A Quiet 4th

Happy 4th of July! A great holiday! Parades! Music! Fireworks! What could be better?

We are having a quiet one today but going to a party tomorrow so I will be baking a cake later. No fireworks for us this year but it is probably going to be too foggy to see them anyway. We will watch the Boston Pops Concert later to get in the spirit.

So, maybe it was not the best idea to be on the freeways just before a major holiday. It was heavy going to visit dad and back to where mom used to live. We drove by her house and there was someone living there! It had been empty for three years. It made mom so happy someone was finally enjoying her former home. Her three girlfriends where excited to see her, they had a good chat and a lovely lunch before we began the trek home. It was a zoo. Freeways packed. The 90-minute drive took over two hours. Then, after dropping mom at her place, I began trying to get home. Michael had phoned to warn me that the pass was stopped and he had finally made it home from the north, which was also jammed with cars. What happened was that people were flocking to the coast to cool down at the same time people who lived on the coast were trying to get home from work on a Friday night. Just madness.

I finally made it home and we sat in the back yard together as I tried to recover. I was exhausted and spent.

What I learned from the trip? I didn't breathe well in the Valley heat and deeply missed my coastal fog. It was around 100 degrees the entire day and it just sapped my energy. I will force myself to stay rather quiet today: take a walk, wash and iron the sheets, run into town this morning to buy food for today, pick up some dropped flowers in the garden and watch the qualifying for tomorrow's Formula 1 race from Britain. A nice day. A day to recover before a nice small birthday party tomorrow.

Happy 4th! Hope you have fireworks in your life today!