i hate the 4th of july. oh not the holiday ion particular, and i am not unpatriotic. but in our neighborhood, the 4th of july ranks right up there with new year's as a pleasurable celebration. right now, right outside my door, the local gang bangers are firing off all kinds of fireworks and smoking their weed. last night it was mexican polka music till all hours. and most this week, their kids have been playing with fireworks unsupervised. these neighborhood brats have been putting the firecrackers in boxes, bottles, trash cans and anything else that will either bang louder or explode more impressively than the fireworks themselves ever could do. or, they have been throwing them...at people (including each other), at houses, at animals, at anything that moves.

to make it worse, some of these things sound like gun shots. we already get enough of this kind of nonsense through the year. we had at least one person shot on a nearby corner, which one daughter has to pass on her way to school everyday. with this kind of violence in our neighborhood already, i seriously doubt we need 4th of july noise makers that sounds like guns going off. not to mention, i am sure there are REAL guns going off in "celebration" of the holiday, just like for new years. so far no one has had a bullet drop on their head, but it is a nightmare waiting to happen as far as i can tell.

right now i have 4 kids and one husband trying to sleep, two of which have to get up early tomorrow for school or work. and right on our front lawn (apartment living is such a joy, anything that happens in the complex happens on your front lawn) are snaps, pops, shrieks and whistles going off at regular intervals. this is well after the grand finale at the stadium, which we got to over hear around 2 HOURS ago.

i just hope that this all quiets when i head to bed in a few. i have an eeg tomorrow and i would like to get the 6 hours allotted to me for it. not that i normally get 6 hours on any given night, but at least it's usually quiet enough to TRY.

to make matters worse, while much of it is kids (god knows what their parents are thinking to let them be up and running around outside at 11 pm at night), there are adults happily adding to the mayhem in a drug induced haze. my husband walked outside a bit ago to take a trash bag to the dumpster in back and walked into a cloud of marijuana smoke. oh, yea, this is supervision...NOT.

and to add to my personal irritation, i cannot stay online more than 5 minutes at the moment, and the set i am working on is being a totally disagreeable pain in the arse. i have come to the conclusion that my isp will forever claim things are working wonderfully, because for them it is. they have a plan you see...to get us all on dsl, which costs twice as much as a regular modem account, and thereby gets them more money. i am sure somewhere someone said, well, if we make sure that they are periodically dumped every 5 minutes for several days at a time they will be more than happy to shell out the extra for the dsl! thus, yes indeed, everything is fine with them.

happy independence day america. forgive me if i don't set of a sparkler or smile happily at the moment. and don't try to wish me a good 4th...i won't be able to hear you over the fireworks outside my window.