I Refuse to Title this Blog with Katy Perry Lyrics.

Hello dream weavers. Welcome to b Honest: 5^th of July edition, wherein we question the logic of working after holidays. Things were literally exploding until 2am, and I’m supposed to be able to audit inventory reports? Bullshit.

Did your 4^th of July look like Lady Liberty arm wrestling a grizzly bear while eating apple pie? Maybe it was Uncle Sam eating a hotdog while playing baseball in a corn field. Or did it look more like George Washington, riding a bald eagle while toting a bazooka?

http://texags.com/main/forum.reply.asp?topic_id=2273868&forum_id=5

Friend and I celebrated our country’s independence the way we celebrate just about everything: with meat, fire, and off-color social commentary. For the record, I’ve adhered to a strict vegetarian/gluten free/non-dairy diet for the past month. But obviously ‘merica’s birthday is the perfect occasion to overindulge. Go big or go home, right patriots? Confession time: I ate two hamburgers and three hotdogs. No shame, just a meat hangover.

The 4^th of July is not my favorite holiday. The noise, and colors like the sky throwing a rave (and what is a rave anyways? Like is there a technical definition?). I hate the way so many people want to be in the same place at the same time seeing the same thing. That hot messy press of other humans overwhelms me, or that feeling like pride but tinged with something bitter that only America inspires. Yesterday I woke up with enchilada sauce between my toes. I don’t know what that means but I think it says a lot about the current state of my life.

The first time I fell in love was July 4th, 2006 with rain falling down like sparklers spitting silver all around us. I remember blackberry wine, wet gravel sloshing between my bare toes, the way she kissed me at the foot of the slide and it felt like sitting-still-falling. We crawled into the backseat of my van and I kept her with me as long as I could because we had to go inside and sleep in a bed with her boyfriend and in the morning everything would be the same but different and I wasn’t ready.

The next morning I woke up early, stole the keys to her car, and put my last $40 in her gas tank. I imagine that was love, but really it was foolish. We were all so poor back then. We’re all so poor now, but it feels somehow different because we sit at desks and wear nametags.

Yesterday was the 4^th of July and I’ve never seen the way you hold a sparkler, but I’ve seen you hold a camera and I imagine that’s close enough.

This year was muddled berries and vodka, strawberries like battery acid. Adorably tousled friends huddled on the roof, fireworks reflected in my neighbor’s second story window. Wishing headlights could be fireworks the way fireworks wish they were stars, the way stars wish they were moons. Worrying about people the way you worry about people who are far away, which is mostly angrily because helplessness can’t be helped. I never wanted to be the sun… maybe a moon. Allison wants to be a chair. Andie would be a bookshelf. She wants to hold knowledge, and Allison wants to hold people and I love them both for their different reasons.  

I want to be a notebook, or maybe a blanket. Both things comfort people in different ways.

Many miles of love.

-b