Unless there’s a turkey in the oven and a giant Snoopy balloon floating down West 77th Street, Thursday holidays are weird. And if you’re unlucky enough to have to work the next day, Friday feels odd, too. Almost like a second Monday, which – no offense to Monday – ain’t nobody got time for that.
I’m one of the unlucky ones. But at least I’m working from home. A lot of people at CheeseGov took the day off; I probably would have done the same, but even though my PTO began accruing on day one, I can’t tap into it until I’ve been there six months. That’ll be mid-October.
We do get 36 hours of Personal Holidays we can use immediately, though (you truly can’t beat state government benefits!). Tara and I bought tickets for a Heart/Cheap Trick concert in Milwaukee on August 14, a Thursday evening. Rather than deal with a late show and a long drive home, I took half that day and all the next off, giving us a nice, long weekend. You’ve heard about those best laid plans, right? This week I was notified that the concert was postponed because Ann Wilson is receiving treatment for cancer. Major bummer, and I hope she’s okay. Unfortunately, our hotel reservation is non-refundable, so I guess we’ll be coming up with a concert-free Plan B. I have no doubt we’ll end up having a blast regardless.
To celebrate yesterday’s holiday, I declared independence from doing anything even remotely constructive (unless you call making potato salad constructive). We had talked about kayaking, but have been working our asses off basically every single weekend and wanted a day to chill. Plus, we haven’t had any respite from the rain, and many of our rivers are already at flood stage. When we do hit the water, we’ll have to stick to a lake.
This is the Fort Atkinson Riverwalk. It’s been underwater in places for over a month, and the Rock River is forecast to keep rising.
So, the 4th of July was very low-key. We listened to records. Tara puttered in the garden. I drank Old Fashioneds. We grilled steaks. At one point I actually dragged the corn hole set out from the garage and thought I’d toss the bags around for a bit, but it was just too damn muggy, so I retreated inside instead.
In a past life, when I was married to someone else and living in the Pacific Northwest, Independence Day was the opposite of relaxing. Back in the early 2000s, Vancouver, WA’s fireworks laws were so lax it was kinda like the Wild West. Pretty much everything was legal, and firing off giant mortars is just plain fun, so I routinely spent hundreds of dollars on fireworks every year. Our neighbors all did the same, so we ended up with these incredible hours-long block parties with fireworks so spectacular, my ex’s extended family started to caravan north from California every 4th of July to visit. Not just her dad and mom; we’re talking siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, nephews, and nieces. This was fun at first, but as the years dragged on, the whole ordeal grew tiresome and felt like too much damn work.
Which is a perfect metaphor for that first marriage, too.
After the divorce, I rarely bought fireworks again. These days, Tara and I don’t even go out of our way to see them. I feel like I crammed a lifetime’s worth of fireworks into a span of six or seven years. I heard some last night and was content with that.
As you probably know, I get up at the crack of dawn every weekday but Thursday (I need one day off!) to go for an hourlong walk. It’s a habit I started nine years ago and keep up, without fail, all year long. During the winter, cold and/or snow usually confines me to the treadmill. No cardio workout is worth frostbite, you know?
Even when it’s mild enough to walk outdoors, at least half the year it’s dark when I venture out at 5:15 a.m. Which makes my summertime walks rare and enjoyable – especially when I’m treated to views like the one I encountered this past Monday. Walking through the park, the rising sun was burning through a shallow layer of ground fog, casting shadows through the trees that caught my eye.
Pretty wild, huh?
And to think that we initially rejected this house because “there was nowhere to walk close by.”
Even the neighboring subdivision isn’t without its charms. You’d think this photo was taken in the middle of the sticks, but in reality, there are houses just out of frame.
Wisconsin’s pretty easy on the eyes, ain’t she?
Mark My Words 
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