The Blonde Duck enjoys posing more than sparklers.

4th of July Fun

For some reason, Blogger is not letting me put a title. Fine, I didn't want to put a title anyway. Jerks. Anyway, I know it's a bit late, but here are the pictures and tales from the 4th of July.

The 4th of July began with cloudy skies, humid air and lots of rain. Early in the morning, I went jogging underneth omnious dark clouds that foreshadowed the early afternoon to come. Later in the morning, the skies opened and rain poured from the sky, making the Pond actually look nice and green in July rather than brown and dehydrated.


My parents came over later with my sister, bearing gifts of ground beef, hamburger buns, tea, chips and three different pies. That's right--three different pies for 5 people. Ok, ok. To be fair, one of the pies was half gone. But still--it was a diabetic's nightmare and a sugar addict's dream. I was in heaven.


I made potato and fruit salad and we spent the afternoon lounging and watching T.V. My dad and Ben immediately retreated to the garage where they participated in important tasks like scratching their butts, belching, passing gas and changing my battery.


Then, a crisis fell throughout the Pond. We had no fireworks. Fireworks? We hadn't ever had fireworks at any 4th of July I'd ever been at with my parents. We used to go downtown to see the fireworks at my dad's building, where we would stand on the 33rd story and my mom would hyperventilate. But fireworks in the yard? We'd never done that before. What was the big deal?


Oh, duh. Ben and I live outside the city limits. Whoops.


On a mission, my father, sister and Ben set off in search of gas and firework stands. My mother grilled hamburgers while I spastically danced around the living room. I had important things to do, after all. Dancing is much more fun than doing cooking. Isn't that what moms are for?


The troops returned victorious with several bags of fireworks bursting with sparklers, black cats, roman candles and the Cone. The Cone was my favorite.


After stuffing ourselves with burgers, potato salad, fruit salad, chips and salsa, Ben pleaded for mercy and asked that we let our stomachs settle before we attacked the pies. He suggested we shoot off the fireworks.


Before I knew it, someone stuck flaming stick in my hand sprewing red sparks. My automatic reaction was to hold it as far away from me as possible while sticking my body as far as I could in the opposite direction. It looked as if I was trying to feed an alligator. I was then informed it was a sparkler.


"What do you do with them?" I yelled unelegantly. I was not sophisticated in the use of firecrackers and resented that everyone seemed to think I was supposed to know what to do with them. After all, my sister didn't know any better than I did and she was waving that sparkler around like she was a fairy godmother with a magic wand.


"Wave them around, draw pictures, write your name," my parents suggested helpfully. Gingerlly, I waved the sparkler around. It roared and only sparked more. I decided I would stick to holding it as far away from my body as possible and getting ready to drop it and run like hell if the flame came within inches of my fingers. "You're supposed to have fun with them," Ben said dryly. Whatever. Flaming things aren't fun to me.


Ben, and Danielle, however, were not having this problem.


My sister, the Rat, seemed to think we were training for Iraq. She was delighted to set off black cats and take off running in the opposite direction, screaming, "It's going to blow!" and hurling herself behind the car. The first time I heard that I nearly dove into my car. I thought a damn gernade was going off. Oh no, just an overdramatization of something that sounded like a hyperactive cap gun. Sparklers didn't faze her either--she swirled those suckers around like it was a baton and she was in an orchestra. She wasn't the worst however.

Then, there was Ben. You see that mischevious grin? That's right. This little twerp, my dear husband, harbored a secret love of fireworks I never knew about. I thought he was bad with the candle lighter? I hadn't seen nothing yet.

The boy used roman candles as cannons, aiming at coffee cans and various debri in the driveway to make it move, threw black cats in the trashcan to see it go "Boom" and held his own mythbusters experiment to see how many fireworks he could put in the trashcan before it exploded. He set off the cone, set off various sparklers and ran around with a "punk" seeing if he could capture the smoke on film. When he wasn't doing any of those activities, he was twirling the candle lighter on his finger like a gun, looking for the next thing he could set on fire.

So as the fireworks raged throughout the night, we fell asleep stuffed with pie, burgers and every kind of salad imaginable. And on top of everything, we had fireworks! Only 6 more months until New Years....who knows what other toys we can drag home?!?!