Happy Fourth of July

I couldn't get a good picture of the flag at the foot of my driveway--not enough breeze--so this clip-art will have to do. It's about as celebratory as I got today. Even forgot--or got so wrapped up in what I was doing--to go out on the front porch and see the neighborhood parade head for the school across the street. But it's been a good lazy day--cleaned my desk of all sorts of odds and ends, wrote a book review blog I promised someone (the book was William Marsh Rice and His Institute, meaning Rice University--great story; he was murdered!),  filed some papers, whittled my "to do" pile down and cleared out the cooking magazines. All this is a way of saying I avoided work on the novel in progress.
Also got a nap and did my yoga routine. If you read yesterday's blog, you may remember I mentioned, cryptically, the piriformis muscle. My right hip has been sore off and on, especially in going up steps, althoiugh it's much better lately. But my yoga/wellness guru thinks it may be the piriformis muscle (a small muscle behind the gluts) and has given me exercies to strengthen and stretch it. So far, no hip pain.
Capped the day off with dinner with Sue, my former neighbor who calls me her Fort Worth mom. We headed for one spot but it was closed--a place I'd never been and was curious to try. Driving down Magnolia was like driving down a ghost street--eveything was closed. We came to one restaurant that was open--in a location I'd been to before in previous incarnations. I didn't even get the name this time, but it was Mexican, and I had great ground sirloin tacos, filled with fine fresh vegetables and a bit of cheese. Sue had paella which she said was good but oh so rich. We talked--and argued, as we always do. I said something about the difference between Bush and Obama, and she said, in her own forthrigt manner, "I think that's complete bullshit!" We have fun because, with a generation between us, we are a lot alike but oh so different--she's a lot tougher than I am. She says it's because she works for lawyers. I think it's just a personality difference. But tonight was lots of fun.
Rat race the rest of the week.

4th of July and Jesse Helms

I thought it was sort of fitting that Jesse Helms died on the Fourth. I am diametrically opposed to almost everything he believed--racial policies, gay/lesbian policies, military policies, maybe not fiscal. But I respect his devotion to his country and his determination to do what he thought was right. May he rest in peace as the flag flies tonight.
Often holidays are tough for me--not Christmas and Thanksgiving, which are clearly family holidays, but the Fourth or Memorial Day or Labor Day. They loom as long empty weekends, because the kids are busy with their friends, everyone else seems busy, and I'm sort of adrift. But today was a happy day--my neighbors, Jay and Susan, took me with their family to the local country club to watch fireworks. I've avoided them because the thud made me uncomfortable, and I thought we'd watch inside tonight, but there was an enormous crowd and no place to sit. They'd brought chairs for the elderly (Susan's parents and me) and we watched from a covered balcony where there was a nice breeze, no mosquitoes, and the noise didn't seem to bother me. I really enjoyed it. Got a brief glimpse of Jordan, Jacob and Christian--and a sweet kiss and hug from Jacob.
It's sometimes a bit hard for me to work up my sense of patriotism with the straits that our country is in now--you name it, from disastsrous weather to global warming, to war in parts of the world that aren't ours, to high gas prices and the resulting economic distress, it's pretty dismal. But tonight I sat on that balcony and watched the enormous--it really was!--crowd below, many with red and blue lights flashing in lapel pins, and I thought this is what America is about. The loudspeaker screeched an awful rendition of the anthem, at full volume of course, but it still hit me as we all stood. And during the fireworks, they played patriotic music instead of the soft rock they'd been playing at too high a volume. I loved hearing "America the Beautiful" and other songs. It was a neat evening.