World on Fire

I should really post a picture of my sexy new glasses, with frames picked out for me by the sweetly flaming boy at my eye doctor's office. I told him I was going for a "funky, naughty librarian" look and he delivered it in spades. What does that have to do with the fires that are raging in California? The smoke has travelled over the Sierras and into the little desert valley where I live, making everything smell like an acrid campfire and making contact lens wearing impossible. The way my eyes felt this morning, I didn't even want to try to jam my finger in there.

I hate fire season.

• My lungs get really unhappy with the smoke, and I feel more inclined to keep Little A indoors, which makes her cross.
• Sometimes the fires are caused by lightning strikes, and we never get enough rain that falls all the way to the ground to put them out.
• But some fires are man-started. Seriously, who lives in the middle of a bunch of sagebrush and decides to flick a lit cigarette butt out the car window?? WHY??? I was benind a guy in a Jeep who did that yesterday while we were at a red light. I very nearly got out of the driver's seat in my car and brought the burning projectile back to him. I wanted to flick it at his crusty gray mullet and say sweetly "Excuse me, sir. You dropped this..."
• Likewise, who goes camping and doesn't adhere to the basics of fire safety, or learn how to properly extingish a campfire? I learned how to do that when I was about six. I also learned to not feed wild animals and how to secure my cooler from bears, although I would say I have a more than passing interest in camping issues. People do a lot of things wrong when camping, in my opinion.
• I like taking long walks outdoors, but my lungs really can't take this. Yuck.