Saturday, July 4, 1998

        I've been cooking this morning, something I rarely, if ever, do. Bob came into the kitchen and said, "Can this be called cooking, technically, or do you think it should be called something else, like assembling?" Okay, I wasn't cooking, per se, but putting things together in bowls and stirring them counts as cooking in my book. And I did technically cook when I boiled the pasta, didn't I?

        Oh, and I boiled eggs.

        It's just after midnight, and we just got home. I knew it would be late since we had to stay until it was dark to do the fireworks, and we were over an hour away from home. It was nice. We had a lot of good food and conversation and lots of pretty fireworks. There was only two near-disasters when fireworks went off prematurely and much too close for comfort. And I wasn't at all comfortable with the idea of a five year old lighting fireworks, but since it was apparently okay with her mother and certainly none of my business, I stayed out of it, and no one was hurt.

        Bob did almost all of the cooking, and most of the fireworks supervision. I wish I could have gotten a picture of him surrounded by a throng of little girls wanting him to light their punks, but it was getting too dark and I had already taken all the pictures.

        To see a larger size, click on the thumbnail image. The first picture shows Chico and Dakota, John's horses. The second one is of John's girlfriend's two step-sisters and the daughter of one of his friends (and Chico); the third shows Bob on Dakota.

        The first picture in the second row is the pond on John's property, the second picture is Bob and John, and the third shows John staying well away from Bob as he's lighting a bottle rocket . . .

        The fireworks, once the bottle rockets and firecrackers were disposed of, really were beautiful. I love fireworks, the bigger and flashier the better. Actually I suppose ideally I like to see them go off from a distance, silently. I love the huge showers of sparks. I almost always go to sleep in the car on the way home from one of these parties, but I try to stay awake for awhile so I can see the fireworks in the sky. Fireworks always make me think of Bilbo Baggins' birthday party in The Fellowship of the Ring. I'm not sure why that particular fictional instance of fireworks sticks in my mind, but it does.

        In addition to the horses, there was a Doberman/Rottweiler mix named Sheba, a baby girl named Harley, and John's girlfriend's grandmother, who got up abruptly at one point during the fireworks, grabbed her purse, and looked around her in agitation, suddenly afraid that the grandson who had brought her had gone home without her--"What, Grandma?" several people asked. "Where's Wendall?" she said. "I'm right here, Grandma," Wendall said. "Oh, okay. Don't leave with out me."

        Tomorrow I'm driving down to Sedalia to another picnic, this one with my father's extended family. It's an annual event--we used to get together at Christmastime every year, but a few years ago someone decided that it made more sense to do it in the summer. I'm not sure exactly why. The people who don't live nearby are more likely to be in town over Christmas, and it's always around 100 degrees on the 4th, but I don't argue, I just show up.