Rambling thoughts from a cold-addled person with smoke in her lungs:

One of my earliest childhood memories of Halloween was 3rd grade. I was trick or treating in my neighborhood, and the skies behind the mountains that flanked our house were orange with fire. I remember the stark black of the mountains against the orange so clearly. We were on evacuation alert, but hadn’t been moved yet, and I was too young and too Pisces to be frightened.

It was the early 80’s. I don’t think we were as diligent about things like this as we are now. Heh.

My father’s house burned up in the early 90’s. It wasn’t part of a wildfire; it was an electrical fire that blew up the garage. What the fire didn’t destroy, the smoke did. I remember going into the house after the firemen put out the flames (I was reckless, even then), and seeing the skeletal remains of the house I grew up in. The best work I can think of to describe it really is surreal. Parts of the house were literally blackened skeletons. I remember the smell of smoke and wet wood, and the moment I realized that all the artwork and all the photographs in the house were gone. I remember my father wrestling with the insurance company, and the crap deal he got in the end.

I miss those photographs. I have, maybe, three of my family now, and the one I really loved of my father was taken from me when I was mugged in San Francisco in 2000. Bastard.

My heart really does go out to everyone that is affected by the hellstorm that is blowing through Southern California.