July 30, 2016

• I'm cranky today

   

  I awoke this morning, after another restless night, to the sound of motorcycles rumbling down our dead-end street and Boo barking downstairs. Today is my second-least favorite day. My five least favorite days of the year, counting down to the worst, are:

  5. Mammogram Day

  4. Doing the Taxes Day

  3. Going to the Dentist Day

  2. Support the Troops Festival Day

  1. Pap Smear Day

  Today, as you’ve surely deduced, is the Support the Troops Festival. It’s less a festival than a pay-to-attend party that lasts from 8 AM until sometime in the wee hours of tomorrow morning. I call it the Redneck Patriots Festival. Hotrods and motorcycles start rumbling through our sleeping village around 7 AM. There are people sitting in private yards on all the streets leading to the field, which they fenced off yesterday as I discovered when I tried to take Boo on our morning walk, to collect the entrance fee. Usually they are in yards at the end of the street closest to the field, but when I looked out my bedroom window, I saw someone sitting in the yard on the corner. If he tries to stop me every time I come home today, I’m going to be pissed.

  

  Actually, I’m already pissed. You’re smart enough that you probably realized that without me pointing it out. These people are going to spend the entire day and most of the night playing loud music over a P.A. system, yelling, getting drunk, and being generally obnoxious. I will have to take Boo to daycare and pay for him to stay overnight because there will be a fireworks show tonight. It’s a nice fireworks show, but they are very loose with the start time. One year, they spent two solid hours awarding door prizes – we are close enough to hear what’s going on and several of the door prizes were guns which I’m pretty sure is not entirely legal. Anyway, that year the door prize drawings lasted so long, the fireworks show was an hour late starting. Village residents can’t go to bed until after the fireworks show because… HELLO! EXPLOSIONS!!  Finally, a little before midnight, somebody somewhere in the village started honking the horn on their car and soon there were hundreds of car horns blaring all over town. They got the message and started the fireworks and they’ve been a little bit better about not starting them so late in the two or three years since then. I imagine that has more to do with complaints to the village president and fear of losing their venue than fear of another car horn protest. We’ll see how they do tonight.

  There are only two things that are making this day better for me. One is that I’ve got a few friends from Indiana and a couple of Krysten’s friends coming over to grill sausages and watch the fireworks tonight. I even have the sparklers I hauled to Colorado in my suitcase and forgot about for us to play with while we wait for the fireworks to start. And it’s a cool day so far, so we may be able to start a fire in the fire pit and I have stuff to put in the flames to turn them blue and green and I may even buy stuff to make s’mores.

  That was all one thing. The other thing making today better is that, when I opened up the document I keep for writing blog posts, I found this list of 100 things that make me happy and I read the entire list before I started writing this post. It made me happy.

  I put Boo’s Batman shirt on him today hoping it will make him feel brave enough to just growl at the noise instead of the incessant barking I usually have to contend with until I take him to daycare in the afternoon. We are going for a walk in the opposite direction from our usual walk and maybe we’ll capture a few Weedles and Pidgies along the way. Someday I’m going to figure out what to do with all these monsters after I’ve caught them. I wish I could turn them loose on the redneck patriots; Boo would like that.

  

  Grr! I'm Batdog; the dog you deserve.

  • 11:12 am
  • 8 Comments