mistressofmuses | Fourth of July:

Alex took this picture, but it was the best of the day imo.

I'm not terribly patriotic, particularly after All That from the Supreme Court, but it is also Alex's and my anniversary. 15 years together!

We went out for fireworks, and brought the dogs with. We'd brought that umbrella in the background of the above pic to make shade, especially for Cy, but he absolutely wanted to be in the sun the whole time.

Another picture Alex took. This one is from earlier in the week, but it makes me laugh.
We were trying to take pictures of Bella for her AKC registration (Alex wants to get her a PAL registration so that she can maybe compete in FastCAT, because boy does she like to chase.) She definitely would rather play than stand still for *boring* pictures.

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This is the first year in a long time that I've had the fourth of July as like... a separate holiday. I think the whole time I've worked at my current job, and at least most of the time at my job before this, I've taken the week or so around the fourth off as my main "summer vacation" time. This year it just didn't work out - my manager took part of the week off (though her plans wound up kind of sunk, too), and I wasn't sure I'd have the PTO anyway, after I had to use so much of it at the very beginning of the year when I got sick. Maybe I'll see if I can justify something in August.

But we are closed for the 4th, so it was at least one extra day off for me.

We made our traditional fruit salad, of only the fruits we really like:

Mango, nectarine, peach, banana, strawberry, blueberry, raspberry, blackberry, cherry. And a can of mandarin oranges that didn't make it into the picture. We were lucky this year, because we managed to get a lot of the fruit on sale, and it had a chance to ripen before we used it!

And assembled!

Alex also made a gallon of fresh-squeezed lemon-limeade, which we also put some of the berries from the fruit salad into. It was delicious!

We tried to decide between a couple different fireworks shows in neighboring cities to go to, and ended up picking based on which one had the better food trucks the most recent time we went, ha. We were hoping for the brisket we got a few years ago, though alas, that truck was not there this year.

We brought both Cy and Bella with us. Neither of them are reactive to fireworks, and Cy is deaf now anyway. Bella in general just doesn't care. Both of them would have been more unhappy being left alone for a long day and into the night.

Parking was a nightmare, but we eventually got lucky when the staff opened up a few extra spots in what's typically a loading area, and we snagged one. It was a bit of a walk from there to the fields, but not too bad.

Cy had a good time, especially for the first few hours! He was delighted that he could just keep rolling in the grass, and he wanted to play, haha.

Pit bulls of the sun.

When we arrived, there was some pretty awful bro-country artist playing (and I realize it may have just been a pander-y setlist, but I find lines like "an ice-cold beer never broke my heart" cringey.) After that, the music shifted to just some DJ stuff for a bit, and then the next performer was an 80s cover band, which was more generally crowd-pleasing. They were fine.

The BBQ truck we'd been hoping would be back was sadly not, though there were more food options this time than I remember from the last time. We didn't want anything too heavy, and while an elk burger was tempting, it sounded way heavier than we wanted. We ended up going for macaroni and cheese from one of the trucks (which sounded good, and was on the cheaper side). It was upper middle quality, haha.

And around sunset, we got some pretty clouds.

As the day wore on, Cy started to get tired. This was probably the longest day he's had in the last year put together! Both dogs were good all day, and Bella was even good about a couple random little kids who repeatedly ran up and got in her face without warning, trying to get her to react. (There was also a very polite kid who asked if he could pet her, which she was delighted by.)

The fireworks show itself was pretty good! It was a good show, and didn't feel too short. I would prefer that shows *weren't* set to playlists of vaguely patriotic song clips (some of which are glurgy, some of which are fine, and some of which just had the word "USA" in them and were included for that alone.)

Cy didn't even seem to notice the fireworks for a while, until he looked up and saw them, ha. Bella noticed, but minus a tiny startle at the first one, and then sniffing the air as the show wound to a close, she did not care at all. She just wanted the carrots we'd brought along, ha.

We waited for a while to try and mitigate the crowds, and we managed to find a slightly shorter route back to the car. The dogs were definitely tired and ready to be done with the night, and Cy was a bit stiff today.

It was a nice day, even if it did leave me not really wanting to go back to work today!

Fourth of July:

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