What I have been up to lately

I haven’t written a story for the Eagle recently and I thought some of you might want to know what I have been up to.

My daughter Brenda, recently got a job in Sacramento in the field that she was in before she came up here to help me with her mother’s health. After Joanne’s death, Brenda and I threw our lots in together and we will live together, probably for the rest of my life. She was trying hard, but her online business, dyeing and selling yarn, was not doing as well as it used to so she went back to work. It is hard on her, but it absolutely was the right thing for her to do.

Anyway, we had been frantically looking for a home to buy or rent in Sacramento, but we were having a hard time as prospective landlords would freak out about our two big dogs. She had been living in motels and coming home on the weekends for a couple of months. This was very hard on Brenda and she hated it. We finally found a house to rent and got moved in. We had not yet decided what to do with my house up in Concow, in the foothills near Chico, whether to rent it, sell it or keep it for a second home. We didn’t even have everything moved, but mostly. Well two weeks after moving out, the house burned down along with every house in the subdivision and many other in the surrounding area, as well as a lot of houses in the nearby town of Paradise. We have not even been allowed back in yet. I have seen pictures of it and it is a complete loss.

Actually I didn’t lose much, just some stuff and of course the house. I have been having trouble with my printer so I wasn’t able to write sooner. I finally got the printer going enough to dash this off today.

Now, ordinarily there wouldn’t be much to decide, rebuild and go on from there. I have been in contact with the insurance company and will be getting sizeable checks in the mail soon. The decision comes from wondering if a new house would be worth as much as I put into it. The prices are very depressed in that area and with that massive cleanup to do will they get much better? Of course, I will have to make a deal with the mortgage company whichever way I go. I don’t know how many people are going to rebuild and what that subdivision will look like in the future.

In some ways, I am enjoying my new home and even Sacramento. There are lots of choices here. I probably will be able to write more here. I really hate the Sacramento traffic but that is my eighty year old self talking.

I am so extremely thankful that we had gotten moved. I could easily have been there. It happened early on a Thursday morning and I would have been in my bedroom asleep, I might not have made it. Many people were killed and most people just escaped as flames were licking all around. Many were burned, some enough to go to the hospital. The wind was blowing sixty miles per hour with gusts even higher.

I will be writing a letter to the editor on another subject; in it I have included my contact information. I will be glad to hear from anyone.