Green Comet

As you know, if you’ve been following this, we’re currently “between homes.” The home we were living in sold and the one we’re moving in to hasn’t been installed. So we’re floating around, living here and there, while our stuff is in storage. Well, as of last night, the place where our stuff is stored has been put under an evacuation alert due to an encroaching wildfire. My immediate reaction was to try to recall where my manuscripts are. The banker’s boxes containing my stories, including the hand-written first drafts. Good news. They are safely stored in a shed far from the fire. The other stuff — furniture and clothes and so on — can be more easily replaced. Not that there won’t be a loss. It also includes irreplaceable things like photograph albums and other personal mementos, so it would leave a hole if it got burned up, but I selfishly value my creations more.

It just goes on.

rjb

I’m in a motel now, trying to balance the imposition of my presence in my niece’s house. They say I’m welcome there whenever and for as long as necessary. In fact they said they hoped I would be back soon when I left to come here. I believe them, but who knows how they will feel in a month or six weeks or two months or however long this is going to last?

The worst of it is that I’m so up in the air that I can’t get down to writing the final section of my current novel. I got a couple of pages done so I know that I can still do it, but it’s not easy to find the time nor to have the energy when I do. I spend a lot of my time thinking about revenge, and that’s not nice either.

Thank you for letting me vent.

rjb

The house sold and changed hands with minimal fuss, other than having to live in a show home all that time. We got our stuff moved out but now we’re stuck without a place to move into. Our manufactured home was supposed to be installed by now — or, at least, we were hoping that it would be — but the lot sits empty. What with moving the house and installing it and getting the inspector in, we could be stuck in this limbo for six weeks.

Well, at least it’s not winter. The trouble is, it’s summer so the hotels are expensive and people in this area tend to have visitors so the surfing couches are in short supply. So we get to look forward to six weeks of alternating between expensive hotels and overwhelmed hosts. Yuck. With all the expense and hassle the worst of it might be not being able to get at my writing and recording as easily as I’m used to. Currently I’m lucky. I’m set up at one end of my niece’s dining room table so I’ve kind of got an office. Unfortunately, even though she is generous and welcoming, I can’t stay here for that long, so I’m going to have to swap off with the hotel.

At least we have a home at the end of this. No matter how much of a hassle this is, we are a lot better off than we could be. There. The optimism at the end of all the whingeing.

rjb