Happy Independence Day to one and all!
So what are you doing to celebrate, if anything?
Here in the ’hood, the neighborhood association throws a big shindig in the park. When the dogs and I circumnavigated the park at 5 this morning, folks were out there setting up booths and bringing in the beloved fire truck and generally carrying on. It’s a great tradition, especially for those who have the stamina to tolerate the heat…it’s supposed to hit 109 today.
Not for me, thanks. The dogs and I trotted through our favorite part of the ’hood before the Old Guy who likes to feed other people’s critters. The shade-tree mechanic’s old yaller cat was sitting on the sidewalk awaiting the arrival of the food hand-out. Cassie, who adores cats, and Ruby, who thinks a cat might be good to eat, admired the cat quietly, sat around and gazed at the cat, did not try to grab the cat while it sat there gazing at them. LOL!
Dropped the dogs off back at the house and then raced back out to get a real walk & jog, not possible when you have one dog trying to charge forward and one dog lagging behind, pleading old age as an excuse to sniff every blade of grass. Hence the view of the shindig preparations.
This evening I’ll be joining friends at the home of a couple who host dinner at their 12th-floor apartment, which overlooks the Phoenix Country Club and the Steele Indian School Park, both of which have spectacular fireworks displays. It’s a wonderful party and experience — a great opportunity to get together with people who scatter during the summer and a fantastic view of the nearby displays and more distant fireworks all over the Valley.
So that will be fun.
People started blasting away with amateur fireworks last night. For years, selling fireworks to the general public was illegal in Arizona.
But of course, our moronic legislators decided that this outrage abridged good old American Liberty and so passed a law legalizing sale of fireworks to one and all. In Arizona, it’s perfectly legal to blow your hands off — we have affirmed that it’s your God-given American right to do so.
Cities, whose emergency responders were already maxed around the Fourth, subsequently passed local bans within city limits. The legislature, incensed, responded to this rebellion by decreeing that all retailers would be free to sell fireworks, even in cities that ban the use of fireworks. This means you can buy whatever your little heart craves at the corner Albertson’s or Safeway.
Isn’t that cute? No more stealth trips to Nogales! 🙄
So of course, at this time of year every nitwit in the city is out throwing fireworks around.
Last night a couple of bird-brains who live nearby were setting off cherry bombs. You could tell by the sound when they’d put one under a can or a pail. They were in the alley and the street outside my east wall.
Corgis being fairly calm dogs, the hounds weren’t unduly alarmed, though they didn’t like the noise. I was annoyed, in the way stupidity has always annoyed me.
In junior high school, a kid I knew was blinded when a cherry bomb he set off under a can blew up in his face. So my patience level with this kind of “fun” is low.
It’s SO hot and SO dry this summer, I’m concerned about the flammability of those massive hanging gardens of cat’s-claw vines that ensure my privacy in the backyard.
Even though Gerardo has them trimmed up off they ground where they lop over the wall into the alley, there’s still masses of plant material along the way out there. All it would take is some Roman candle to go astray and land in that stuff to set fire to it. If such a fire isn’t put out quickly, it will easily jump to the house. Those vines come all the way up to the back of the house along that far wall, and they join up with hop bushes and a tree that would carry flames to the roof and attic.
So I’m not real happy about having to go off and leave the dogs here unattended. Cassie has never figured out how to use the dog door, and I doubt if Ruby would have enough sense to get out if the house started to burn. What they’d do is try to shelter in their den in the back bathroom. Where, you may be sure, they wouldn’t last long.
How can a species that so prides itself on its allegedly superior brain be, collectively and individually, so fuckin’ stupid?
I’m thinking about taking the dogs down to M’hijito’s house on the way to my friends’ place. But a) that will require me to leave very early and b) I suspect he won’t appreciate it. He’s probably entertaining his own friends.
So this morning I asked the neighbor across the street, who was celebrating the start of Independence Day by working on his wife’s car’s brakes, if he’d kinda keep an eye out. He no doubt thinks I’m a crazy old lady. But that’s OK, if he’ll take a glance over at the shack after the racket settles down.
Meanwhile, I’m pouring the water to those vines, in hopes that they’ll soak up enough moisture to protect them some from incidental sparks. Don’t even know if that’s possible. But they need to be watered, anyway.
DuckDuck is in the pool as we scribble. Every time Ruby realizes the duck is paddling around, she trots out the dog door, parks herself by the fence, and sits there as rapt as a little kid at the zoo. It’s really very adorable!
Better get up and fix some lunch and make up the rest of those tomatoes into gazpacho. And so, away! Have a happy Fourth of July!