The Glorious Fourth!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Independence Day celebration! I missed everything because we went to the wedding of Bobby's cousin's son in Egg Harbor, NJ. Some of you may not know that Egg Harbor is near Atlantic City--major resort and casinos. When we first got the invite for the wedding, all I could think was "Atlantic City??? On the FOURTH OF JULY????? What are they thinking???" Well, they were obviously not thinking about those who don't live in the area. Thank God it was planned for 6 p.m.

Since we're the chauffeurs for Bobby's parents, we had to leave even earlier than usual because of age-related slowness (*ahem*). It's a good thing we did because, not knowing the area where we were going, we were relying on the directions provided by GoogleMaps which took us on the Atlantic City Distressway. I mean "Expressway"--read that "Five Thousand Car Parking Lot." Add to that two 85+ toddlers in the back: "How far are we from the exit?" "I shoulda stayed home." "Boy, our lane is slow--the other lanes are moving much faster." "Wow, there's a Grayhound bus." "How far til the exit?" *HUGE SIGH AND PRAYER FOR PATIENCE*

Well, we did find the place in plenty of time. It was a lovely wedding, the food was great, and a couple glasses of a lovely Chardonnay went a long way to calming my nerves! I was surprised that they didn't have an attendance book for the guests to sign because I brought along my new Namiki M90, filled with Rohrer & Klingner Cassia, to sign it with. (So many places provide a horrible ballpoint with black gummy ink, and I have moral objections to signing a guest book with anything that nasty.)

I had to laugh because my mother-in-law remarked to me that she and I were out of place because we were "the only women there not showing our boobs"! I replied that we also were not tattooed (as were the majority of the guests under the age of 45), and that made her laugh.

We got directions from the father of the groom on how to get to Route 40 (our usual route to Atlantic City), so the trip home took half the time as the trip there. We did get to see a few fireworks in the air here and there on the way home, but I think those were set off by individuals and were not part of any display. And fortunately our passengers fell asleep early on (it was, after all, after 10 p.m. and WAY past their bedtime), so the ride home was peaceful and blissfully quiet.

I slept til 8:30 today and have been just futzing around. The weather since Friday has been about as perfect as summer weather can be: Temps in the low 80s, no humidity to speak of, and a nice breeze to keep things cool. I sat on the patio with our parrots, watched our sparrows and catbirds eating the toast crumbs I put out, and watched our hummingbirds at the feeder. Ahhhhhhh. If only it would stay this way, I wouldn't hate summer weather!

Well, our neighbor has finished mowing his lawn, so I'm going back outside! Have a lovely day, everyone!