A quick trip to Denver for a family wedding seems to have cleared out my lungs pretty well, and the progress that’s been made in terms of getting the fire contained and directed away from LA proper seems to have done the trick in stopping the series of asthma attacks I was having last week.

This is a phenomenal set of time-lapses from August 30th, when the fire really started raging out of control, which will go a long ways towards explaining why I was so goddamn miserable for a couple of weeks.

That video is ONE DAY of smoke being shot into the air around L.A., and it did that or worse every day for almost a week and a half. I don’t even live that close to the fire, but it’s easy to see how bad things got for those amongst us with craptastic lungs.

I’ve been back in LA for a few days. My timing was miserable, showing up just as the forested hills around the city decided to burst into flames.

There have been fires here before, and they’ve aggravated my lungs a bit, but nothing’s set off my asthma like the giant fire that’s still burning almost completely out of control tonight.

My one attempt to work out since getting home ended rather disastrously after half an hour on Thursday, having to come home and use my inhaler like I used to when I was a kid and just a little exercise would set my lungs off.

I haven’t had to use my inhaler daily in years, but I’ve had to every day since then. And that’s without working out at all.

What gets me is that the smoke really isn’t that bad in my neighborhood – It’s certainly not as bad as when there was a smaller, much closer fire a couple of years ago. That fire was only three or four miles away at its worst point (I could smell the smoke much more distinctly), and I don’t think I had to use my inhaler once.

I don’t know if it’s the lack of transition after being up in the bracingly clear, thin air of Idaho for a week, or if there’s something in my air conditioner (running non-stop for the first time in well over a year) that’s making my lungs even angrier.

The bottom line is, I’m stuck at home, waiting for the air to clear out, unable to get my stress out through working out, and feeling like my old, fat, sickly self as I manage to need a hit off the inhaler from the strenuous effort of watching TV.

I thought I was losing my mind before I left. I thought the walls were closing in on me before.

I’d been a little reluctant to go to a family event in Denver this coming weekend. Now I wish I’d decided to spend this week there, because at least I could fucking breathe.