1284 Where There’s Smoke

I guess I’m getting cranky in my old age.
Like the other night. I’ve peacefully drifted off to sleep. I had my bedroom window open, catching the gentle summer night’s breeze. I’m doing my best to reduce my carbon footprint and not use air conditioning. And on summer nights, it’s nice to have the fresh air wafting through the house.
Since I get up early I go to bed early too. Anyhow, I’m stirred out of my slumber by a strange smell. It’s smoke.
About the time my subconscious registers that fact and starts to turn on the alarm chemicals in my body, I hear voices. My panicky and yet still partially dream-addled brain interprets the voices as fearful.
I wake fully up in complete sphincter-clenched adrenalin-energized crisis mode. The smoke smell is intense, and appears to be coming from my window. I run over, look out and ...my neighbors are sitting around their new portable fire pit. Laughing and drinking, smoke billowing into the fresh summer air.
That’s when the cranky part kicked in. Because this neighbor of mine is a liberal in good standing. He’s all against global warming. He doesn’t like carbon dioxide emissions and greenhouse gasses generally.
Yet here he is burning big chunks of wood, and smoke-polluting my fresh summer breeze. Not to mention infusing my bedroom with the odor of charred alder.
We all have our blind spots I guess. Just because there’s a burn ban on, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t fire up the chiminea on the back patio.
It’s bad enough his loud party woke me. That’s what you get when you live in a neighborhood.
It’s filling my house with the lingering stench of burnt wood that really got me fired up.
America, ya gotta love it.