It's miserable here with all the wildfire smoke. Dark outside with a sickly yellow-orange-grey color to the air. The perpetual daytime twilight is confusing some of the wild animals. Yesterday a woodchuck crossed the street to get back to our yard in the middle of the afternoon. Normally you don't see them until dusk. When the sun is briefly visible it's a orange or red ball. Since it's an old drafty house the smoke smell is getting in to some parts of the house thanks to the wind gusts. On the news at noon they were recommending people wear masks outside and stay indoors as much as possible. I was shocked yesterday while driving to see my mom there was a family taking a stroll together and a mother was casually walking her toddler out in a stroller without any sort of protective cover on it. There are all sorts of warnings about keeping kids indoors. The lawn needs mowing but that's not going to happen. It will have to wait until the smoke is expected to clear via a cold front on the weekend. Since I have asthma I'm only spending time outside when absolutely necessary. I wish it would rain. We could really use it and it would help with the air quality.

We live near a small school and the parents park their minivans and SUVs all over the neighborhood to drop off and pick up their kids. Somebody has been dumping their trash in our garbage pails recently. They do this after the garbage men have already emptied the pails. A lot of it seems to be empty plastic drink bottles, paper plates and such in white kitchen garbage bags. Likely parents tidying up the minivans and dumping the trash on us. They dumped a big bag into the yard waste pail this morning so the yard waste wasn't picked up. The collectors are not going to touch this at all. The same thing has happened a few times over the years with people dumping trash bags on top of the recycling bins. Last summer someone dumped a bunch of heavy unbagged garbage in a newly emptied pail. Very annoying. Some people are just jerks.

The only thing on the agenda today is visiting my mom later. It's going to be an awful drive there since the traffic situation is even worse with the smoke problem. What should have been a 25 minute drive on all county/local roads took an hour yesterday. Since I return home after 8pm the traffic was better then although heavier than normal for the hour.