Today was an eventful day that showed what was really valuable and precious to me. We are in a pretty bad drought and heat wave right now in Central Texas. Most of the area is in a burn ban and my neighborhood is in a Stage 4 water restrictions. This basically means outside watering one day a week, during specific times, with a water hose, no sprinkler and no watering on the weekends. It may not seem like much but when you have an acre of brown grass and gorgeous oak trees struggling to find water underground it matters a lot.

So imagine my shock and slight fear when The Boy calls out, “Mom, you gotta come see this.” and there is black smoke billowing up in the air behind my fence. A neighbor behind me, who has given the neighborhood HOA problems for many years, decided to burn trash and junk. Hoarding doesn’t even begin to describe the mess in and out of this person’s house and cars and he had just started a fire in an extreme drought and low water levels in our tanks and aquifer.

The Boy grabbed the video camera, because isn’t that what kids do these days. We are lucky he did because we were able to give it to the Fire Marshall who will try to build a case of arson against our neighbor.

I told The Boy to grab the pets and we left the house. I grabbed nothing. No shoes, clothes, bags, computers, pictures…nada, nothing, zilch. Because it’s all just stuff. I didn’t even have my wedding ring on. And it didn’t bother me. I wasn’t worried about anything in the house or the house itself, just my family.

We came home about a half hour later, when I didn’t see smoke in the air any longer. Luckily we only had minor damage on our back fence and along the fence line.

I’ll be back to posting on my stuff tomorrow. Because even though it’s “Just Stuff”, I love using it and it makes me feel good.

What would you grab if you only had a few minutes?