Margret Sloan

My sister-in-law has a lovely little home in a close-knit neighborhood. Everyone has come over to say hello and they’ve brought enough food to feed an army. One neighbor even cut the grass for her without asking or any fuss about it. That’s one of the nice things about living in a small town - you get a lot of support from friends and neighbors when you have bad things happen in your life.

The florist has brought flowers and plants to her home and also to the funeral home. I’m not sure what I can do to help, but hubby is really glad to be here.

Even though she’s technically living “in town” her property backs up to a huge farm. Here’s a picture I snapped from her backyard as the sun was going down:

Wow, we finally arrived after two longs day’s drive. Hubby did all the driving - I think he needed the driving to keep his mind and hands busy so he doesn’t dwell on the fact that we are going to his mother’s funeral. We got all the way to Shawnee, OK before we caved and found a hotel room to get some sleep.

Luckily, there were plenty of billboards along the highway and we knew there would be a Hampton Inn at the Shawnee exit. We’ve had several good experiences at Hampton Inns now that they’ve upgraded their properties and their bedding. The beds are incredibly comfortable - it is like sleeping on a warm cloud. Plus, most of them offer a complimentary full breakfast in the morning, with sausage patties and hot eggs and a full array of other breakfast foods, including hot and cold cereals, pasties, yogurt, fresh fruit and very tasty coffee.

We got into LaVergne about 4:00 in the afternoon and found my sister-in-laws house very easily. We are settling in and expect to be pretty busy over the next couple of days. It’s nice to be here but wish it wasn’t for a sad occasion.

When the phone rings really late at night it is never good news. I actually hate to even answer a phone that rings any time between midnight and 7:00 am. It’s going to be bad news, and sure enough around midnight we got a call that we didn’t want to get. My mother-in-law passed away suddenly and unexpected.

Today we’ll be getting things in order around the house so we can leave for Oklahoma. My sister-in-law has offered up her spare bedroom and we need to get out there as soon as possible to help with the funeral. Hubby has to get someone to cover for him at work and I have to find the church clothes and arrange for a kennel for Buster Brown.

I’ll check the airfares to Oklahoma City, but there are rarely good rates without at least 2 weeks notice. More than likely we will drive, which is a hard 18 hours on the road, but the price of 5 tanks of gas and 2 nights in a hotel room halfway there is still much cheaper than two round trip plan tickets at full fare.

California continues to burn. The photos on Yahoo News are fascinating in a macbre way. The view from Sausalito eastward to the San Franciso skyline is usually crisp and clear except for a couple hours of fog in the mornings. Now it is a thick brown-gray haze of smoke from all the wildfires. It must be very difficult to even breathe for hundreds of miles around the City by the Bay. Tourism is down - huge sections of Hwy 1 are closed, people are being evacuated, and there is no view of the ocean to attract the tourists as the smoke is everywhere and the danger is very real.

The Governor’s Office of Emergency Services maintains an awesome website that has an interactive Google map of the fires. You can click on a fire icon and a text box opens with detail of that particular fire area, including current status of containment and the number of acres affected. Click here to see the current map - it is very disconcerting. As of this morning there are over 1,000 wildfires burning out of control, with weather forecasts of more storms with high winds and lightning. So things are not looking good for No Cal.

Last year the California fires making the news were the southern California wildfires. All around Los Angeles and San Diego there were dozens of major fires that took months to put out. Even the upscale and exclusive Malibu Beach area lost multi million dollar homes to the fires. People were being forced to leave their homes and camp out at the San Diego football stadium for over a week while firefighters battled to save entire neighborhoods.

This year it is northern California, with over 1,000 fires burning today and the news shows airing clips of officials crying for helping - they don’t have enough manpower or resources to even show up at all the fires burning, most of them caused by lightning strikes over the past several days.

It’s hard to imagine that areas so close to the Pacific ocean are suffering from severe drought this early in the summer season and that dry trees and brush all over the far western states is a waiting tinderbox.

There’s no way I could ever agree to make California my state of primary residence. There are just too many natural disasters waiting to take your property and your life. It’s a nice place to visit, but I’ll never live there.