forth

Woooooo! Early sort-of weekend! Wooooo!

Sorry about the gratuitous WOOOOOing but that is what my neighborhood is all about these days, the gratuitous WOOOOing!!! Because it is apparently some sort of (WOOOOOOOO!!!) holiday that calls for (WOOOOOOO!!!!) lots of backyard parties and carrying (WOOOOOO!!!) on.

My neighborhood is sort of filthy with vacationing cottage-renters from New Bedford or Lowell or Dorchestah or someplace this week, and man are they ever WOOOOping it up. Every night is just another reason for a barbeque, my friends, and midnight is when we blow on our horns and re-enact celebrating the 2004 Red Sox World Series win LIKE IT WAS YESTERDAY! YEAH!

And then somebody sets off some lame fireworks in their yard and my crotchety neighbor the retired shop teacher (every neighborhood needs one of those) calls the cops and all the lights go out real quick-like.

Seriously, everybody needs a neighbor like Arthur, the Retired Shop Teacher. He is perfect in that you pretty much never see him because he lives a pretty solitary life in his retirement shack, and only occasionally emerges to hang his white t-shirt collection out to dry on nice summer days, or to stand in his front yard and whack golf balls out across the street and into the river.

Also, he remains convinced that my name is Laura. (It is not.)

Something about the way he stands there and just whacks golf balls into the great beyond for hours at a time makes me calm and happy. It also makes me worry for the squirrels and the birds that make their homes between us and the river, but they are wild and spry and ought to be able to take care of themselves, really. I mean, there are coyotes roaming these parts at night. So if they can't handle a few airborne Titleists zooming through their airspace, then I say Bon Apetit, Mr. Wile E. Coyote.

Come to think of it, the coyotes like to go aWOOOOOOO a lot at night, too. Wonder if they are Red Sox fans, like my drunken carousing vacationing neighbors. I doubt it. Don't coyotes seem more like New Yorkers, somehow? Sort of all crafty and sinister, in a totally charming way?

'Course, I keep my cats away from 'em. Coyotes. Not New Yorkers.

So my work week has come to an abrupt though temporary halt as I am apparently required to celebrate some sort of holiday tomorrow by not going to work and avoiding the neighbors. And then I will only go to work for another two days before being forced to rest again. Feels wrong, somehow, during the busiest time of the year, to just take a break like that in the middle of the workweek.

But there you are. Happy Fourth of July, the last scheduled holiday before the big one, my birthday, conveniently scheduled as usual on that other independence day, Bastille Day. AKA the 14th of July!

le woo!