It's bizarre how ironic life can be. So we were at Pomona's Red Cross, dividing mini shampoos and toothpaste into neat little piles for Care Packages for fire victims when poof! Wildfires. One second we're crooning over paper cup handles and listening to Hot and Cold, and the next, we're outside watching a ring of smoke become bigger and bigger off the distance. I guess those Care Packages will be put to good use after all. Advice: When you're feeling jittery and you're leg can stop bouncing, take a swig of juice because that's the only nonalcholic drink you have at home. If you feel like you can't breathe take another swig. If you feel like your being smothered by all of this, take another. Repeat until the carton's empty. Then switch to chocolate. I bought a hunk of Belgian chocolate bigger than my head two days ago and it's already mostly gone. I've eaten so much I feel disgusted and bloated, just like the sky. The perfect portrait of Hades' dream bachelor pad. One more piece and I might actually puke. Compulsive-eating. The compulsion anorexics would hate to have. The compulsion that keeps bulimic treatment centers in business. I can't stand watching Fox 11 and having my family cluck over it all, oh what beautiful houses they were, how new. Oh, the fire is so big, oh Yorba Linda was such a lovely place, oh this is bad. Shut up. Fucking shut up. I know. I'm on the edge right now. Everything's ticking me off. I feel like one of those bungalows: I'm going to blow up any second. Everything but the music is too loud, jarring and sharp, each sound driving me crazier and crazier. Their voices: twangy, sympathetic, brassy: loud. The sound of the TV. The slamming doors. The chairs screeching along the floorboards. Shut up. Be quiet. Four words to describe fire: dangerous, alluring, compelling. How about the sky right now? The disgusting portrait of smothering gray blackness that used to be California's treasure of golden-blue. The clouds? The pearly white fluffs that used to look like carnations? They've decided now might be a good time to scatter. The only things keeping me sane: blogging and music and Listerine. Take a breath. Exhale. Feel the cool rush of spearmint through your nostrils. Be grateful. And open a new carton of juice and take a swig.