The royal couple

Just as I thought the fires were losing ground I heard a news report this evening that there are now over 1,000 fires up and down the state. The air smells smokey and I haven't seen the sun in days.

Usually there are rainbows dancing all over the dining room floor as the sun hits the prism in the window but today, I noticed, even the rainbows are gone.

I had some free time today so I got caught up in much needed dusting. We have hundreds of books and more arrive every month, a true addiction. Today I dusted 20 shelves and all the volumes they held, only a portion of the entirety.

Along the way I found old favorites and new acquisitions that I still hope to read (some day...) The bottom shelf of one bookcase holds all the children's books that were kept for visiting grandchildren. Several are stories of King Babar and his Queen Celeste. How well I remember the adventures and antics of their children, the elephant triplets Pom, Flora and Alexander.

I would be a wealthy woman if a had a dollar for every hour I read those tales over and over again -- to my kids and to kids in daycare years ago. It's one of my most pleasant memories, a child or two on each side of me as we pored over the episodes of elephant babies falling over cliffs, swimming with the aligators and other scary events. In the end no one ever got seriously hurt but we would hold our collective breaths all the same.