Three years ago this evening, we drove off to San Diego for the weekend for a family reunion with my husband David’s relatives. We had just booked into a hotel and sat down for dinner when we got a call from our neighbors saying our garage was on fire. It was one of those calls that you never want to get. We were three hours away from home and there was nothing we could do to save our home and our cat. Fortunately, another of our neighbors had called 911 and for the next few hours as we made our way home, we got intermittent reports on how well the firefighters were doing putting out the fire. By the time we got home, the firefighters had finished their work and left, and instead we faced vulture-like contractors hovering around our house eager for us to hire them to rebuild it.

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