Current location:	At home
Current mood:	worried
Current music:	helicopters and sirens

Reflections...
I may have never lived in a warzone. Never heard the sound of air-raid sirens or even air-craft flying over head and worried for my safety. I am so immensly glad for that. But, you know helicopters in summer have a somewhat similar effect on me.

There's a bushfire not that far from me. It could be as little as 3kms away as the crow flies. Admittedly between the bushfire and me is many, many houses... and it's not in a valley that connects to the one at the bottom of my street... but nevertheless the constant sound of helicopters flying low overhead concerns me. As does the emergency vechile sirens that I hear at least once every half hour.

I remember as a child having blackened leaves falling in my back yard, and barely being able to breathe because of the smoke. This is not even nearly as bad. I can breathe pretty easily when I go outside, and the sky is mostly clear except when you look to the north-west of my house.

It's crazy I know. I'm so grateful for the effort that is being put into controlling this blaze, but you know, it's still scary. The sense of being on edge constantly. Thinking about past experiences, thinking about the future. They've closed the two main ways north now. I'm not sure about the third... Depends where they've closed one of the others I suppose. There's no reason *yet* to worry about it, but I'm already thinking should I pack a box or two - either to give myself peace of mind, or for that "just in case".

*sighs* You know until this happened I had actually thought we might get away with this summer not being too bad. I know there's been a lot of bushfires in other places... But the gorge and berowra and several other places have been fine this year. So yeah, I was quite happy, I thought we'd get through summer just maybe - even if there hasn't been anything close to enough rain.
Guess not.