Fabulous Fourth, aka Successful Party

So the annual 4th of July party at my house went off surprisingly well, considering. I mean, I'd only been home from vacation for a week. This was by far my biggest 4th celebration with twenty-five people (my last head count) in attendance. Plenty of food, plenty of fun, plenty of excitement, and one 911 call. Yep. All's well, don't stress! About 7pm most of the guests were there and the burgers had come off the grill. The mad flood of food seekers had ebbed and I was about to fix my own plate when my little's mom comes in the back door yelling "N, we need your hose! Your neighbors started a fire!" I thought it would be a little thing, but no. Two doors over they were shooting off fireworks in the back alley, which is wide enough for a car, and bordered on the far side by an incline up to the highway. Did I mention it's covered in tall grass? That is, it was. Except I could see flames over the neighbors garage roof. Ooops. None of our hoses reached far enough. And they hadn't called 911. For Pete's Sake. You've got flames shooting 8 feet up, moving fast, there's a breeze, your garden hose doesn't reach, and you don't call 911? I did. M took charge of getting the hoses hooked together while I ran for the phone and started dragging the second hose from the front yard. We finally managed to get 2 hoses together at each end of the fire and get enough water on it to mostly get it out by the time the FD got there. But sheesh. I was shaking for an hour. It was breezy enough it could have been so much worse. As it is, a stretch about 15 feet long and 5 feet wide was burned. All the way down to the edge of the alley (dirt/gravel). Seven feet from the leading edge of my garage. Thank goodness my immediate neighbor and I are pretty good about keeping our sections clear. I'd just sprayed the whole area with weed/grass killer before leaving for FL. Rest of the evening went well. It got dark around 10pm, so we started dragging our chairs out to the front of the garage for the EH VFW show. I ran inside to put on pants (gets chilly evenings still) and on my way back out noticed everyone milling around in confusion, chairs knocked over...I heard someone say something about a fire...So I hollered "Don't tell me they started ANOTHER FIRE!" They were shooting off more fireworks in the alley...a stray dog had been hanging around, got spooked and attacked them, knocking them over. OMG. The rest of the world (ok, neighborhood) is shooting off fireworks from the very wide paved street in front of the houses, not the narrow, weed-choked alley...But these morons, oh no... So the dog got stashed in my garage, I called animal control (the police in EH). They said they'd have to come back for him after the chaos. Everyone was gone by midnight, house all clean. But there were so many unofficial fireworks "shows" the police didn't come back until almost 2 am. At least the owners had been found. I didn't realize until next day that the dog had knocked one of the garage door opener sensors down, and the wires had snapped. So now I need to fix that. What's that saying, no good deed goes unpunished? (Or is that just a song from "Wicked"?). I spent the next day sleeping on the couch. Poor Scully didn't even wake up until 10:30am. Which is when I stumbled out of bed and made her go out. I hope next year, there isn't so much excitement...

Sometimes I just wanna hit somebody...

Arghhhh. I've been planning my 4th of July Party since last year. Because the city I live in launches the fireworks - literally - over my house. It's the most amazing fireworks display I've seen since the ones on base in Germany. And since I'll be up all night anyway, why not have the party at my place? So I told everyone last year, and have invited everyone for this year (in the process, not everyone has their invites yet.) My so-called best friend, who just had her annual party last Saturday, announced to me this past Monday that she's having a party on the 4th. When I said, "hey, it's at my place this year, remember?" She went "oh, I forgot." Well, she's still planning on having the party! Even though our set of friends overlaps, and as my best friend, I really wanted her to come to my party...

So today I approached her and asked if she wouldn't mind postponing her party until later this summer, maybe Labor Day weekend? Since she just had a party, and I've been planning mine since last year...To which she responded "But I've already invited people." Umm, so have I. So she said she would but only if she could invite her people to my party. Duh. It's the same freakin' group of friends! And then she says "what are you serving?" Naturally, it being the 4th and all, I'm serving hamburgers and hot dogs. She goes "Oh, no, I was going to roast a pig's rump." I said she could bring her own grill and do that, but we're having hamburgers and hot dogs. She goes "The pig rump will feed everyone." To which I said "Remember, I don't like pig, and this is the 4th of July." So we're having burgers and dogs.

She's going to be cranky about this. She's probably going to hold her own party anyway, or try to commandeer mine. And I'm really tempted to tell her to go take a flying leap...Sigh.

It's not like she's being really friendly lately anyway. I came to her party even though she barely spoke to me for weeks beforehand, STILL hasn't asked me how I'm doing with Grandma's death (and reading about Bonnie's dad on the BB had me in tears in seconds, so I guess I'm not doing so good!) and didn't say hello to me when I got there. Seriously. Just frowned at me when I told her I'd also brought a bag of ice and put it in the freezer since I didn't know where the drinks were going. She was pissed I'd done that. Hello???? I just don't get it. But she was all smiles and sunshine for everyone else. She didn't even say 2 words to me during the party. Bizarre...her stepmom was very surprised. See, it's not just me. Someone else noticed.

But I didn't mean to get all of topic. I'm having a party on the 4th, I stood up for myself and, not unreasonably I think, quite nicely asked if she could switch her party date.

Found a new recipe on SparkRecipes.com. Crock Pot Lemon Chicken. Okay, I baked it in a corningware dish, used 2 limes instead of lemons, 1 cup of chicken broth using a bouillon cube and I cut up 2 small potatoes and baked them in with the chicken. Also didn't put in the garlic (migraines 'r us, that stuff). It was de-li-cious. :) A little too much Italian Seasoning, but it was easy to make and easy to eat. Gonna keep that one on my list!

I also got in 40 minutes of QiGong last night in addition to completing Abs #1 in the morning. Hurt like heck today (shouldn't have moved the washer & dryer alone on Sunday) but it's a good day to be me. :) And I'm halfway to my 8 glasses of water today.