The California fires are burning a hole through my pocketbook.
The free bike ride around the neighborhood is out of the question.
The gratuitous swimming in the backyard pool just seems too risky.
The no cost frolicking in the backyard with friends would be too costly.
I know there is a myriad of things we can do indoors, and believe me, we’ve done plenty of them. Indoor bocce ball. Cat Lovers Monopoly. Hide and Seek and nearly break a toe trying to make it to base.
But try telling two very active grade schoolers that this summer (going on three weeks here) they have to stay indoors. Despite a blotting of the sun with a gray pall of smoke until it glows an eerie orange, itchy, watery eyes and throats, headaches and slight nausea, they can’t quite seem to grasp that this all could be hazardous and permanently disabling to their developing lungs.
So I distract them by taking them to the movies. I find I don’t feel like I’m cultivating couch potatoes if we go out to see a movie. Despite fertilizing ourselves with buckets of popcorn, gallons of Icees and smuggled in jumbo boxes of Junior Mints.
So, we’ve become the Siskel, Ebert and Wheelers of summer kid movies. Kit Kittredge?
Favorite! WALL-E? Fantastic! Space Chimps? I pray the prayer of a desperate mother these fires are snuffed out before I get dragged to that one.
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Thank you to all the firefighters for working tirelessly to preserve the beauty, resources and homes of California. Our prayers are for their safety and those in the fires’ path.