"Another Country" Reflects upon Her Own

I'm definitely middle-aged; there's no long any doubt about it. Good thing, too, that I've finally come to this conclusion. It was only a few years ago that I realized, much to my amazement and chagrin, that I was. If not for that, I would've found myself propelled right up into senior citizen status having missed the "middle-aged" boat entirely, only to be left wondering, "wot hoppened?"

Today's a holiday, Independence Day, and America is 229 years old. I'm spending the day doing what I do best; i.e. as little as possible and I'm liking it, big time. The day isn't full of traveling, barbecues, parties and mental overload from great crowds of people milling about. Nope, my husband and I are home alone today, leisurely smoking a turkey outdoors which takes about ten to twelve hours and doing whatever we please. The older I get, the more I like to spend the majority of the years' holidays in just this fashion. We spent last's year's Fourth like this and I'm appreciating the pattern that seems to be developing.

After last year's break of attending a barbecue at my daughter and son-in-law's on July 3rd which served as the official holiday feast (and was wonderful, by the way), we're hosting dinner and a place to view the fireworks once again. Dinner is planned for later in the evening and I'm not expecting anyone until around 5pm at the earliest. Everything's pretty much ready and the most work I have left to do for dinner is make a huge salad and boil a big pot of water for corn. I think I can handle it! Since it is a holiday, I don't feel compelled to do several loads of laundry, rush around the house straightening up and vacuuming madly. My company is my family and they know I'm no domestic goddess. I am another kind of goddess entirely! Besides, this is an outdoor, backyard, on the deck affair and I concentrated my tidying efforts there.

This is a day for actually relaxing and enoying the backyard that time and effort are spent on to make it comfortable and welcoming. This is a day to lie back and reflect upon how lucky we all are to be citizens of and living in The United States of America. I'm not so naive and arrogant to think there aren't many other great countries to live in. Despite the problems we've been having--and there are many big problems--I'm glad that this is where I was born and this is where I live. As I sit back in my lounge chair, comfortable and relatively safe in my own little backyard, I fully realize how lucky I am not to be living in some war-torn, povertry-stricken, drought-ridden nation where life as I once knew it (or worse yet, never knew anything but) has become a distant memory perhaps never to be realized ever again.

Happy Birthday, America.