OK, the bee sting actually did suck

July 4th is my favorite holiday each year, and I hate to say that this year was terribly predictable.

I had a horribly wonderful weekend, complete with painfully mild, 85-degree weather and zero humidity.
Several friends came to visit during the unfortunate three-day weekend, and our house was filled with the annoying sounds of laugher and good cheer all weekend.

We donned obnoxiously cliché red, white and blue attire. We never ran out of beer, as much as we tried.

Could we get any more typical “American” than a visit to a pool, a trip to the beach and a luxurious boat ride around South Carolina’s remote islands?
How about watching a nearly 40-minute fireworks show from a boat with the terrifying popping and banging coming from above?

(The dizzyingly colorful sparks also made it practically impossible to notice the garish sky full of stars. I mean, I hardly ever get to see the Big Dipper, and my view was obscured with firework smoke, GAW!)

I awoke July 4th morning to five friends laughing in the kitchen and an illegally sugary, terribly delicious brunch on the table, complete with mimosas and my roommate’s notoriously unforgivable cinnamon bread. It was downright sinful.

In addition to the holiday being marked by embarrassingly drunk happy strangers everywhere shouting HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMERICA! and wearing American flag bathing suits and bandanas, we also suffered through a gigantic C-14 plane doing a exhausting “patriotic” flyover along the coast.
The thousands of people on the beach all waved and whistled as it flew overhead, a terrible waste of energy because the pilot certainly couldn’t hear us.

That afternoon, while waiting for our friend’s dreadfully immaculate boat to pick us up at a super snooty marina, my twin sister, Joy, even got stung bitten by a large honeybee.

Joy cried in pain and had to get ice rubbed on the red lump on her back for at least a half hour, making it horribly uncomfortable to lean back on the extravagantly cushioned boat seats.

My calves are frighteningly sore from all the dancing I did every night this weekend — terribly grueling. All of this dancing was also to peculiar contraptions like mandolins, harmonicas and unidentifiable brass instruments.

I don’t know what I did to deserve such a terribly glorious weekend, or how I got such terribly wonderful friends. I mean, would it be too much to ask to have one thing go wrong? Could America’s birthday be a little less awesome?

Thank goodness I'm going to work tomorrow — and early, too. I miss structure. I miss emails. I miss wearing more than just a bikini.

And there certainly won't be any bees.



terrible, just terrible

Happy 4th y'all.

-Jenny