And here I was planning

And here I was planning on blogging over the three-day weekend. Alas,
however, laziness and other things intruded on my master plan to
conquer and dominate the blogosphere with fresh content!
while all the other bloggers took the weekend off. This always happens:
no one ever blogs over long weekends. Something about having lives, I
suppose. I don't really have one, hence, I came up with the master plan
of blogging whilst no one else was, you know, just in case I could pick
up the slack. Big dog bloggers would hail and thank me, and as a result
I would suddenly be getting more hits than the instadog. Pshaw. I just
couldn't bring myself to bother.
Everyone bugged out of town this weekend. Off to a cabin in the
northwoods or wherever, Cake Eater Land seemed like a ghost town.
Which, on the whole, was rather nice. It was very quiet around here,
which I like, but there was just enough traffic that I didn't freak out
at the overall silence of the place. Phew. Because we all know how
prone I am to freaking out at silence. Anyway, The husband spent a good
portion of Saturday over at ML and the Doctor's house, helping them to
drywall their sons' bedroom. Mr. H. used to rent a room from ML, but as
he moved out and into his own apartment in January, the Doctor and ML,
two home repair junkies, have been plotting to redo his former room.
Their sons are 14 and 13 and they're huge.
Their eldest has gone from being the same height as me to looming over
me---and all within the space of a year. More space was
needed---desperately. Hence the remodel. But they wanted to do it
themselves, because they like that sort of thing. Well, they needed
some help of the masculine sort to bring sheetrock up from the garage
and to shove framing into the walls, etc. This was the second Saturday
he'd spent over there, and other than a bit of bitching about the
choice of steel framing over wood, he was as happy as a clam. Renting
is all well and good until one realizes that the opportunities to fix
worthwhile things are far and few between. The husband likes to fix
things---and he's good at it. Alas, however, he has to get his groove
on on other people's projects. Along with framing and drywalling, he
also got to help rewire the room, and of course he got to play with
saws and nail guns and screw guns and all those nifty power tools one
would need to accomplish such a job. As a result, he went about the
rest of the weekend with a well-satisfied, manly-man air about him.
Sunday, of course, was the 4th, and while we had no parties to go to
(usually we have an alley BBQ, but the ringleaders had also bugged out
of town, so no party this year), we still managed to fill the day with
worthwhile Independence Day activities. The fair fiefdom of Cake Eater
Land sponsors a parade, which conveninently, rumbles through a few
blocks from the Cake Eater Apartment. Even though Cake Eater Land is
convieniently located within a major metropolitan area, the parade
route ending just a block away from the Minneapolis Province of the
People's Republic of Minnesota, the parade has a definite small-town
feel to it---or so the husband says. The route is about a mile long: it
starts at city hall and ends in downtown Edina. There aren't any
intricate corners which would require serious maneuvering on the part
of the marching bands---it's a straight shot, which makes it ideal for
parade amateurs: juggling academies, Cake Eater Soccer Leagues, Cub
Scout troops, the Middle School marching band, and so on and so forth.
And there are lots
of kids. The under-18 demographic is well represented in the parade.
Since there are kids in the parade, there is also a goodly amount of
candy presented to the spectators as bribes for putting up with the
slowness. Whipped from small children's hands, the candy is hurled at
the spectators with the speed and force of a Roger Clemens' fastball.
If you're sitting on the curb, the chances you'll get beaned by a
Werther's Original are pretty darn good. Most people want the candy,
but they do take a defensive posture and cower in fear when the Tootsie
Pops come out: you could lose an eye that way.
I have to say, I was surprised to read Lileks
this morning. I've mentioned before that Lileks and I share a
neighborhood, only he lives over in the Province of Minneapolis,
whereas we live in Cake Eater Land. The husband and I joke frequently
that you couldn't pay us to live over there: the taxes are twice as
high and you don't get nearly as much bang for your buck as you do in
Cake Eater Land, meaning the snow gets plowed here, where across the
street in Minneapolis Province, it's a veritable demolition derby. Who
knew the difference was this pronounced, though?

Earlier in the afternoon we went to the park for a parade. All the kids go around the block driving patriotically festooned bikes and trikes. Exactly two American flags present in the entire parade: Gnat had one, and a little tiny Hmong kid had one taped to his baby carriage. We were led by a fellow banging on an Indian drum. At least one onlooker got into the spirit, and held up a boombox that played Sousa marches. (But not too loudly.) There was one flag hanging off a tree, which was nice, but somehow I expected more. Was there ever more? Probably not. It just seems like there should be, but as I’ve noted before you don’t see a lot of flags in this neighborhood. You might wonder why. The answer is because most people don’t have one. My powers of deduction are quite extraordinary, no?

You could have gone blind with all the red, white and blue that was on display at the Cake Eater Parade. Amazing, no? And Lileks doesn't live that far away from here: within a mile or two (to the best of my knowledge---this is just something I've sussed out from reading The Bleat. I'm not stalking the guy. Yet. It's just that I've noticed that his Target is my Target. His pizza delivery guy is my pizza delivery guy---and he really is MY pizza delivery guy---I've been ordering from Paradise Pizza for five years. Lileks is a newbie.). Yet, he completely missed all the flag waving. He missed the Middle School marching band playing Mouret's Rondeau, which is more popularly known as the theme from Masterpiece Theater, and doing a pretty impressive job with it. He missed the pipers and the drummers. He missed the smaller Ragtime bands, who were towed on pickup trucks. He missed people removing themselves from their comfy lawn chairs as numerous Homor Guards went by. But mostly he missed the endless line of Vets in HMMVV's, WWII-era Jeeps and Trucks, and in particular one Marine who was eighty if he was a day, in dress uniform, marching with the Korean Vets, his posture upright and very Marine-like. This man managed to keep time with his younger compadres even though he had to use a cane to get around. Lileks missed all of this because he lives over in Minneapolis Province: in Cake Eater Land (which, if you hadn't guessed already) is one of the few suburbs here in the Cities that's overwhelmingly Republican. Jump a street and an area code and it's a whole different world. Kinda sad, isn't it? Anyway, the rest of the day was filled with a walk around Lake Harriet, where the husband decided to fire up a cigar and ticked off most of our fellow walkers with the smoke. He didn't mind and decided to smile heartily about it, but, as it happened, he was a handy man to have around that afternoon: some picknickers needed fire to light their barbeque and, as he had his lighter available, he was able to help them out where the multitudes had failed. (HA!) At the bandshell, the Minnesota Pops were finishing up their concert and we listened to a little Irving Berlin and some Copeland, not to mention the requisite Tchiakovsky. Later on, we drove over to one of the local country clubs to watch fireworks. They don't advertise, and I'm not going to name them lest I ruin it for everyone else, but they allow neighborhood folks onto their beautiful golf course to watch their fireworks. And it's a nice show. Every municipality here puts on a fireworks extravaganza. If you're on high-ground, from our centralized location, you could conceivably see fireworks in every direction. But we're not on high ground, so we have to go somewhere to see a show. While these municipal shows are always huge and impressive, the downsides are many. You have to get there hours in advance to get a good spot. Parking is a nightmare, etc. This club's proximity, however, allows for us to go and see some fireworks without it being a hassle, which, in our humble estimation, adds to the fun: it shouldn't be a pain in the ass to see some fireworks. While it's a smaller show, they shoot the things off right over your head, so all you really need to do is lie back on the grass and you've got the best seat in the house. Last year was my first year at this show and I'm telling your right now that as long as I live in this neighborhood, I'm never going to a different fireworks show. The husband wasn't able to attend last year, so this was his first year at this show and he was very impressed. Mr. Gunpowder himself was pleased with the sights, sounds and smells of this experience, so much so that he was satisfied, which is unusual. Usually when he sees a large fireworks show, the first thing he wants to do is go shoot off some bottle rockets or unload half a pack of Black Cats. Somehow, a large show only makes him want more and that wasn't a possibility this year: we hadn't gone anywhere to buy fireworks of the illegal sort. But, knowing him, I was willing to compromise: I said if he wanted to go and buy some of legal (read lame) fireworks, he could do so. If we'd been at a larger show, he would be jonesing badly enough to settle for some lame fountains. Not this time. This time I was finally able to prove that bigger isn't always better. A rare victory for me, so you'll have to forgive me if I'm still savoring it two days later. Yesterday was filled with lame activities like laundry and the like, but it was a nice quiet day to cap off a busy weekend, which isn't always a bad thing. Honestly, I don't know if there's a better holiday than Independence Day. It's a wonderful thing: food, music, and gunpowder. Could you honestly ask for anything better on a beautiful summer's day? I think not. Anyway, it's probably going to be a short week of blogging. Tomorrow you might get something out of me in the morning, but my sister and her family are in-state for their yearly vacation and we'll be traveling out of the city to visit them tomorrow and part of Thursday. On Friday evening they will be arriving to spend the weekend with us here in town, and I've already been informed that they want to ride the new light-rail line (apparently, the opening has been covered extensively in the Omaha paper and they're pumped to see and ride it)and we'll be doing other family-oriented stuff this weekend. It should be good fun and I'm looking forward to the one time a year when a family member visits me, rather than the other way round. I've less encumbrances (read small children), and it's easier for me to go to them than vice versa. It will be good to see them, as I haven't been down to Omaha, where they live, since January. Robert and I should have our final JANE AUSTEN CAGE MATCH essays up later today and then it will be your turn to vote on who should win: Emma or Lizzie. And I think we all know who you'll be voting for, don't we? Hmmmm? Posted by Kathy at July 1, 2004 12:45 AM | TrackBack