could he be such a ____? He's a firefighter. he should be out there on the front lines not going on vacation. More bad thoughts and a few turns int he road.

I pulled over. Called work. Our neighborhood was being evacuated. I called my husband back.

"Ben, they're evacuating our neighborhood," I shouted into my phone.

"The fire is two miles from our house," he said. "Will you stop worrying. You see, this is why we left. If we were home, you'd just be freaking out. They're evacuating so they can fight the fire without "Aunt Maybelle" worrying about us trampling on her prized tomatoes."

"Will you stop that," I said.

"No, really, it's just precautionary," he said. "It's just so people aren't in danger-- and so we can do our jobs. "

He could still sense the tension on seething from my end of the phone so he added, "I'm sorry I was a little flip."

We drove on and I vowed not to check in on the fire.
I wasn't being fair. My husband's crew was out on the fire. His camp was vacant and his chief told him to go ahead and take his vacation because it would be his last for a very long time.

Fast track to this Saturday.

My husband is now back at work, but I haven't heard from him since Thursday. I have no idea what is going on-- only that our house is safe.

I get home, resuscitate some of my plants and start to unpack when rain rattles the rocky driveway. It's as dark as a closet-- and then in the clouds overhead someone suddenly turns on a light. It sneaks up on me with a flash and then one, two, three-- nature announces her presence with a boom.

The next morning I awake to smoke. More than 300 fires have broken out across the state-- one just a few miles from my in-laws.
We are safe once again.

More lightning is scheduled for Thursday, so cross your fingers.

I am just thankful to be home at last-- and to a home that is still standing.

If my daughter can tolerate the smoke, we will stay for now. I have two projects due this week. If not, I'll take my laptop and pray I can get my work done on the road.

Where we will go this time-- I don't know.

The Humboldt Fire rattles Paradise, but my town is still standing

As I look down Skyway and see red and orange erupting from the darkness, evilly eerie cottony towers of flame-induced clouds, it hits me.
This is my town.

I’ve covered stories of nature’s destruction. I talked to people whose homes were consumed by the Poe Fire and the Storrie Fire, but it was different. It wasn’t my home, my town. It wasn’t happening here to people I knew before I had to write the story.
You can feel empathy toward strangers,. You even can cry with them, but somehow this is just different.

It’s my town at stake, the whole heart and breath of our community in danger.
Fortunately, my family and my home are not threatened at this time. The fire is about three miles from our house.

But when tragedy strikes a corner of something you love, it’s like a piece of the whole is endangered and you want to rise up and protect the very things you hold most dear-- your community.

It is my hope people have responded with outstretched hands, neighbor to neighbor.

What impresses me most about the situation is the shear nerve of our Town.

Though every major route out of town was closed to traffic, people seemed to be keeping their cool.

Angry traffic congested panic didn’t ensue as many predicted-- even when the lights went out.

People just did what they were told-- gathered up their personal belongings, said goodbye to their homes and let their faith prevail.

And our firefighters proved once again -- we are in good hands, the best of hands.

When you consider how much ground this fire burned , 20,000 acres from Highway 32 to Butte College, and you consider how many homes were in danger, it is a miracle the area wasn’t just flattened.

Instead of shear destruction, our fire personnel managed to save hundreds of homes and push the fire away from the most populous areas.

And while the fire fighters on the front lines may gather the bulk of the thanks, other heroes often go unnoticed.

Our police, deputy sheriffs, highway patrol, VIPS, the entire staff at town hall, Red Cross volunteers and dare I say reporters all did their part to keep the public informed, to direct traffic, to evacuate people and to help diffuse the enormity of this situation.

Some might say it was luck that kept the fire from wrecking havoc on the Town of Paradise, but I think we all had a big role in keeping things from blowing up in our faces.

Peace was kept.

We survived with only one way out of Town.

And we proved once and for all that we are prepared when disaster strikes.
As the embers die down on what is probably now a much larger fire, I hope we can show the same support to our neighbors as they rebuild their corner of “our town“.



On that note folks, I am scooping up my girls and we're heading to Oregon. Abby, my 6-year-old has asthma and this is just not the right environment for her. If my house is still standing, I'll post something when I return.

BS in My Space

So my dear folks let me tell you how pathetic I have become since last leaving you.

This spring I became an avid American Idol watcher. Loved it. Voted. Downloaded it. Turned into walking zombie.

My brain matter is now classified as mush. Perhaps I will go into the mushy-gushy self esteem lowering details later, but I know nobody wants to read that long of a post on a Monday morning, so I'll save you all a trip down pathetic lane.

Fast forward to May 31st.

The show is off the air. My mother and I are still debating the fine qualities of the two "Davids" and whether or not Jason Castro threw a big party the night he got voted off. He may have screwed up Mr. Tamborine Man, but at least he didn't have to sing the penguin song. I figured if he made it to the top three, Simon would make him sing "Hot For Teacher" or some other horrendous 80s rock anthem-- either that or "Uum Bop" by the Hansen brothers. I think Mr. Castro was one smart cookie if it was a calculated memory lasp.

Oh yes, it's May 31st and the show is off the air, the guest appearances are completed and I can no longer download Dolly Week off ITunes. What is a girl to do? Visit YouTube for pirated copies-- well of course. But it gets better.

Yes, I took to googling for the latest idol contestant information-- only to find out Jason Castro and the crowd have My Space accounts. I know what a shocker.


I clicked on the link faster than my 35-year-old brain could command my fingers to please act their age.

And then a very disturbing thing happened. The darn thing would not let me read his blog WTF? There was info to be read. Curious minds need to know-- how did he get to those dreads?

I tried to leave a nice little comment "You may have shot the Tamborine Man, but "I don't want to cry" "somewhere over the rainbow" because I'll be "daydreaming" about living "forever in blue jeans"as I'm "Traveling thru" on a "September Morn-- "hallelujah!"

Somebody please stop me.

Well nobody did. well, perhaps they tried. I couldn't leave my well thought-out comment. Only friends could leave comments. To become a friend, I had to get a My Space account and send out a friend request.

And I am so flipping ashamed to admit good sense didn't step in-- no I sent out a request saying "You didn't exactly have me at "Hello," but you had me the second you sang "What . . . a . .day for . ..daydream?"

And you know what? He actually let me be his friend.


I know, I know. I need help. I need your help. Get me through these post Idol days -- one step at a time. there is a world out there, a world where the presidential campaign is finally coming to a close, a world where my children are out of school and need someone to trap pollywogs with them. There is a blog and it needs some attention-- and maybe with a little help I'll forget about the dueling Davids and the dreadlocks and how super hot Michael Johns was before I remembered I'm 35 and this is only a TV show for crying out loud.

BTW you can all be "friends" on my MySpace (giggle-giggle) and join in the fun of feeling 16 again. I have one post and it will probably be my last at www.myspace.com/bsnspace.

They don't just raise themselves

All year my failures as a mother drag me down into the depths of a dark and piteous party, and I don‘t think I am the only one in attendance.

In this dungeon of motherly despair are those moms who forgot to sign “the homework sheet,” who decided they were too tired to cook and swung into MC Donald’s for a family fat pill, whose voices rose just a little too loudly when Jenny or Jimmy robbed the peony bush of her blossoms and who forgot it was bike day or snack day or -- I don‘t know-- bring your lama to school day.

I am certainly not June Clever, nor am I as swank and put together as a “Park Mom.”

I am the lady who prays each morning that her kids are not tardy, that all their homework is done and that no one wants to chitchat in the carpool lane because she may or may not be dressed in pajamas.

My garden has weeds in it. My beds aren’t always made. And my laundry never seems to be done.

But, you know what? I’m a pretty good mom.

So many times I beat myself up for my failures that I forget to recognize the small miracles I nurture every day.

I don’t think I’m an anomaly.

I’m sure I’m not the only mom who has locked the bathroom door to escape arguments over who said what, did what or didn’t do what to someone else.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels unworthy of all the Mother’s Day hullabaloo.

As my kids drench me sloppy kisses and wrap me in a wallpaper of homemade cards, I just feel undeserving.

How can they forgive me for not always listening or for tuning them out as they perform yet another “Kid Concert” during the evening news?

But they do. They see all the good. This year I am going to try to see it with them and celebrate my triumphs.

I am a good mom because I read to my girls every night.

I tuck them in and give them fairy kisses.

I floss their teeth ( a disgusting but very necessary duty , especially after my baby’s last dental visit, which incidentally made me feel like Bad Mom No. 4,000).

On most weeks I bake two batches of chocolate chip cookies and then portion them out into Ziploc bags so they aren’t gobbled up in one day.

I also make them homemade strawberry jam and let them lick the spoon.

No bowls of scrapped out cookie dough go unlicked.

Each summer, I load the kids into the car and we go camping-- just the four of us.

I know how to set up a tent, light a campfire and barbecue.

I can read a map and am not afraid to indulge in a road trip.

I am not afraid of bugs, so when my baby slaps a caterpillar or beetle on my arm, I investigate it with her.

I know I am a good mom because I worry, I feel inadequate, but in the depths of my soul I know
I am doing the right thing -- though I am not always as successful as I wish.

I know my kids aren’t always angels, but I also know they are pretty empathetic.

They are three amazing, sweet girls, and though I know a lot of their goodness comes from within-- I also know I have something to do with it.