I love the 5th of July because it means the %$!@ firecrackers will stop.

I have come to utterly despise firecrackers. Not fireworks. I love watching professional fireworks displays. But firecrackers are legal in these parts, which means that on New Years Eve and 4th of July (and usually the week leading up to each as well) are chock filled with far too many people setting the damn things off. I know that lots of people love them, but I think most people are in utter denial about how dangerous they are. Not only are they dangerous to living bodyparts, but they’re also quite dangerous to stuff that burns, e.g. collected leaves on roofs of houses. It rained most of the day yesterday, which delighted me since it pretty much killed the risk of fires.

But I admit it’s not just the danger that makes me hate them so. Call me a curmudgeon, but I can’t stand the noise (it scares Anna to death) and I especially can’t stand all of the trash that ends up all over the street and in our yard. And I guess it’s that last part that annoys me so much about firecrackers. The people who spend all of this money on firecrackers (at least the ones in our subdivision) and spend half the night setting them off, seem to be in blissful denial that all of this crap that they shoot up into the air has to come down somewhere. Today Jack and I pulled close to 20 spent firecrackers out of our yard (I’m talking about the big ones with the 2-foot wooden rod attached to them–like giant bottle rockets). Grrr.

Okay, rant over. You won’t have to read my bitching about firecrackers again until the end of December.

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Another person came to see the house today. Woo! I was looking at other real estate listed in the area, and we’re definitely the most reasonably-priced house in this subdivision. And the house was actually spotless today, too!