Key Issues

Do I have to work?

Really...I'm not in the mood.

Yet, the alternative is a helpless, whining existence as I plead incompetence and mooch off of the taxpayers, who would then be bent over the IRS barrel and raped due to my laziness.

In which case, I wonder whom I would vote for? (...Having gone there, I'll just be getting back to work after this brief intermission.)

It's just never fun to come home to life, after having spent six days nestled in white sands, staring at emerald waters. The trip was good for the soul.

Spending the 4th in a small beachfront town was something to behold. I thought the day would be celebrated the typical way...lounging, eating, 30 minutes of professional fireworks.

I thought wrong.

The parade started at 8am Saturday. Tourists and locals alike blended together in a red, white and blue confettied mess along the street in trucks, golf carts, bicycles, and scooters, all decked out in various patriotic themes. The crowd alongside the street was showered with candy, mardi gras beads, frisbees, and silly string.

My niece (age 10), who wanted to be in the parade, jumped on the back of a scooter with a young man (also 10) whom she had met the day before at the beach. The parade must have been a bonding experience for them, because for the next 48 hours, they were continually inventing reasons to run into one another. Ahhhh, the girl shoulda been mine. (Although, I must say, even I didn't start that young. Incidentally, when I told her as much, she shrugged as she replied, "What can I say? Hormones.")

Meanwhile, Miss Priss thumbed her nose at the idea of being in the parade, and rather decided she'd loot it up street side. She ended up with about five pounds of candy and thirteen strands of beads.

There were no professional fireworks, as such a display is prohibited in this particular county. So, rather than fight the crowd to drive in to Destin for a typical show, we took a blanket to the beach and settled in to watch the drunken spectacle of amateurs, who were already making a great deal of noise prior to sundown.

It was absolutely amazing. Unlike a professional show, this one went on and on for hours. Fireworks as far as the eye could see in either direction. The biggest show was a couple of hundred yards down on the left, but there were plenty going up directly overhead.

Admittedly, it probably wasn't the safest way to go, and I realized as much as I picked a smoking piece of debris out of my hair, but it was too breathtaking to retreat.

So we sat with our new beach friends, whom we'd met courtesy of my niece, and we watched the kids write their names with those dangerous sparklers that we shouldn't have let them hold, but did anyway. And we watched the sky light up as animated individuals celebrated the 4th with heart-swelling pride and drunkenness.

I hope everyone had an excellent holiday...and I hope you all were duly entertained by the gentlemen raiding my closets while I was out.