Happy Independence Day

I'm doing my part to celebrate our independence by sitting around our extremely hot house. My husband had to work today, so I'm waiting for him to get home to see if we're up for doing anything. To be perfectly honest, I think that I'm satisfied with sitting here on the couch and watching fireworks on TV. Really, I do. It's hot. I'm tired. I'm now down to only one day before I have to return to work.

I hope that this week goes really quickly. A good friend of mine from Minnesota is going to be in town this weekend coming up. And to add the cherry on top, Mi Mami ran into another high school friend of mine this weekend and we're going to try to put together a small reunion of sorts. All of us freaks from high school. And really, we were. The punk/goth/new wave kids. HA! I'd bet no one from high school would recognize us now. We all grew into such nice presentable professional soccer mom types. But with an edge, you know the hip soccer moms. The one's who show up to pick the kids up from school blasting The Killers. So anyway, I'm really looking forward to next weekend.

So, on this Independence Day I really want to focus my "Thanks" on the men and women who had the foresight over 200 years ago to put it all on the line so that people like me could live freely. If you really think about it, it's amazing. These were lawyers and farmers and successful business men who literally sacrificed everything so that I could hate the President. I read somewhere (I can't remember now, where I did) that a good majority of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence ended up penniless and destitute, they lost their families, homes, etc. And they did this so that I could sit on my ample ass all weekend bemoaning that Tom Cruise is an idiot.

I personally think that a lot of people incorrectly thank our military on Independence Day. And please, don't tell me that I'm anti-military for what I'm thinking. I grew up in a military family in a military town and I married into the military. I'm very PRO-Military. But what I'm saying, is that I thank our military every Memorial Day and Veteran's Day. I thank our men and women in the Armed Services every time I see our flag. Everytime I see camo. I'm thankful that there are people in our country that are willing to make the ultimate sacrifice so that I can drive a gas guzzler to the Super Wal-Mart and flip through the tabloids for the latest picture of Demi's maybe baby bump.

So what I'm saying, I guess, is that while I'm immensely thankful for the sacrifices made by today's military, I'm even more thankful that people like Alexander Hamilton and John Hancock were willing to use what, in today's world, would be considered terrorist tactics to ensure that we would have a nation full of choices. A nation where the daughter of a poor sharecropper in the South can grow up to be a mega-millionaire talk show host. Where people can share ideas and express their opinions without fear of governmental reprisal. Where my father can sit around in his underwear and call Hillary Clinton a lesbian femi-nazi and where I can roll my eyes at him and wonder if all that pot he smoked, no WHEN all that pot he smoked permanently damaged his mind and made him FUCKING crazy. It was a huge sacrifice that the Benjamin Franklins and John Adamses made. Would any of us be willing to lose our livelihoods, possibly watch our children and other loved ones be tortured and killed, die too young and without a home all so that our grandchildren could have a better life? It's amazing. And I'm thankful.