Dog Days of Summer

Happy fourth of July! I hope everyone is eating hot dogs, watching fireworks, and attending their local parade. Lee and I celebrated by indulging in the latter. It rained so we never made it to fireworks. I really like parades - I've always wanted to go to the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, but don't know if I'll ever have that dream fulfilled. Every year, the Park Cities has a Fourth of July parade so we went this year. Right off the bat, I knew that it was not going to be an ordinary parade. The parade started off with a "bicycle brigade" and a girl in front about six years old was riding down the street on her cell phone. The brigade was followed by two squad cars on with their sirens blaring. For those of you who have spent any time with Lucy, you know that she loves to howl at sirens. This morning was no different:

I started howling first to get her to howl and then she wouldn't stop. It makes me laugh so hard because it's not even a good howl. About halfway through the parade, I saw something I'd never seen before - someone had entered their limo and the family was inside chunking candy out the windows. Not decorated or anything. I pictured Thurston Howell III planning the Fourth holiday with his wife (in his best Kennedy accent) "Lovey, you know what we should do this year since we won't be summering at the Vineyard? Let's enter the car in the parade. It'll be fabulous. I was going to give Jeeves the day off, but I'm sure he won't mind." Lovey responds "That's a wonderful idea, Thurston. And let's take some candy to throw to those hungry souls on the street." Maybe it didn't happen that way, but in my head, that's totally the way it happened and this is my blog so that's the story you're all getting. Central Market had a float and they were throwing out watermelons to the crowd. I caught one. Just picture that.

The Howell limo was followed by a military vehicle and it sounded like it was setting off machine gun fire. I have met many dogs in my life and none of them more like the Cowardly Lion than Morgan. Lee calls her "sensitive", but if she was in seventh grade boy, she'd get beaten up and have her lunch money stolen every day. So this gun fire starts up and she decided she'd had had enough. Enough bicycle brigade, enough of the squad cars, dogs dressed up like Wonder Woman, enough of the Howells and them throwing candy at her, so like a cat, she scurried underneath the Suburban that was parked behind us and stayed there until the parade was over. She's the only dog in history that will require years of therapy to get over a neighborhood parade.

We got to see our former downstairs neighbors, which I was very happy about. Caitlin has turned 4 since I last saw her and she told me that being 4 is a lot different than being 3. According to her, she has more responsibilities now. Four was my favorite year - I really feel like I peaked out in 1980. I told her to soak 4 in and enjoy it. When it was over, the dogs were hot so we got out their pool. It's not the lake, but it does the trick. We spent the rest of the day riding on the Vespa, watching the Italy-Germany World Cup game and Pride and Prejudice, and I worked a little. Getting the promotion was a really good thing, but it's been a lot more work, and I don't see it slowing down any time soon. Happy Fourth!