Fire in the Sky

Welcome to southern California! This week has been our first real introduction to the Santa Ana winds, these strange hot gusts that come from all directions. My husband has been home from work the last two days on account of the fires in Malibu. Instead of snow days, which I am used to back in Idaho, here we have fire days. Pepperdine is closed down, although it is not in danger from the fire anymore that I know of. It's just that all the roads leading to Pepperdine are still on fire. The real bummer in all of this is that there was supposed to be a reading tonight by Tobias Wolff, one of my all-time favorite living writers. I had found someone to babysit Will for the evening, and John and I were going to go to the reading and then a special dinner afterwards with Toby. And now that of course was called off.

I tried to go out with Will this morning for our regular walk, but the sky is filled with so much smoke that it makes me feel a little bit queasy and the sidewalk and roads are filled with fallen branches. We just went one block before I decided to turn back.

So tonight we stayed in, and enjoyed Will's new adventure of pushing a big toy of his around like a walker. He is going to walk very soon, I think. He is already standing alone so much of the time, and he is so proud of himself. He just grins with his two little teeth. He especially likes to stand up in the tub, which keeps me on my toes. Here is a picture of him Robin took while she was here last week.