Author: wwducat

It’s nice to be home.

The smell of smoke is heavy in the air, the dog is sleeping in his favorite spot on the floor. (He’s not stupid, the spot is right where the A/C blows down)

Gotta give him credit. He’s right where he needs to be to keep an eye on me as I’m unpacking and setting things to rights. He doesn’t like the smell of smoke, but his happiness to be home far outweighs his dislike of the smell.

It’s only in the mid 70s here and a sparkling clear day but the smoky smell forced me to close the house and fire up the A/C. 

The firefighters are still doing water drops. According to the inciweb.org site, the fire is mostly smoldering with occasional flareups.

Time to start some laundry, and allow the computer to catch up on the delayed backups.

While I’m doing that, I’m watching Pirates of the Caribbean.

One thing I can say about staying at the hotel, after having all the television networks and the movies channels I don’t regret for a moment going to basic cable.

Now on with the chores.

Thanks for all the kind wishes and prayers.

After sleeping for 10+ hours I feel a little more like normal.

The Dog slept soundly and is more like his normal self this morning.

We’re still evacuated it doesn’t look like that’s going to change today. It might but I’m thinking more likely I’ll be here at the hotel until tomorrow.

I’m good with it.

Friends have offered shelter and I am very grateful for those offers.

We’ve not taken them up on their unbelievably generous offers for a couple reasons.

1) We hate to impose…

Yes I know friends say it’s not an imposition and they mean it. But think about it, It’s one thing to have guests stay for the weekend or a defined time and you can deal with that. In this case, I can’t tell anyone when I’ll be leaving. They can’t make plans for their weekend or possibly well into next week for that matter.

2) We have a large dog…

Believe me 85 pounds of curious happy go lucky retriever is not something you invite into your home lightly.

The dog is very well behaved. He likes cats, he likes children, and generally he will respond to command unless he’s wound himself up to the point of needing to hear me tell him he’s a bad dog.

Think about this,  if your house isn’t childproofed it’s surely not retriever proofed.

All those expensive hand blown, one of a kind glass trinkets artfully arranged on a shelf 5 inches off the ground?

GONE! in one swipe of happy puppy tail.

That bookshelf with magazines and expensive coffee table books casually arranged to invite someone to read them? HAHAHAAHA that shelf is cleared and nicely dusted by a hairy dog trying to sniff the squirrel he can see through the window behind the shelf.

When we decline your gracious invitation, It’s nothing personal my friends. You don’t have a dog in your house for a reason… You like your lives to have some order and you prefer to be able to display your art in a manner around your home that is appealing to you.

This is as it should be, and I appreciate from the bottom of my heart your willingness to open your home to us…

But I’ve been in your homes and I look at the beauty, and picture a large dog, no matter how well behaved in the middle of your place, and I shudder.

Believe me a hotel room is cheaper and is going to do less damage to our relationship.

Even those of my friends who have pets.

Think about this… My dog likes cats… he wants to play with them and often they don’t want to play with him. This results in the potential for chases, usually ending in crashing crockery.

Those of you who have dogs. You know that some dogs just don’t get along with other dogs. My dog is generally sweet but every once in a while he encounters another dog that says “your momma”.

This ends with me and the owner of the other dog having our shoulders yanked out of the socket because the two dogs have decided to take care of business and it’s all we can do to restrain them.

Imagine for a moment how that might play out if my dog is invading your dogs space…

If we stay then it’s going to be all about marching one dog outside while the other is inside, Then changing the guard 4 or 5 hours later. Your dog deserves not having their routine disrupted.

So unless my dog and your dog have met before and not had any issues I’m going to decline your invitation.

You may think this is all about the dog…

Well, yes and no.

It’s really about me. If I’m having to worry about your house being trashed accidentally, or our dogs fighting, or my dog chasing your cat out of the house…

I’m not going to be able to rest or get much of anything done. It’s really about my ability to tell the dog “Go lay down” and have him do that so he can rest too.

Being evacuated is stressful for a human, imagine what it’s like for a dog who doesn’t really understand what is going on or why.

The dog is part of my family too, so yes I guess a lot of it is about the dog. However a lot of it is about my friendships.

So don’t be offended when I turn you down.

It’s that I value our friendship more than the trivial cost of a hotel room.

As of 8 am no homes have been destroyed. 

My Alarm system is still responding to commands and reporting status. So that is good news, it means that my house is still there. 

We have only 5% containment at this time. 

The Firefighters have been pounding the fire with air drops all night but the area that is burning hasn’t been burned for a very long time.

Here’s a photo of the first hint that there was a problem.

It doesn’t look like much does it?

Within just a few hours the scene look like the next photo.

The fire started coming down the face of the hill toward the line of homes 2 streets above my street.

That’s when the fire department told us to leave.

It make sense because the streets are narrow and if the fire were to advance toward the houses suddenly, there would be pandemonium as the residents and the firefighters tried to get out of the way.

This way, if the firefighters have to bail out, at least all they have to worry about is getting themselves and other people who have appropriate training instead of trying to make sure that a bunch of panicky civilians too.

In my neighborhood only one person didn’t evacuate. It was his right but probably not exactly the smartest move anyone ever made.

We’ve evacuated to a very local hotel. The dog is sprawled on the tile floor and is finally calming down.

Between Kitties, chickens and his whole world being turned upside down for the second time in less than a month he’s a little stressed. I’m thinking we’re going to just hang here with the A/C running and just relax.

You have to love the fact that the dog has ice floating in his water. Can you say spoiled puppy?