I'm here too. Have been away from home off and on, looking after my step mom and helping my Dad out. Talk about the blind leading the blind. Even so, I'm in better shape than she is at this time and it is too much for Dad (80 years old), to take on being a care giver 24/7. She suffers with sclerodermia and chronic interstitial lung disease because of it.

I've been coming home, harvesting things from the garden, preparing them into dishes, freezing them and then taking them down there so that they have good nutritious food to eat. By the time I get my own place back in order, I'm getting ready to head down to be with them again.
What a summer!

It has been hotter than normal in our region so there are lots of wildfires. They have them in their area too, so there is heavy smoke in both areas. The smoke is a problem for my step mom so she is needing to be on oxygen.

The smoke isn't great for me either but I've been coping OK. The biggest problem that doesn't seem to be coming around is ongoing spasticity on the left side of my body from a mild stroke that I had a while back. For the most part, the rest of the problems that I was having have been gradually settling down. Not much I can do about the ongoing spasticity as it doesn't respond to Baclofen and I can't take much Ibuprofen for pain these days either because of the risk of ulcer recurrence. At least I can still walk and drive.

We finally got some rain yesterday and that took the smoke down a bit. It was so bad on Thursday that it was actually snowing ash; leaving a light dusting of the stuff on everything.

I'm heading back down to my folks in a couple days and will be gone for a week or so...unless they get an evacuation order. They were pretty close to getting one on Thursday because of a fire that started in the forest behind their subdivision. No such risk at my place so far.

Hope that everyone is doing OK.
Miss all of you and I'm hoping that everything settles down at my end so that I can sit back, relax and chat on here like I used to. But for now, my focus is on helping my folks and taking care of myself so that I can do that.

With love, Erika