Day 225 of Staying the Fuck Inside

Tomorrow we pre-vacuate.

Again.

Although it was delightful to wake up today and find everything covered in moisture – either from heavy fog this morning or light rain last night (I am unsure), tomorrow we are due to lose power, as the weather patterns will be pretty much identical to the Kincade Fire (2019) and the Tubbs Fire (2017). There is no logical reason to stay here, in the dark, eating food that is slowly degenerating, and spending each hour wondering “if.”

So, today I am making a rather large batch of spaghetti sauce to take with us on the road. Today we stage what we’re taking (a good chunk of it remains packed from a few weeks ago), and, to borrow a phrase from Tom Waits, “in the morning, we’ll be gone.”

Leaving for these reasons once a year is difficult.

Multiple times brings anxiety, fear, and feelings of helplessness.

And yet, we have no plans to move. We DO love it here. We DO love what we do, and the industry we have found ourselves in. Add a dash of trauma bonding and Stockholm Syndrome, and there’s no reason for us to permanently relocate.

I am extremely extremely late to the party on this, but if you haven’t read Nathan Ballingrud’s North American Lake Monsters, you really should. My only regret is that I hadn’t read it sooner. I would have liked to have sent it on to Dallas. I’m not sure if he ever read it or not, but I think he would have enjoyed it immensely.

Don’t be me.

Read things sooner.