Campfires

They have become a nightly ritual. What peace, to sit before glowing, crackling embers while nature does its thing all around you, as in teenagers continuing to set off fire crackers on July 6th, or the elderly man from the condominiums behind us getting off of his bicycle to pick up sticks off the road. (Likes his street pristine.) Yes, nature is all around us. Strange human nature.

Everyone knows that in most couples, men are the designated fire-builders. It's in their DNA. But last night I was feeling "woodsy" and powerful and decided to build my own instead of waiting for Jorge to be "the man." After all, do you think Sarah Palin waits for Todd to build the fires? Unh-uh.

So I marched out there with all the stuff I needed to get a fire going, and I succeeded in building a great big, roaring ... pillar of smoke, kinda like the smoke monster in LOST:



Then Jorge, who finally came outside, was all pretend-mad at me because he claimed the smoke would poison the bird seed in his new feeder and kill all the birds within a 3 mile radius. And he didn't like the way I rolled up the newspaper kindling into a cigar shape instead of a ball. And he didn't like that I used cherry wood instead of oak because everyone knows it smokes more than oak. And he didn't like blah, blah, blah.

I couldn't hear him after a while because I was toasting marshmallows to perfection. It's in my DNA.