Happy 4th of July!

I truly hope that everyone's 4th of July holiday was just as wonderful as mine turned out to be.  The combination of exhaustion, disappointment, and a general sickly feeling (stupid allergies) led me to feel super emotional last night.  I wrote the post in the car on the ride home from my parents and by the time I finished it I was so upset that Dave actually had to be the one to post it.  After spending more than a few moments iin tears, I tried to fall asleep.  Unfortunately my allergies were in rare form, though I'm sure my crying didn't help matters, and I spent the entire night awake, shifting positions, and constantly wiping my nose as it running like left-on water faucet.  Finally, I had enough.  By seven in the morning, it had been more than 24 hours since I last slept and in half frustration, half exhaustion I stuffed my nostrils with tissues and settled on the fact that I would have to breathe through my mouth.

As Dave woke up, I finally fell asleep (tissues in my nose and all) but found that I was unable to wake until close to 2:30.  Normally, on the fourth I like to get into Cambridge by 2:30 or 3:00 so we were already late.  Like most mornings after a day/night of being over-emotional I determined that it was better to not care too much this year.  I resigned myself to getting less than prime seating and felt determined to have a good day anyway.  To be honest, it was pretty easy was Jamie and Ian arrived and we found a somewhat decent spot.  It was ridiculously hot and that did take up a lot of our conversation until we were approached by both the Globe and the Herald to take pictures of us and our pinwheely headbands.  Lauren also was able to stop by and say hi and it was super great to see her since I've only seen her once or twice since Paris.

Really the best part of the day was when we found my sister's good friend Andy.  Like me, he was super shocked that both my sister and my parents decided not to go but wanted to go himself.  He had brought his group there and had found an ideal spot by forcing them to arrive by 2:30.  Listening to him talk, I felt like I had found someone who cared as much as myself.  At some point, we determined that there was room for us to join them and in the end, we did get to enjoy prime seating location.  As an added perk, my parents did come and it felt like old times.  As always the fireworks were incredible.  Normally, I'm not a fan of the song selection but the choices for this year and the synchronicity of the fireworks were perfect.   The threat of bad weather amounted to nothing and no acts of terrorism to be had (I hate to admit it, but just before the fireworks begin I always think about it and this year more so now that I'm a crazy person with my anxiety and  the fact that it would be the perfect opportunity for revenge of our killing of Osama Bin Laden).

I was so truly grateful to Andy today.  In a way, it sort of rekindled my passion.  I thanked him immensely for finding such great seats and allowing us to join him and could only say that it was the least he could do after all my years of treating him to such great spots.  I told him I'd owe him for next year.  Overall, I am truly, truly happy about how it all went.  I'm so glad that Jamie's spirit was there to help me feel that the tradition was still alive as she has come with me for close to ten years now.  Her being there lifted my spirits and my parent's arrival made it all the better.  I feel like I've learned a lot in the past twenty-four hours about myself and those I care about. It's days like these that really help one grow as a person.