August has been a grueling month. My colleague finally followed through on his long threat to retire, which landed me 3 weeks of retina call. My cell phone also died suddenly at the start of my call week, necessitating a frantic visit to the Verizon store to revive my old Galaxy S5 while I waited for a replacement.  I had suspected bad mojo when our house cleaner had to cancel twice this month due to car and childcare issues. To eradicate our front yard bermuda grass infestation, we’ve also had to wake up early each weekend to shovel lava rocks and tear up weed fabric to exterminate each metastatic tentacle. The manual labor left our arms and quads wobbly, with little energy to spend with Westley to promote his new biking skills or enjoy the newly renovated playground across the street. Our couch rest did give us a chance to finish watching the visually-stunning first season of His Dark Materials and a strangely-entertaining second season of the Umbrella Academy. Unfortunately, the bizarre dry lightening storms and ensuing wildfires this week led to suffocating smoke and ashen dust to befall upon us. We were glad that we had at least completed the weeding and even enjoyed some outdoor Korean BBQ before the air quality downturn.  Today, I scrambled to finish clinic early to pick up my new Google Pixel 4a from Best Buy ahead of our weekend trip. Hopefully, we’ll be able to get away for some fresh air (literally) amidst the heatwave, wildfires, and pandemic.