After 6 days, the fire and smoke clean-up is pretty much done. Steve’s aunt, who worked for a fire department at one point, suggested an ionizer to get rid of the smoke smell. Unfortunately, every place that we could find rentals for one were closed for the weekend, and we were looking on Friday evening. In the meantime, we bagged up every scrap of cloth we had ranging from clothing to linens to stuffed animals and filled each bag with baking soda. It’s been six long days of laundry, and we’re only just finishing up.  Poor Steve; the master bathroom that he so coveted when we first moved here has thus far been a duckling brooder and a holding room for bags of smoky laundry.

We were blessed enough to be able to check in to a local hotel for the two evenings immediately following the fire. As Steve shared, there was pretty much no damage to the house, but the fumes were still pretty strong. And in a dramatic twist of irony, while we were checking in someone came running up to the desk and tells the concierge to call 9-1-1 because the grill was on fire. The kids were frightened, but all Steve and I could do was laugh. Apparently, we just can’t go anywhere!

On Saturday, Pepper the goat managed to sneak out of her pen and gobble down some of the rabbit food. I had to massage her left side for quite a while to get her to burp so she wouldn’t bloat. She did burp. She didn’t care for my methods of getting her to do it.  Not a big deal, but just one.more.thing.

 

 

In the midst of all this, we decided to eat Whole30 for Lent, as in starting on the day of the fire. It’s a great program, and for us we’re hoping that it will train us to eat more of the kinds of food that we can grow ourselves. It does mean that we have to think about EVERYTHING we put into our mouths. No grains, no legumes, no soy, nothing artificial, and no sugars of any kind… it makes for a difficult way to plan easy meals. In retrospect we perhaps should have postponed Whole30 until after we got things in order, but y’know, where’s the fun in that?

Finally, Monday rolled around and we were able to get the ionizer. What a difference! Since returning from the hotel we’d been sleeping on the pull-out couch because our bedroom was still too smoky. Last night we were able to sleep in there for the first time. 

So many other little things happened in between. The kitchen sink stopped working and Steve had to fix it. Gabe ran a fever for 24 hours. Steve tells me he ordered turkeys, which I supposedly agreed to. I may have… who knows at this point? The cat got shut out of the basement (where her litter box is) during one of our nights away so…you can guess how that turned out.

It hasn’t been a bad week, in spite of all this. I certainly wouldn’t want to do it again, but it hasn’t been bad. Hectic, yes. But bad?

A woman that Steve and I have known for a long time recently told me of some dreams she’s had to let go of and give up. Just as I was feeling awful for her, she said that it’s all ok; she really doesn’t need those things to make it a good life.

What a truth.

It really hasn’t been a bad week. A little painful, a little hard, but not bad. The house is fine, only a few things were lost and we are all safe. That’s all that matters. Our friend is right; we don’t really need much to make it a good life. I’m going to try hard to remember that.