Fourt of July (From the day after)

"The tried and true holiday of the United States of America."  No joke, that's what the headline was for the magazine from Delta... What the heck does that even mean? I have no clue, what I do know however is that no fourth can be complete without explosives and poor choices. From our house here in Seattle we were able to view 3 separate municipal fireworks displays and an unlimited number personal displays (including our own).  Our elderly neighbors actually came out and watched our show, in fact I'm pretty sure they stayed up/out on that porch later than we did.  Earlier in the day we managed to stop by Gas Works... and wow... just wow... I've always wanted to be a part of something like that (for those of you not from Washington here's what happened: WaMu was the main sponsor of the Sound's firework display every year and when they went belly up there were no funds for a show.  As soon as it was announced community members were up in arms, by the end of the week the combined donations of numerous corporations including Starbucks and Microsoft and hundreds of individuals totaled over $500k) sadly since I don't actually live here in Washington 90% of the year... Fortunately I was here for this grand and hopefully new Seattle Fourth of July tradition.


Unfortunately since we were preoccupied in combating the forces of nature at the house, we had to send our "better half" to do the acquisitions of supplies. What my mother ended up bringing home at first sounded promising... but after five minutes of trying to light the wick, I realized that the Fred Meyer brand of fireworks she had purchased were nothing more than generic party poppers... I also learned that party popper pull strings are flame retardant...  Things were looking glum as minion numero uno totally screwed up our [first batch of] strawberry rhubarb pies putting 3/4 a teaspoon of corn starch instead of 3 tablespoons of it which ultimately made for some very soup-y pies.  This fourth of July had suddenly take a turn for the worst when all of a sudden...
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 MUCKLESHOOT TO THE  RESCUE!!!


Who would have ever guessed that after less than a century a people, that we collectively as Americans attempted to expunge from our oh so conveniently "manifested" lands, would come to represent the savior of this nation's birthday? Although July 4th actually isn't when the United States was formed... nor was it when the Declaration of Independence was signed (August 2nd...)... or anything, it's almost as if this holiday was adopted simply because we like to blow stuff up.  ANYWAYs... thanks to the power of the automobile combined with Muckleshoot we were able to save our fourth of July and spend less than $200 at the same time YAY!!

However it seems that we are not the only people who enjoy watching the earth's ozone die just a bit faster.  In Spain Las Fallas are really sick, I had the pleasure of witnessing it first hand  awhile back.  Basically they make huge flammable monuments and then on March 19th they light them up and watch 'em burn.  Good stuff really, but that's not what we're talking about  here.  Today after making a makeshift fire pit after two of those recessed metal window well thingamabobs and some trees we cut down earlier in the day(see next post of Day 3: Return of the weed Whackers) we were making our smores like any good Americans.  As it got later and later the fire started to dwindle and people started to leave... and my mother says "we should burn all the dead weeds and grass and make some more smores!    [
Hold up rewind...
Grass + Leaves + Fire = eye searing smoke... no fire or anything (you're actually supposed to burn leaves when lost in islands/jungles to produce smoke signals because leaves/grass SMOKE so much)
Roasting marshmallows in eye searing smoke + eating them = more carcinogens than even I would care to ingest...
Ok play...
]  after all it's good for the environment."
There you have it folks the reason napalm was such a hit in Vietnam was because it was actually GOOD FOR THE ENVIRONMENT.  Sometimes I wonder how my parents maintain their respective professions...

Hope everyone had a good fourth.
Happy Belated Fourth Of July.