Happy Fourth of July!
This year, the Fourth of July seemed to sneak up on me. I had been talking for weeks about getting up to the park in Longmont to listen to the Fourth of July concert, and then finding a good place at dusk to watch the fireworks. But the week before was nearly unbearably busy – both at home and at work. With the release of my first novel, much of my free time has been taken up with promotional activities, while I try to write novel number two. The gardens are at the point of needing more attention than I have to give – hot dry weather means I need to water more often, and the heat-loving weeds have continued to overrun my pretty vegetables despite the heavy mulching. Klown has been sick since Tuesday, which means even less support with housekeeping and additional messes to clean up.
And work is full of “change,” with people leaving, new people coming on board, and a general feeling of not being able to keep up with the current and projected workload for the next two months. There are also a handful of proposals and user manuals to write, and this writing saps my energy when I’d love to be working on my novel instead.
So when Friday came around and I realized the 4th was the next day, I suddenly felt like I’d made no plans! Which I hadn’t!
But Tater and I pulled it together. We made ourselves a picnic lunch – sandwiches, baby carrots and jicama, a bag of strawberries and blueberries, and some patriotic red-and-white sugar cookies from the grocery store. We strapped our lawn chairs onto our backs, filled our cargo basket with our yummies, and biked the twelve blocks or so to the park. We found a shady spot and settled in.
And my goodness it was hot. In my over fifty years of 4th of Julys, there have only been two kinds of weather – hot and humid, or hot with giant thunderstorms. This day was no different. Colorado’s thunderstorms this time of year are mostly dry – little puffballs of angry thunderheads float overhead, rumbling with tremendous thunder, but no rain reaches the ground. Those little thunderheads serve a purpose, though. They block out the relentless sun for a minute or two, and produce breezes that help cool us down, if only for a few minutes.
The concert was wonderful. It started with a guy and his band singing some classic rock, and was followed by a chorus that sang patriotic tunes like American the Beautiful. Then the Longmont Symphony Orchestra played for 90 minutes, covering all the best tunes. They always wrap up the show with the playing of the 1812 Overture by Tchaikovsky, complete with real cannon fire. In between these things were activities for the kids, the awarding of prizes for the best-decorated pavilions, and a little interlude where children got to conduct the orchestra while it played John Philips Sousa’s Stars and Stripes Forever.
Then we biked home. The sun was hot, the shade was limited, and by the time we got there, all we wanted to do was stand under a running hose in the back yard. We opted for showers and a nap instead, though, because there was more to come!
At 8:30, we headed to the Fairgrounds for the annual fireworks show. We live in the biggest small town in America, I think. Population 91,000, but our entertainment is still very small-town. I swear at least half of the 91,000 people were gathering around the Fairgounds for the show. And it did not disappoint. Tater and I sat in our lawn chairs behind the car and oohed and ahhed with all the families that were gathered. When the finale came, the crowd had reached such a frenzy that the last “boom” brought long minutes of applause.
I love my city-that-is-really-a-small-town, and all the fun we can have. Even if it is hot. Next year, I’m going to try to not let the Fourth of July sneak up on me.
