It's kind of strange looking back and seeing that the last post that I made here was on October 19th. That was a few days before one of the worst firestorms in California history broke out and tore through the neighborhood where I grew up. Several of my friends' parents lost their homes, and my own parents nearly lost theirs--the house that they've owned for 20 years and where I grew up. Our neighbors on either side of us lost their houses (from what we understand/saw, the fire tore through our backyard, but our house never entirely caught fire). The photo below shows my parents' side yard (and part of the house) next to what's left of our neighbor's yard.
In this picture, you can see the mini-blinds in my childhood bedroom...they're melted from the inside of the house:
And here, you can see the Red Cross relief supplies on my parents' lawn. This is certainly something that you never expect to see in a boring suburban neighborhood...
And finally, here's the view of what's left of our other neighbors' home from my window. The streaks in the glass aren't a result of my mediocre photography skills--the glass cracked from the heat of the fire. (Note all of the news crew vehicles...)
I haven't really wanted to blog about this since hundreds of families *did* lose their homes. On the other hand, it's hard not to talk about since it's been heavily on my mind for the past few months. For the first couple of months, the whole neighborhood looked like a war zone. It's depressing to see my old neighborhood look like this, even if some of the homes are starting to be rebuilt now. Sometimes, I tear up just driving through when I stop by to visit my parents, or if I see news footage on tv of a street or a house that's near them.
Hopefully, this will help me to get this out of my system (although this might not be my last post about this), and I can move on to blogging about important things like jewelry making or fashion again. ;)
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