CarFire

As we were driving back from San Francisco, we passed a car on fire (to the side of the opposite direction on the freeway, thankfully, and with fire crews already there). Opal commented on it, and I said it was a car on fire. "Do you think the people are dead?" she asked. "No. Usually if your car catches fire on the freeway like that, you notice and get out before it's a big problem." "Oh. Why do cars catch fire?" "Well, you know, it's little tiny explosions that make the car go, so there's a lot of fire involved. There are all sorts of things that keep it under control, making the car move forward, but if enough things go wrong, you get a fire." Pause. "Mommy?" "Yes, dear?" "Tomorrow, can we clean out the car? I wouldn't want any of my stuff to burn up." "It's always a good thing to clean out the car, but really, car fires are quite rare. And the only time I was in a car that caught fire, it was just a little fire. Well, it caught fire twice, but the brakes don't really count." "And did your stuff burn up?" "No. We just got out of the car in a hurry, and when we turned it off, the fire went out." "Then what did you do?" "We were on our way to a wedding, so we called a taxi."

We have been listening to the Ramona books on CD; somehow I missed them as a child. I don't like the way Stockard Channing voices Ramona (although a lot of her voices are great) but I love the books. Opal finds them quite intense, but not re-listenable the way almost everything else is. The curse of the real, again, I expect.

Read to Opal today: A kid's book about a fish, The Story of Moomin, Mymble, and Little My, we finally finished Kabumpo!. She read (at least) an Enid Blyton, How to Make A Cherry Pie and See the United States, a Transformers book, and 2 library books. And Sardine 2 for the umpteenth time.

The Running Book Count: 434 + 193 (last year 1170 + 121)