The nearly week-long Independence Day weekend is drawing to a close.  We ate ate well, as usual. I’ve posted all of the recipes except those for Sunday Supper– which was planned to be Saturday Supper, but we had so much danged good Seafood Gumbo Friday that we had Friday Supper for Saturday Supper, too. Recipes for (planned) Saturday/(actual) Sunday Supper’s pork roast with vegan beer BBQ sauce and baked turnips to follow.

This has been (for C– present perfect tense: begun in the past, completed in the present) the quietest Independence Day we’ve celebrated (past perfect? begun in the past, completed in the past?) in a very long time. No one traveled hundreds of miles to celebrate with us. 

These folks have a right to privacy.

We did not do our traditional Independence Day 50-gun salute to the 50 Sovereign States. 

Too bad.

We did carry on our tradition of reading the Declaration. Miss M printed copies and we had the text as presented in some crappy old books. She also printed out copies of the Bill of Rights, for reference.

Quiet

And of course, we had a fire-works show

starring Daughter C as Max.

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I have long attributed the fact that no one has been seriously injured or died during our several years of raucous Independence Day Celebrations (see gun photo, above) to the fact that folks followed the Rules– not in a blind sense, but in the sense they understood that The Rules allowed maximal personal Freedom for all.

Here are the Original Rules, from our Independence Day 2007 Celebration, when folks traveled miles to celebrate with us. BTW. As I recall, everyone had to sign a copy of The Rules. The Rules were a Social Contract. Ha.

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As I said, it’s been the quietest Independence Day in a long time. I thought it might be, but on the morning of the 4th, …

Rocky suffered an injury.

He twisted his ankle.

And since Rocky is not my dog, and not Miss M’s dog, and not Mr. Big Food’s dog… . We babied him. He’s fine.

Here’s how it played out.

We were all five– Mr. Big Food, me, Miss M, Rocky & Missy– down in the pond pasture. The dogs were playing on the pond bank and we heard a “yelp.”

We called them to us, and saw that Rock was limping. I palpitated his hind quarters as Miss M declared she was going to go get the truck and Mr. Big Food helped get Missy to Miss M and relax Rock.

Miss M and Missy ran back to the house to get the truck. Mr. Big Food, Rocky, and I limped to the gate.

Rocky hobbled for a few hours. He’s a smart dog. He knows we are sympathetic to his “pain.”

Here’s the interesting part of the story. Miss M went to get the truck.

I’ve been trying to get Miss M to drive the truck for months. And now, here she is, in the truck, mowing down fences and killin’ little critters in the process, just to get to Rocky.