The Fourth: An Instagram Post

This weekend will be spent at work, but that's okay.  Maybe its because the last two days at home were kicked off with our favorite holiday.  Or maybe its because today I dug around in the dirt, met the ice cream man at the end of our driveway (Summer list!), sat in a beauty parlour for two hours catching up with my mom's stinkin cute friends, and then came home and took a dusky stroll with the dogs.  I'm getting good at putting quality in my days off, which makes the next three days already seem like a piece of cake. 


But, back to the holiday.  As a fellow pyromaniac, I love the 4th the best.  Maybe its the Americana-ness of it all: the waving of flags in front of houses, desserts with only red white and blue decorations, and people quoting "Proud to be an American" on facebook all day.  This holiday has always stuck out in my head.  When we were younger, we'd venture to a family friend's house, eat fresh steamed clams with lots of butter, and watch our engineer fathers create makeshift firecracker dangling devices over the sound, knowing we'd have to rake them up the next morning.  In highschool, I distincly remember sitting on a canoe with two of my guy friends motioning for me to cover my ears and watch out as they launched mortars into the sky above us.  And lately, it was as simple as a caulde-sac performance of ten dollar fountains as we sat in lawn chairs in front of our house. 


That's all I wanted this year. So, I was very honored when my dad handed me money for fireworks and clear instructions. 

No spinners. No Pistol Pete's.  No Bees.  Fountains.  Dog friendly? Sparklers.  Parachutes.


This year it was my job to gather the goods. 

And let me just tell you it was good.  Until it wasn't.  We brought four chairs to the circle, I ran back and forth lighting fountains.  The parachutes went in the trees, of course.  The neighbors gathered around, eager to shoot off their own goods, which in no way compared to my haul. 

Everything was going fine and dandy.

I lined the fountains up in order, saving something called "Pink Diamond" for last.  I shot off this tall fountain, which showered blue and white sparks overhead.  It was beautiful.  It was buy one get one free.


Save that one for the finale!  My family shouted.  The neighbors continued to shoot off lousy bottle rockets.  Most of them didn't fire correctly.

So Pink Diamond was lit second to last. 

For the finale, I lit the tall one and ran back.  Camera on phone ready to capture some of those beautiful blue and white. 

Boom, shower. Boom, shower.  Boom, nothing.


It was good until it wasn't. 



The damn thing tipped over. 

Boom, neighbor to the right's garage. 

Boom, up the street, past the neighbors with the faulty bottle rockets. 

Boom, into the forrest. 

And, Boom, neighbor to the left's garage and almost their children. 

Sigh. 

(This was Boom #3)

We can all laugh at it now.  No one got hurt.  It rains here and so the trees did not burst into flames. We cleaned the scorch marks off neighbor to the right's garage door immediately with bleach. 

And we went right inside after that. 

A little while later, we sat around a controlled fire in the backyard, listening to the fireworks in the distance.  K was amazed by the noise.  It was a bit of a culture shock. 

To me, it was comforting.  Familiar.  And, all pending lawsuits aside, so very Fourth of July.