He also wears dark socks with shorts.

I love a parade.

I love The Fourth.

Specifically, I love any holiday where you hafta take a day off (in a good chunk o' industries). More specifically- when P.J. has to take day off. We didn't travel. There were no houseguests. (And don't get me wrong, I've blissed out on having some favorite friends and family here...and will continue to...until August...but our good sheets are gonna be threadbare by September. And for those who have yet to see my home? This is the time. Place is CLEAN. This is also the time as I most likely wouldn't know you're here amidst the chaos. Win/win.)

So, good chunks of Saturday and from Sunday late afternoon until Monday evening there was no work. No theatre. Minimal yardwork [for me. Peej was SWAMPED]. We did spend the majority of Saturday fixing up the new kid's room. Like Nora's nursery, a couple of months before she was born, you ask? Nope. For you see, the house already has a roof, [most] windows, a floor, and running water. But I did have to get rid of a nice cross-section of my hoarding. And then I had to do some spackling while Peej hung awesome curtains at a dizzying height (to create the illusion of vaulted ceilings. Or at least Higher Than Eight Feet Ceilings). And why the spackling? Because I am an incredibly lazy person. It's true. I work really hard to keep this in check but, left to my own devices, I will hang a 4x6 frame with drywall screws. Out of curtain brackets? I will make one out of twisted metal found in the recycling bin. The key to my laziness is this: if I don't have to leave the room to complete a project, it's a success. Even if we don't have all of the materials. Especially then. The end result is golf ball-sized holes in crumbling plaster whenever we need to redecorate. (Which of course, I never think of. My laziness lives in the present.)

But I think I've learned my lesson this time. Because after spackling and sanding and [having P.J. do some] paint-retouching, I actually found myself cursing the moron who had hacked into the walls. Baby steps.

We also finally matched the master bedroom wall color (Gold Dust) to cover up the sample that I had lazily thought would be just fine (Marigold.) This was difficult, as all paint samples remind me of the colors in my room. As do the names. But thanks to a little detective work (our electricians used an old piece of dropcloth to clean a project and it miraculously had a splotch of the correct paint color- and not the erroneous one I had written down) we were able to match the sample. Making us stupidly proud of ourselves (and our yellow room).

The age old holiday tradition of selling a bed on Craigslist was also acknowledged, complete with no-shows, price hagglers, 'round the clock emails, requests for headshot-like photographs (of the bed, sadly), and a culmination of a non-native English speaker and his newly hired moving guy who- I am not kidding- instructed the former to grab onto the sides of the mattress like "a pair of t**tties."

There were also naps. Which did not include anyone in the previous story except for my husband, my curlicued kid, and my stompy midsection kid. Also two utterly confused cats.

And as we enjoyed no fewer than seven unobstructed firework displays from the comfort of our front stoop, living room picture window, back kitchen window, and upstairs window, I feel that I am well-qualified to offer up this advice to the city of Chicago: Out of money for the annual explosion gala? Ask each pyro in my neighborhood to donate five bucks worth of explosives to the town. You'd have a show to rival the denouement of Independence Day. (The movie, not the actual holiday.)

And to the parents of the Power Wheeled five year-old setting off bottle rockets (!) solo at 1am, I offer up this advice to you: Stop it*. Please.

(*Having kids/ letting them run willy nilly/ not setting bedtimes/ driving to Indiana to purchase said detonating things. Any or all.)

Or I'll have P.J. come out in his socks and sandals, turn on the sprinkler, and shake his fist at the darned hoodlums. I'll do it. And so will he.

With the slightest provocation.

Really.