<![CDATA[The Girl In The Band

<![CDATA[The Girl In The Band - Home]]>Tue, 06 Oct 2026 02:19:43 -0700Weebly<![CDATA[Lessons In Loss Of Use: When An Airbnb Is Not A Vacation]]>Tue, 06 Oct 2026 04:08:44 GMThttps://www.thegirlintheband.com/home/lessons-in-loss-of-use-when-an-airbnb-is-not-a-vacation

After spending January of 2025 at the DMan’s in Orange County, I moved back to the San Gabriel Valley to be closer to my house and have a place that was a little more suited to a dog with advancing arthritis.

The AirBnB I found was not ideal. The unit in the back meant I didn’t have the privacy I had come to take for granted after living in a single-family home for over 30 years. There was also another dog for Kody to deal with, and he didn’t take it well.

The long-term neighbor in the back eventually moved out and what followed were a succession of short-term folks who shared our driveway, but in general, were quiet. I would go to bed one night and find new neighbors the next morning. I kept saying it was only temporary. I will be back home in a few months.

I had made President’s Club that year (an award at my job) and the prize was a trip to Venice, Italy. Not the best timing, but the DMan and I were excited and had even decided to extend the trip and visit Vienna, Austria. It was going to be our Double V trip.

I boarded Aja for the first time, Kody went to DMan’s mom for a visit and off we went to Europe for a little over a week. Although it was fun, I was worried about leaving Kody. I was also worried about how being gone for over a week was going to impact my timeline for getting home back. I knew if I wasn’t following up on things daily nothing was going to happen.

The flight home was long. We picked up Kody and headed to the rental. It was hot, I was tired and all I wanted was a glass of wine and a nice shower.

It was dark when we pulled up, but I knew something was off. There was a porta potty in the front yard, a sign of construction. I went in first, flipped the light switch and nothing happened.

“The power is off,” I told the DMan.

We had gotten friendly with one of the neighbors who also had a dog, and he happened to be outside. DMan went over to ask him if he had power and he said, “Wow, you guys haven’t been here? You missed it. They have been tearing the whole back house off. Jack hammers, tons of noise and a real mess!”

In just one week, the rental had become a major construction zone. And one with no electricity.
I immediately called the owner. He had always been very receptive, and he got back to us in about ten minutes. He was coming over with his crew to see what he could do.

Turns out the power had been off for four days.

Some of his construction crew arrived first. They had cut power to the entire house and were only going to be able to restore part of it that night. The rest would have to wait until morning.

When I asked why they would do that knowing, I was living there, the reply I got was, “Well, since you didn’t complain, we thought everything was fine.”

The owner got there and with half the house having power, we were at least able to get two of the air conditioning units working, some of the lights and the refrigerator. Although I didn’t have a lot of food there since we had been out of the country, what was there, of course, was spoiled.

Just a couple of months before, I had thrown everything out of two black mold filled refrigerators in my house. Having to do it again, knowing I was still fighting with AAA to replace the refrigerators (of course they said they could be cleaned and they would not be reimbursing for all the spoiled food), triggered all the frustration and anger I had been feeling. Whatever relaxation I had gotten from the trip was destroyed.

The same night I discussed with the owner how having a dog who needed some outdoor space and the fact that I worked from home was not going to be conducive to having jackhammers and construction crews on the property all day long. He agreed to halt the construction and allow me to get out of my stay. He suggested a couple of other properties he had that I could look at.

Move number three in four months happened about a week later, to another one of his properties. It was bigger, had a lot more privacy, but still had some issues. Since inventory was low and demand was so high, it was expensive, but in no way shape or form a luxury rental. I stayed there for four months before finally making the move home.

I didn’t need all the drama on top of all the stress I was already feeling. Looking back on it, here are two things I would have done differently and one thing I did right:

Don’t settle: I should have known that any timeframe I was going to come up with to be home was going to be extended. My garage fire kept me out of the house for eleven months, so thinking I was going to be back sooner, was just plain delusional. Me thinking I could suck it up and deal with the first rental was just plain stupid. I should have treated it as short-term stay, moved very little in and looked for another place immediately.

Don’t worry about the monthly budget: I had thought the insurance company would baulk at a high monthly rate, but the reality was, they knew things were overpriced. I had a $94,000 budget for twelve months of loss of use. When I moved the second time, the monthly fee was double what I had been paying and they didn’t say a word. I If you have the coverage, use it. Just double the time you think it is going to take. I had thought it was going to be six months max. (I got back in nine months). I should have budgeted for a year, which would have meant 7,800 per month was doable. If I had looked at it that way, I would have found something more suitable before I left for my trip out of the country.

I found my own place: You have the right to find your own lodging. You do not have to wait on your insurance to find it for you. It can be an Airbnb, a hotel, or a rental. I had an emergency credit card with an available balance, so I could book what I wanted and have them reimburse it, instead of waiting on them for any money. It’s tempting to let them do SOMETHING for you, but when you feel like everything is stuck having a place to stay you pick yourself lets you feel like you have something back in your control.

]]><![CDATA[A TRUMPET TREE CELEBRATION]]>Thu, 10 Sep 2026 04:17:28 GMThttps://www.thegirlintheband.com/home/a-trumpet-tree-celebration

The last 18 months have been one of the hardest periods of my life. The fire was the beginning, followed by health issues, including surgery, having to put my dog down and then a job loss. It was all too familiar. In 2003, I had faced the same issues after another fire, this one at my home, when my garage burned down. I have posted about that experience in detail (check July postings in 2014). During that year, I lost my job, was out of the house for 11 months while fighting with insurance companies and contractors, lost my truck (burned in the garage) and also had to have my dog put down. Almost the same, right?

Did it help having gone through it all before? Yes and no. This fire was different in a lot of ways, the job market is something worse than I have ever seen in my life and between dental work and a full hip replacement, I have spent more money on medical bills this year than I have in my entire life. Losing the dog was just as painful and adopting the next one turned out to be unlike anything I had ever experienced with an animal. But the one plus was, I knew I could get through it. I had done it before. So even when it got bad, I reminded myself it would get better.

I have talked to others who have either lost everything or are working through being Surviving Structures and they have shared that they also dealt with health issues, loss of family members, having to have pets put down, all in the middle of fighting to get back to their lives.

Which is why, no matter how many things get replaced, no matter how many new pieces of furniture or brand-new homes get built, it will never be enough. We lost the community we all loved. We lost everything we were familiar with and then had to wage war to get back to something that might be bright and shiny but will never be the same. While the tragedies of everyday life were going on, we couldn’t be as present as we should have been. Because we were fighting for what should never have been taken from us. And we were fighting blind, with little or no guidance or information.

I started this blog to share experiences and knowledge of all the things that have happened along the path of my life and I want to continue to do that. My hope is someone will read something and learn something or do something they wouldn’t have thought about.

But in this post, I want to show a little bit of what coming back looks like. There was a trumpet tree that was burned to an absolute crisp in the corner of my yard. I figured it for dead. I was wrong. It bloomed and now has a whole corner of the yard, with a bird bath, some pink flamingo lights and a little garden around it to celebrate it.

My backyard was my sanctuary for as long as I have lived in this house. The site of many memories and my traditional Sunday night glass of wine and a little reading to get ready for another week
It does not look the same as it did before. The trees that once shaded it were all burned to the ground, the mature vegetation gone. But it is still my happy place. So taking a little break from the rest of the war stories that I will be sharing, to show that yes, even though it will never be the same, it can still be good.

Trumpet tree corner and the fire pit area, four months after the fire and the fire pit area now.

The back tree box and the back patio.

The nighttime view

]]><![CDATA[THE WAR TO GET HOME]]>Thu, 27 Aug 2026 03:47:51 GMThttps://www.thegirlintheband.com/home/the-war-to-get-home

Eaton Canyon was not the first wildfire in California. It also wasn’t the most destructive. The Camp Fire in Butte County, November 2018, destroyed 18,804 structures across 153,336 acres, making it the most destructive and deadliest wildfire in modern state history with 85 lives lost.

Eaton Canyon came in second, with over 9,000 structures destroyed across 14,021 acres in Altadena and some surrounding areas, with 19 lives lost. The same day, the Palisades Fire came in third with 6,833 structures destroyed across 23,448 acres in Pacific Palisades and Malibu, with 12 lives lost. It was understandable, to some extent, that insurance companies would be overwhelmed by what happened on January 7th, 2025. Yet, it wasn’t their first time at the rodeo. There have been hundreds of wildfires, floods, earthquakes and other natural disasters that they have had to deal with.

In Eaton Canyon, there quickly became two groups. The Total Loss group who had lost everything and those of us who became known as the Surviving Structures. We still had homes. Toxic homes with at the minimum smoke smell and damage but still standing.

Due to the overload of claims, my insurance company, AAA, turned over Surviving Structures to contractor employees. I noticed the difference immediately. The first adjusters I spoke to were knowledgeable and available. Once I got turned over to the contractor adjuster, it became clear that would no longer be the case. My adjuster did not return calls. When I did manage to get her on the phone, our conversation always started with a sigh from her, as though dealing with me was a bother.

It made no sense to me why, at this point in this disaster, they assigned clueless and lazy contractors who didn’t even technically work for AAA to those of us who had Surviving Structures. There was not much work for those that had a total loss. Nothing to access, no inspections to be done on a continuous basis. Not at that point of the game. Everything they had was gone. Pay out the money to them and you move on. Those of us trying to get back in our homes had dozens of issues to deal with and no guidance. There was no checklist. No process. No list of things that automatically needed to be replaced. No protocol. Unbelievable, considering how many times this has happened in just the last 20 years.

AAA started by sending out an inspector to assess the damage to my house and yard. I had already contacted the contractor who had done my addition and when he looked at the estimate they provided, he said there was no way what they were going to pay was going to cover everything. He was looking at the total amount, but the estimate they had provided was confusing to say the least. I spent hours trying to get an idea of what each project was costing. I thought I must be stupid, but my contractor couldn’t follow it either. Months later I sent it to my lawyer, who has had a LOT of experience with fire claims. She said she had a very hard time figuring it out too. It made it hard to follow what they agreed to replace and even harder when they paid for the original estimate.

“We already paid you for that,” was a statement made many times and it was hard to figure out if they had or hadn’t. I suspect this was intentional. Why make something easy to read and understand when you can continue to gaslight people to the point they just give up?

One thing I saw immediately was that they were not going to be replacing my HVAC. Only cleaning had been approved.

The fire in my neighborhood had burned for over ten hours, with high winds blowing smoke and debris into the compressor, which was outside. The compressor was going on twenty years old and used freon that wasn’t available anymore. Meaning they couldn’t drain the freon and change it. The furnace and ducting was in my attic, which had vents which were not airtight. That meant the attic was also covered in soot and even though I didn’t know about lead yet, turned out it was full of that too.

The thought of moving back to the house with an HVAC system that was full of poison, was my first non-negotiable.

I told them I would not accept cleaning, my contractor agreed it could not be sufficiently cleaned, and they needed to approve a new HVAC system or I wasn’t moving home.

They said no, it could be cleaned.

I went to a supervisor. She said no. I asked for the name of her supervisor, left that person a message and got ready to file a complaint with the state insurance board.

They said they would send out someone to inspect it and give a better assessment. They chose the vendor and it was HVACi. I looked them up online and their website said: “HVACi is the nation’s leading provider of residential and commercial HVAC and refrigeration damage assessments for insurance carriers.”

Their main source of income is coming from insurance carriers, and this is going be an unbiased assessment? WTF?

That’s why I was shocked when the guy they sent got out of his truck, took one look at my torched neighborhood and said, “There is no way your HVAC can be cleaned.”

He took some pictures and told me not to worry. I would be hearing from AAA.

I heard from them alright. They said the inspector had recommended cleaning.

I called him myself, only to have him make some statement about the insurance company making their own decisions. I was livid.

I went back to the supervisor and had a total meltdown on her. I basically asked her if she would feel safe having her family move home with an HVAC system that had been cleaned instead of replaced. I think I made a few other references to getting a public adjuster, a lawyer and a doctor because of all the stress they were causing me.

A day later I got a call saying that they would approve a new HVAC system.

What changed? I remembered something my public adjuster had told me when after ten months of being displaced out of my house for a garage fire, my insurance company suddenly started paying for things.

“They always start paying when they think you are on the verge of a nervous breakdown."

These are the companies you write a check to every year. These are the companies your parents and probably your grandparents wrote checks out to every year. These are the companies that despite numerous natural disasters, still make profits in the millions. They are willing to try to get you to the point of a nervous breakdown to save, in this case, to what amounted to a $10,000 difference.

There is not an insurance company out there that you “are in good hands” with. They are not your friend or advisor. They will not take care of you. They have one goal and that is to pay you the least amount they can manage, even if it puts you and your family in danger or at health risk.

The disaster, be it a fire, a flood, hurricane or tornado, is only the beginning. What follows is war.

And I had only won the first battle.

]]><![CDATA[NO BLUEPRINTS BUT CHECK YOUR POLICY]]>Thu, 09 Jul 2026 04:34:57 GMThttps://www.thegirlintheband.com/home/no-blueprints-but-check-your-policy

I want to start out by saying, the way I approached getting back to my house and dealing with my insurance company is by no means a blueprint of what to do. But that’s the problem with something like this. There is no blueprint. You would think, after the number of wildfires that have happened in this country, both urban and not so urban, there would be a checklist to follow for insurance companies to help people through. But there isn’t. Maybe because the very nature of your insurance company is not to help you at what is going to be one of the more traumatic things you will experience in your life. Their sole purpose is to do the bare minimum and save themselves as much money as possible. I don’t care who your insurance company is. Some companies are worse than others, but make no mistake, they all share the same purpose. They are not your family. They are not your friends. They are a business and all businesses want to make money. Your job, with everything you are experiencing, now becomes trying to negotiate what you can live with. People who have not gone through something like this, will say things like, “But you got new stuff. You got a brand new house. You came out ahead.”

You never come out ahead, because when you add the stress, the anger and the time suck that comes with getting your life back to normal, you lose. Whatever you end up getting, you will never get the time back. You will never get back the memories you couldn’t make in your home. The holiday dinners you couldn’t host. The nights you couldn’t sleep. The anger and frustration that literally makes you physically ill.

So whatever you can get, it will never be enough You will also always ask yourself, could I have gotten more? Of course you could have. But that’s the part where their isn’t a blueprint. You have to make the tradeoffs. You have to decide how much you can take and how much time you want to lose.

The way I handled things will not be the way you handle things and there should never be any judgement or guilt associated with any of it. Only people who have never gone through something like this stand on the side and say, “I would have….” One rule I always enforce with people. You don’t get to say, “I would have,” if you haven’t lived thru it.

Maybe some of what I learned will be helpful, but again, this isn’t a blueprint. I share only because it would have been easier if I had known a little bit more to start. It also would have helped to not second guess myself constantly. My advice is this. What can you live with and what can you let go? You have to decide for yourself and your family and since money is involved, unless you have an abundance of it to start, you will have to make tradeoffs. Life is what it is and it is much easier when you have a lot of money. So no guilt. You do the best you can with what you got.

REVIEWING YOUR COVERAGE

If you think you are never going to have a fire or any other disaster in your home, let me tell you, everyone thinks that. I can personally say that of the 22 homes that were totally destroyed on my street alone, no one thought when they evacuated, that they wouldn’t be coming back. That’s why looking at your insurance policy and reviewing what it says is so important. You very well might find out you are under insured or don’t have certain features. If you have the ability to make changes to your policy and correct those things, do it as soon as you can.

The main area you want to review is under Property Coverages. I had five areas that I think are fairly standard:

DWELLING: This is the amount they will pay to fix the structure of your house. So what is structure? An easy explanation is if they took your house, turned it upside down and gave it a good shake, anything that didn’t fall out would be structure.

OTHER STRUCTURE: This is basically fence and landscaping, although regardless of this number, they can put caps on the landscaping, even though you have not used the full amount that is in your policy.

UNSCHEDULED PERSONAL PROPERTY: This is clothes, furniture, artwork, anything that isn’t attached to the house.

LOSS OF USE: This is an important one that people overlook. This is the amount of money you will have to rent another place while your house is being either fixed or rebuilt. Important because even if your house is still standing, you are probably looking at being out of the house for anywhere from six months or more. If your house is destroyed, you could be looking at years. By the way, just because you can’t live in the house or it is totally destroyed doesn’t mean you still don’t have to make a mortgage payment.

BUILDING CODE UPGRADE: Usually, a percentage allowed for making sure that if the old code said you needed 2x4 boards and now you need 4x8 boards, you don’t have to pay out of pocket. However, you do have some room to fight about this one. They must put the structure back to what it was and if you can’t pass current code, that can’t be done.

TO PA or Not To PA?
Speaking of fighting, get ready to do a lot of it. I had an advantage, having gone through a garage fire in 2003 that left me out of the house for almost a year (also covered on this blog in July of 2014 ). For that fire, I had a public adjuster. Even though in the end, everything did get resolved, I vowed if I ever had another fire (who knew?) I wouldn’t use one.

What is a Public Adjuster? A public adjuster is a state-licensed insurance professional who represents you, the policyholder, rather than the insurance company. They handle property insurance claims from start to finish by assessing damages, reviewing your policy, calculating losses, and negotiating settlements to help ensure you receive fair compensation. Generally, the charge about 10% to 15% of the total claim.

Once they get involved, you stop talking to your insurance company without them. If you don’t like conflict, they can be a god sent, since they are the ones who deal with the “no, we aren’t going to pay for that.”

On the other hand, you give up any control you have over the situation and the timeline. Yes, you will get a larger settlement, but it will also take longer to resolve your claim. Also, that larger settlement also had their fee taken off the top, so sometimes that larger settlement can come out about the same.

Which was why I made the decision not to use one again. I felt I had heard and learned enough from my first experience to do it myself this time around. Was it more stressful? Hard to say. I was stressed dealing with everyone, but at least I knew what was going on and how long things were going to take. Despite this time around being a much larger disaster, I got back home in nine months versus eleven and I know that wouldn’t have been the case if I had not done it myself.

Again, no right or wrong. I know people who love nothing better than haggling with someone over the price of a purchase and I know people who would rather have root canal and three wisdom teeth pulled before saying, “Can I get a better price?” You have decide what you can tolerate based on where you are in your life.

Regardless of the route you go, it is not going to be easy. It will be a rollercoaster ride that you will never want to take again, and no matter what your final settlement check says, it will never feel like enough for what you lost. But you will make it through. You make it through by demanding what you can live with, letting go of what you can't, and refusing to let anyone else dictate your timeline or your peace of mind. I’ve stood in the ashes twice now, and I can tell you that survival isn't about playing the game perfectly, it’s just about getting back home.

]]><![CDATA[TRIPLE EVIL PART ONE]]>Wed, 08 Apr 2026 03:36:27 GMThttps://www.thegirlintheband.com/home/triple-evil-part-one

The house had survived the fire and knew I was lucky when so many had lost so much. But I also knew it was going to be a long and difficult struggle. I had been through it before in 2003 when my garage had burned to the ground after I inadvertently put some paper towels in a waste basket that spontaneously combusted. That time, I spent eleven months living in a hotel, fighting with my insurance company over every god forsaken penny. I lost my truck in the fire, the company I worked for was acquired and I got let go and I had to put my dog down. Lost my truck, lost my dog, lost my job. The perfect country song, called The Three Times The Misery. Little did I know I was about to do it all again, adding health issues.

Sometimes it’s best we don’t know what’s coming. It would only keep us up at night trying to figure out how you are going to handle it.

Threefold misery also came to mean something else in 2025. My insurance company, my contractor and my mortgage/utility companies.

TRIPLE EVIL PART ONE

The one thing I have learned from two fires. As far as insurance companies go, you are in good hands with NOBODY. They are not there to take care of you. They exist to make money, cancel you if you make a late payment or live somewhere that has a tragedy and fight you over every penny while you go through one of the worst times in your life. Sound jaded and bitter? I prefer to call it being experienced.
As soon as I found out my house was still standing, I called my insurance company, AAA.

The first call was wonderful. The person I spoke to was sympathetic, asked me did I need to get to a hotel. They said an adjuster would be out in the next couple of days and they advanced a small amount of money for expenses. They got someone out to board up all the windows, even the ones that weren’t broken or melted, so I didn’t have to lay in bed every night and worry about looters. When the adjuster came, he made it sound like everything was going to be taken care of with plenty of funds.

I was staying with the DMan, but the situation was far from ideal. Driving to Altadena to meet with insurance adjusters and check on things took three hours out of my day, just for the commute time. Of course, that was having to fit it in with a full-time job. My first mistake, I took only two and a half days off work. I should have taken a lot longer. I should have taken stress disability leave. I say this now, knowing as soon as 2026 rolled around, my company was acquired and I was dumped like yesterday’s trash. The fact is, I never had a minute to process the trauma of losing my entire neighborhood and community and had to immediately jump back in to trying to sell software. I never received so much as an Amazon gift card from my employer, throughout the whole long twisted mess.

Top it off, Kody was suffering from advanced hip disease. DMan’s condo is two stories, bedrooms on the bottom, so we had to come up with creative ways for Kody to not have to use the stairs. AAA had said we could discuss finding more permanent living for me, since it looked like I was not going to be able to get things cleaned up at the house quickly.

I refer to this as our honeymoon period. And just like a honeymoon, it lasted a couple of weeks. Because after having a couple of adjusters who were AAA employees, I was told only total loss members would have “real” adjusters. Those with “standing structures” were being passed off to some contractors that they had hired in Texas.

Just like that, they went from being AAA to Triple Evil.

Push back and ineptness started almost immediately. When I spoke to my new adjuster, she seemed very bothered by the fact that she had to deal with me at all. Find me a place to live? Not so much. I ended up going on AirBnB after I calculated what my total ALE (Additional Living Expense) was on my policy. (This is an important piece of your insurance policy. If you don’t have it, you need to get it. Otherwise, you will be paying out of pocket for a place to live, while STILL paying a mortgage).

Since so many people were displaced, prices were outrageous. I needed a yard and no steps for Kody. I finally found a place in San Gabriel, about twenty minutes from my home. It was a small two bedroom and I found out later, the back was a separate unit, with someone who also had a dog. Not as private as I had hoped, but it had a nice front porch and the front yard was totally fenced. I had ZERO help from Triple Evil finding it, as all they were offering were rentals that were snapped up before I could even look at them. Luckily, I had a credit card with plenty of available credit so I could secure the place. When I tried to get the funds reimbursed, my adjuster didn’t know how to process it and I had to involve her supervisor. It wouldn’t be the last time.

Little did I know they would go from being lackadaisical, to aggressively standing in the way of me returning to my life and my home.

]]><![CDATA[MAUI BLUE]]>Wed, 04 Mar 2026 05:35:51 GMThttps://www.thegirlintheband.com/home/maui-blue

JANUARY 9th, 2025

We drove back to Altadena on Thursday, January 9th. Most of the streets were blocked off. DMan and I parked where we could and walked a couple of miles to my block.

I felt like I was in one of those Apocalyptic movies where the whole world has been destroyed. Entire blocks had been reduced to rubble. We had to be careful where we walked because there were wires down and debris in the streets. Small fires were still burning from gas lines that hadn’t yet been turned off. Every now and then there were a couple of houses still standing, untouched. We finally got close. The cute little street that had been lined by tiny houses, just a block from my house where Kody loved to walk was completely obliterated, unrecognizable. We turned down my street. The entire block across from me was gone.

As we started down the street, a neighbor stopped me. “Wait, aren’t you the blue house?”

“Yes.”

“I am 100 percent sure your house is still standing.”

I was still shocked by what she had said, but I asked, “Yours?”

“Everything is gone.”

I burst into tears. Relief and sadness for her. We hugged and then continued down the street, walking as fast as we safely could.

Chimneys were still standing but houses were gone. My chimney was bright pink, and I thought I saw it as we got closer, connected to the roof. I kept asking DMan, “You see it, right? You see it? And it’s on a roof?”

And then we were in front of it. The houses to the right were all gone. The houses across from it were all gone. Most of the houses behind it were gone. Only two houses to the left were still standing There it was in all it’s bright blue glory. Looking almost as I had left it.

I unlocked the door and we went inside. Obviously, it smelled. Two windows had been broken by the fire department, to check if there was anything burning inside. I knew looting was already starting, so we scrambled to find something in the garage to board up the windows. Everything else was exactly as I left it, the dishes from lunch still in the sink.

The backyard was badly burned. My outside happy place was gone. Trees, the fire pit, outdoor couch, chairs, a privacy wall we had put up by the fire pit, all gone. But the house was still there.
I threw a few more things in a suitcase after we got the windows boarded up and walked back. It was hard to go, but I knew it wasn’t safe to stay there.

There were a group of people on one of the corners we walked past, who were handing out free Jersey Mike sandwiches. We realized we hadn’t eaten and we took a couple. The combination of a long emotional day and finally having some food, we both commented they were the best sandwiches we had ever eaten.

While we were finishing them up, my phone got a text. There was a fire in Eaton Canyon and I should evacuate. It was the first and only notification I got.

I saw my next-door neighbor a few days later. The house he had grown up, his family home, just a few feet from mine, was destroyed. He asked me what everyone had been asking me. What had I done differently. I had to tell him nothing.

“Then it must have been God’s will,” he said. A remark made with no bitterness or anger. Just a simple statement.

Over the next few days, I started hearing another explanation from various people. Maui Blue.

If you haven’t heard the theory, blue houses in the Maui fire apparently were spared. More viral online post than anything based on fact, but it seemed as good an explanation as any. Or maybe the wind just changed at exactly the right moment. Or maybe it was, indeed, just God’s will. Whatever the reason, I vowed that as long as I call it home, it will remain Maui Blue.

But it would be a long time before I would call it home again.

]]><![CDATA[PINK SUNSETS]]>Thu, 12 Feb 2026 05:51:27 GMThttps://www.thegirlintheband.com/home/pink-sunsets

Sunsets lately have been pink. In California, the combination of dry air, ocean winds, and even the occasional haze helps to enhance colors, making the sunsets here some of the most colorful and dramatic you can find. I notice them more than usual, walking Deacon, my newly adopted dog. My Altadena neighborhood now has spectacular views of mountains and sunsets. It is amazing how having almost every home in the neighborhood burned to the ground opens up the view. Sunsets are also quiet. During the day there is the wonderful sound of building and construction, trucks coming in and out. At 500pm, almost like clockwork, the workday ends and everything gets very silent. When I first came back home, it was unsettling, but like most things, I have gotten used to it.

We don’t usually walk after sunset. Not only were my neighbors displaced, but so was the wildlife. Coyotes were always around, but since the fire, they are around more frequently and in greater numbers. Seeing them in daylight is one thing, but in the dark, the thought of running into one is daunting.

So sunset becomes the last walk of the day, the pink onesreminding me every time I see one of them, of the night of January 7th.

January 7th and 8th
Tuesday, January 7th I was doing my best to get back in work mode. Monday had been my first day back from an extended holiday break and luckily, my calendar was light. The Santa Ana winds were making their appearance. If you lived on my block in Altadena, you knew that it was just a matter of time before you lost power. Rumor had it they shut it off to prevent sparks from starting a fire. For whatever reason, the houses right across the street always managed to keep their power on. I used to wonder if some elected official lived on that side of the street.

The power went off, as predicted, mid-morning as the winds picked up. Kody, my dog, had an appointment with a specialist who was going to look at a huge lump on his side that we suspected was cancer. Even with the power off, I got in the garage through the back door and manually opened the main door so I could pull my truck out. I continued to work using a hot spot and my fully charged laptop. Looking out my office window, I took a video showing how strong the winds were. Little did I know it would be the last images captured of my backyard intact.

By afternoon, we had power back on. I took Kody for his appointment and got the confirmation I had dreaded. Yes, it was cancer. Removing it would be a horrendous surgery for a 12-year-old dog with arthritis in his back legs. Other treatments were going to provide a few more months, possibly, but with side effects he wasn’t going to understand.

Coming home, I put the truck back in the garage, took a shower and as it started to get dark, the wind picked up even more and we once again lost power.

Realizing it probably was going to be a powerless evening, I lit some candles and settled down to do some reading by flashlight. About 700pm, a friend called and said, “Hey, don’t you live by Eaton Canyon?”

“It’s right down the street. Why?”

“it’s on fire. And you know what’s happening in the Palisades, right?”

I didn’t know what was happening in the Palisades. No power meant no tv and I hadn’t been on the internet in hours.

She explained Palisades was on fire and it was bad. The winds were predicted to get up to 90 miles an hour. She suggested I seriously think about evacuating, since most of the fire departments were in Palisades and already stretched thin.

Everyone knew about fires in Altadena. When I first bought my house in 1993, there was a fire going on in the mountains. Every insurance company I called to get a homeowner’s policy with would ask me where I lived and when I replied, would promptly transfer me to Mr. Dial Tone. Yes, the mountain areas had fires, but in the highly populated area I lived down from the mountains, never. Some smoke and ash, yes, but that was just part of the package. I said once if it ever got that far down the hill, to my area, it was going to be a major disaster. I only wish I could have predicted lottery numbers with that kind of accuracy.

I went outside just to take a look and the mountains behind me were pink. Closer than any fire I had ever seen before. Knowing I had no power and no way to stay informed, I decided to get ready to leave. Just as I was packing up food for Kody and Aja, throwing a few clothes in a bag and getting a few documents together, DMan called from Orange County. He had also heard about Eaton Canyon and was wondering if I was coming out his way. I told him to be safe, yes, I was. I had seen too many videos of other wildfires when people were driving through flames, terrified they were not going to make it and I decided that it would never be me.

Getting Kody in the truck was difficult. Due to his tumor and arthritis in his back legs, he needed a ramp to get into my truck. At 70 pounds, I was not going to be able to carry him. Getting the ramp out and holding the truck door open with the winds was impossible. My neighbor, tiny at maybe 100 pounds, helped hold the door open. Kody stood frozen on the front porch, sensing something was really, really wrong. I finally convinced him to get in. I managed to get Aja in the cat carrier, and we made the hour drive.

We got to DMan’s house around 10pm. He had the news on and that was the first time I saw the destruction that was going on in Palisades and now Altadena. I went to bed still expecting that I would be there a couple of days and return home to ash all over the yard and some lingering smells.
I got up early the next morning and started work. I was in DMan’s downstairs guest bedroom. A few people asked if I had evacuated and I told them I had. I had several meetings, so I hadn’t had time to see the local news that was on the television upstairs in the living room. Around 1000am, I went upstairs to get some more coffee. I stopped to watch what the latest updates were. I saw a newscaster who gave her location and she said the whole street was gone, all the homes destroyed. I froze, not believing what I had just heard.

“That’s three blocks from me, “I said to DMan and then I burst into tears.

“Should I turn it off?” he asked.

“No, no, I have to see.”

I tapped out of work and continued to watch, but they never went back to my immediate area.

The rest of the day became something of a blur. People started calling and texting me. I didn’t know much, other than I suspected everything I owned was gone. At one point, I had to get out of the house, so we drove to a pet store to get Kody and Aja some things. Then we went to Target so I could buy a few things. At one point, I took a picture of what I thought I had left.

I went to bed thinking I had two pairs of underwear, a couple of sweaters and two pairs of jeans and that my home of over 30 years was probably gone. All I knew was I had to see for myself and no matter what it took, I was going back to Altadena in the morning.

]]><![CDATA[BACK TO THE BLOG TWO]]>Thu, 05 Feb 2026 05:10:16 GMThttps://www.thegirlintheband.com/home/back-to-the-blog-two

As expected, last year was difficult. I knew dealing with my insurance company was going to be hard. I had gone through a fire before, so I knew they were going to be fighting me at every turn. What I didn’t expect was all the other fights that I would have to face. Utilities, my mortgage company, my contractor, even the post office. Inept and uncaring customer service representatives at every turn. Night after night pouring over insanely complicated insurance settlement letters and spreadsheets trying to figure out what I was paid, what I was owed and what I needed to get my house put back together. I was pushed to the brink again and again, while working long hours at a job that literally sucked the creativity and life out of me daily. Even a well-deserved trip from the job to Europe meant coming home to yet another shit show of spoiled food, no power and the daunting task of finding a new place to live for the third time in five months. The constant level of anger I felt on a daily basis was enormous. I never properly grieved the loss of my neighborhood and later, the loss of my dog.

What I also didn’t do was keep a vow I had made to get back to the blog. Writing about everything meant reliving everything and I just didn’t have it in me. Instead, I spent the hour before I fell asleep watching “Murder She Wrote” reruns. Or my other go to, “Dateline.” Two opposite sides of tv viewing spectrum, but for some reason, I found some solace in both. I have given up trying to figure out why and just went with it. But not writing, not doing anything creative, didn’t help.

I still am not sure I am ready to tackle sharing everything that has happened, but I am going to give going back to the blog another shot. There is a lot of information about my experiences last year, that need to be out there. And maybe for my own peace of mind, I need to get them out there.

I hope you will join me as I recount my journey.

]]><![CDATA[My Altadena]]>Fri, 11 Apr 2025 04:21:03 GMThttps://www.thegirlintheband.com/home/my-altadena

When my grandfather passed away in 1993, he left me a small inheritance. There was never a question of what I was going to do with the money. I wanted to buy my own home.

Growing up in rentals with pet restrictions (no dogs or cats), tyrant landlords and constantly wondering if the place would be sold and we would have to move, I decided renting sucked. My grandfather had always said that real estate was a sure thing. “People always need a place to live.” I started looking as soon as I had the money.

Pasadena was my first choice, but I soon realized that I wasn’t going to be able to afford much. Altadena seemed to be a real possibility.

I didn’t know very much about Altadena, other than one of the first friends I made when I moved to California lived there. She said most neighborhoods were safe and I liked the idea that all my friends, regardless of their ethnicity, would be comfortable there. I had heard stories about some of the communities around Pasadena where if you were driving a nice car and weren’t white, chances were excellent you were going to be pulled over. Hello Arcadia in the early 1990s.

After searching for months for something I could afford, I finally bought my 948 square foot tract home in a diverse neighborhood in West Altadena. It was supposed to be my “starter home.” But as the years went by, it became just home. Numerous projects, a garage that burned down and had to be rebuilt and a major addition a couple of years ago, and one day I realized I had been there over 25 years. I had put more than just my sweat into it, I had put my heart and soul.
Despite living there for so long, I never knew much about the history of Altadena. I just knew I loved that we didn’t have HOAs and if you needed to get rid of something, you could just put it by the curb and someone who needed it, would take it. One of my neighbors used to put her paintings out in front of her house. Another one sold honey and crafts in her driveway. We were a community of musicians, creative types and people who worked “in the business,” not always in front of the cameras, but behind the scenes.

That all changed in the early morning hours of January 8th, 2025. We had always lived with fires in the mountains, but this was different. It was a combo fire tornado that destroyed entire neighborhoods, including my own, where I was one of three homes left standing on the street.
Suddenly, little known Altadena was all over the news, along with Pacific Palisades, who were hit with the same fire tornado, despite being 40 miles apart.

Unfortunately, some people began talking about the two areas like they were one and the same. It broke my heart when people began commenting, “That’s just a bunch of rich movie stars with a ton of money. They’ll be rebuilt in a matter of months.”

I can’t speak for the Palisades, having never lived there, although I know not everyone who lost their home was affluent. But I can speak for Altadena. We are a working-class community of folks going to work every day, trying to raise their families and hold on to the American dream. If you haven’t been schooled, as I wasn’t here is a little background on how Altadena became the amazing place it is today.

It had not always been diverse. Before the 1960s, it was predominantly white. Social change, like school integration and freeway construction, led to a significant shift with people of color, including many Black families, moving in and establishing a middle-class community. From 1960 to 1970, Black homeownership went from 4% to 27%, as redlining laws prevented them from purchasing homes elsewhere in the state. As of 2023, 81% of Black residents in Altadena owned their homes- nearly double the national average.

I have seen my neighborhood change over the years. As older homeowners sold or passed away, homes were sold to flippers. It brought in younger buyers and families, adding to the diversity. Today, Altadena’s residents are 58% people of color, with Black residents making up 18%. West Altadena remains the most diverse side. It always made me smile when during Pride month, my favorite Altadena Mexican restaurant, El Patron, has three flags flying. The Mexican flag, the US flag and the Pride flag.

None of us can know what our community will look like in the future. None of us would have ever thought it would look like it did in the days after the fire. We see it coming back slowly, as debris gets removed and lots get cleared. Sadly, not everyone will be able to return, but those of us that do will be left to keep intact the most important aspect we have always been most proud of. Everyone is welcome.

You never realize how much you love your community until it gets taken away. That being said, I believe Altadena will rise literally from the ashes. Will it be the same? No, but it will still be my Altadena.

]]><![CDATA[BACK TO THE BLOG]]>Fri, 28 Mar 2025 04:06:03 GMThttps://www.thegirlintheband.com/home/back-to-the-blog

It has been almost a year since I posted on this blog. Last year was challenging. Kody, my beloved pup, had some major health issues. My job had become extremely stressful. Most nights, after some long days, I did not feel like doing anything creative. I felt drained, both physically and emotionally. Trying to write about everything that was going on seemed daunting and more like another job than an outlet.

I had vowed that at the beginning of the year, I would go back to writing and posting.
On January 7th, I took Kody to a specialist who diagnosed what I had already suspected. The huge lump on his stomach was cancer and removing it on a 12-year-old dog was neither humane or even possible.

We came home to Altadena and lost power for the second time that day. I suspected it had been turned off by Southern California Edison due to some outrageously strong Santa Ana winds.
I never suspected that night that most of the community I had lived in for over 30 years would be gone the next day. My home would somehow be one of three sparred on the entire street. But my life would never be the same.

As hard as the start of this year has been, it has put some things in sharp perspective. I thought last year was tough? In looking back it was my reactions to what was happening that made it worse.
I have been thinking a lot about a line from my all-time favorite movie, “It’s A Wonderful Life.” Clarence, the angel says to George Bailey, “You see George, you’ve really had a wonderful life.”

I did too. Or I should I say I do. Because despite everything that is happening, there are still bright moments, laughter and good times. My house is still standing, nothing short of a miracle. I still have the people I love in my life.

I am going to keep my vow I made to get back to this blog. To share my story and experiences with dealing with yet ANOTHER fire (my garage burned down in 2003, something I did post about here), and life in general. I hope some of you will continue to take this crazy journey with me. You might even learn from my mistakes along the way!

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