Oh yeah.... Money

So, July 4th has come and gone. And I was down in Tenino to hang with the fam.

This is Christian. He is the son of my cousin's boyfriend. He's 14 and all those fireworks are his. He was very proud of them. And his hands and elbows were all black from shooting off bottle rockets. Then, he rolled around on the living room carpet with the dog and made a huge mess. And had to clean it up. HA!












Then there's the family I haven't seen in more than ten years. Yeah, try not seeing your cousin for thirteen years.

That's Brian, my cousin and his wife, Marisol and their sons, William and Alex. They were shooting off bottle rockets and flares from that metal box. Which happened to be the electric. Yeah, we're pretty smart people!







This is Sparky. A girl dog, lab and Aussie terrier mix. She was ok with individual firecrackers or bottle rockets, but once everyone went outside and it was really loud and continuous, she bolted inside. And then she would get anxious because she wasn't where everyone else was. So, then she'd come outside again and get scared again. She's only seven months old.

Cutest thing, but kinda dumb. And she digs up the garden, which pisses Tianne off to no end. Tianne's the cousin.

Anyway, I also shot off some bottle rockets and firecrackers and my hands also got black as night. Fun stuff. Jesse and Christian has this narrow plastic pipe thing, duct taped one end and would shoot bottle rockets out of it like a Bazooka. Kinda fun. Except that sometimes the sparks would fly back to you and burn your skin a bit. Not so fun.

But I overate, like any good American citizen. Hamburgers, pasta salad, green bean casserole, biscuits, hot dogs, soda, chips and salsa, cookies. I was literally contemplating being bulemic for a night just to not be doubled over with aches and pains, I was that full.

But I managed, without the bulemia. And drove home at midnight, got home at one a.m. and didn't want to wake up this morning for work.

I should have stayed home because work was hell on earth. It's complicated, but someone who thinks she's important was confusing all us little people with her "explicit" and "completely clear" emails regarding the new criminal background checks we have to do. Whatever. So, there was that and a host family in Southern California who needed student profiles, but I had to resend the email like three times because they can't open PDF or WORD attachments. Who can't open WORD attachments nowadays? At an AOL address too.... Roll of my eyes. But he was a nice guy and very patient with me. Oh yeah, and a Field Director wants me to do a mass mailing for him. 400 people. Like I haven't got enough of those to do this summer. I just did a 300 person mailing for him last week. I've got a mailing for all volunteers to finish by the end of next week, that's like 1000+ people. I hate paper.

My heart is literally beating super fast just from having that day at work. No coffee. Barely a salad and smoothie for lunch.

Why am I here?