This frigging sucks. I can't remember doing anything in the last few weeks to make it flare up bad again. Last Friday morning I was sitting at the cottage and bam, my fingers and hand are swelling again. The pain had been bad for the last couple of weeks but I hadn't expected the swelling again.
So I caught a ride to town with J and his Dad and hit up the small pharmacy. I bought a new splint/brace thing, that immobilizes the wrist/hand more than my old one. I have had it on constantly since.
Oddly enough the next day the pharmacy caught fire and now has severe smoke damage. Last I heard, they weren't sure when it would open again. This is a bad thing for this little town that doesn't have a huge business community to begin with. There nearest pharmacy is probably 25 minutes away now.
On Friday I also noticed a bunch of smoke from the other side of the lake when we were coming back from town. When J and I went swimming shortly there after, we heard planes and could see the smoke quite clearly. The planes were water bombers picking up water directly across from the lake from us. When we turned on the radio, we found out that there was a fairly big fire, not too far away (about a 20 min drive). It was growing at a rate of 5-10 meters/min and was at one point 100 m from the boundary of Algonquin Provincial Park. The road going to that area was closed and was still closed when we drove by yesterday on our way home. Luckily they say they have it under control at this point and its no longer growing.
This is not my pic either, but is basically what we saw.
On Monday we went out in the morning and got home around 1:30pm. We were not home for long when it started to rain. We knew it was supposed to rain, but hadn't really expected it to, since everything was dead (grass, flowers, trees, etc) and we were in a level two drought. There was a complete fire ban for weeks because of how dry everything was. Well, weren't we taken by surprise when the storm picked up minutes later. The BBQ (brand new we bought for xmas!) got blown over and the doors fell off. The chairs were all over the place. MH ran out to put stuff away, and noticed a branch fall down on the hood of his truck. He quickly ran back for his keys and moved it, but while he was inside the top off a giant pine tree broke off and narrowly missed smooshing his truck. It was insane. There were confirmed Microbursts just south of us, but we just had rain and wind. Of course the power was out for about 18 hrs as well. Much fun!!
The next day was spent cutting up the tree's that came down and cleaning up the mess.
When we got back home on Thursday, J listened to his work messages. Well, apparently there was a fire on the neighbouring farm to the one we live on. A haybale caught on fire in the baler, and the farmer kept going back to the barn and never saw it in flames. It was hot and dry up here as well, with no rain in weeks and weeks. The field caught fire almost immediately and the wind pushed the fire back towards our house. Luckily the volunteer fire fighters were called right away when the people in the cottage on the other side of the field noticed the fire. They got it under control just before they called in the water bombers to come in.
J and I went and checked it out last night. Since J is trained in forest fire investigations and stuff, he had his opinions on what could have/should have/wouldn't have happened. He didn't think it would ever get to our house, even though we would have been evacuated if we had been home. The police blocked off our driveway while it was going on. He did think they stopped it just before it crowned, and if it hadn't been noticed right away, it could have potentially got to our house depending on the wind.
CRAZY SCARY.
So that was my week in review. I hope next week is better!!
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