Masks for TWO reasons

Well, we made it through August without any forest fire smoke and thought we were all set! We had THREE terrible smoke years in 2015, 2017 and 2018 I think. We were hoping that never happened again. We THOUGHT those years were terrible. 

Well, the last week has shown us the worst air I've ever seen here. We had a huge windstorm about a week ago and it kicked up a ton of fires all around. Some really bad ones got started in Oregon and then their smoke blew into our area and just settled in our nice little Columbia River basin. 

The kids and I are now on day 6 of not leaving the house. The air is literally hazardous. It's been off the charts at points. Nathan and I spent a morning taping the cracks on the doors and putting towels in all the windows. We can still smell a little smoke in the house the air is so thick. I started getting headaches, a sore throat and a cough. We even have an HVAC system on recirculate. The day the fires started Jeremy put in a brand new MERV 13 filter as well. I'm guessing it needs to be changed already but they are out everywhere. I ordered some from Lowes that should be here in a week. 

Jeremy is in his car for most of the day but says he can still smell it in there. I feel so badly for the people working outside. 

In years past, we never had worse air than red and I thought THAT was bad. We had no idea what dark purple could feel like! We would give anything to be back in red. It really does make a huge difference. 

All we had was expensive blue painting tape so that's what we used. Jeremy was supposed to paint more of the house last weekend but due to the smoke no one could go outside. Hopefully October will be nice enough to paint. We planned to paint in September because that's when we get the least amount of wind. That sure didn't work out for us this year. There is definitely no wind that's for sure! 

I've gone outside once in the last 5 days just to try to pick some of my tomatoes. Even though our days are supposed to be 80-90 degrees, they are only in the 60's and 70's because the sun can't get through. I picked the tomatoes and they were cold. This was the middle of the day. It seemed so eerie and bizarre. I wore one of our last N-95 masks we bought 3 years ago for the bad fires. I also wore swimming goggles. When I came inside, I was still coughing but I think the goggles did the trick so my eyes weren't burning! I just feel so badly for everyone who has to be outside in this. 

Never did I think when we left the house we'd have to wear masks for TWO reasons. A pandemic and horrific smoke. Before the fires started 5 years ago, I'd never worn a mask for any reason my whole life!