July 4th

Jack and I were under the weather on the 4th of July. He had a bad head cold, I had a head cold and a cough. So while Emily and Kate went to the pool, a barbecue, and fireworks, we had our own 4th of July celebration.

We watched Jaws. Jack had never seen it; we had long wanted to show it to him but figured it made sense to wait until he was a little older. I covered his eyes at the Ben Gardner part and the severed leg floating down to the bottom of the ocean, the parts that scared me the most when I first saw it (at age 7). He was really riveted during the last hour or so -- maybe not so much the USS Indianapolis story, but the whole back-and-forth with the shark attacking the boat.

We played a round of Mario Kart, something we used to play back when he was younger, then drifted away from, and now do again on occasion.

We ate a living room picnic dinner of pasta with meat sauce, leftovers, on chairs in front of the TV. Jack had water in a blue cup, I had a red gatorade, we each had cupcakes -- blue for him, white for me. Very patriotic.

We played cards. I taught him gin rummy, which he immediately took to, especially after winning the first game. Big smile. "This is great, let's play again!" We played Blackjack, which is lacking something with only two people and no money, but we went through an entire deck anyway. Played about 10 hands and I think we split them 5-5.

We watched a little of the Macy's 4th of July celebration on NBC. I'm not sure I ever watched it before. Wow was it terrible. Pop stars doing karaoke versions of songs you've heard every 20 minutes on the radio. Yeeks.

We dug out some sparkler fireworks that we've had for a couple of years. Went out on the back deck and lit them and ran around the yard. Well, walked fast, neither of us was at our best. But he lit mine with his and I lit his with mine and they sparkled and burned and we smiled.

At around 9 p.m., shortly before the town fireworks were to start, we washed up, closed all the windows, turned on the air conditioners, and went to bed. When I checked on him 15 minutes later, during the crashing and explosions of the fireworks less than a mile away at the high school, he was fast asleep.