the last holiday

Hope you had a happy Independence Day, America!  

I know what you're thinking. Yes, that bi-color typing was as annoying for me to do as it is for you to read. And yes, Joe is wearing a fake Freddie Mercury-esque mustache.

I spent the morning of the fourth getting rather worried that I would look like a giant reptile. My severe sunburn, after calming down, switched into major blister-and-peeling mode. Growing up, I was obsessed with picking at any wounds, flaking loose paint from anything I could reach & dipping my finger in melted wax just to chip it off. Peeling sunburns are rather distracting for me.

I also have lotion that smells like the "Mediterranean South"–loads of lavender & fig. It's almost too much for me to handle when I'm using it once a day. Now that I'm slathering it on five or six times, I feel like the smell will never leave me. My new skin will just grow right over the perfumes, & I'll come home smelling like the south of France. Maybe that's a good thing?

When it finally came time to celebrate, we totaled about eight Frenchmen, three British girls & three Americans. The numbers don't even accurately reflect the revolution. I'm happy to report the the Red Coats & Colonists got along rather well for the evening. That may have something to do with the fact that we spent most of it, when not stuffing our face with our friend's fabulous apple & cherry pies, soaking up gin or whiskey. (Again, representing both countries... though I think the whiskey ended up being Scottish. Hey, we were trying.)

For more pictures from the night, click here. Not pictured is the walk from our friend's to the party location–about ten minutes of pie-, pallet- & pasta salad-carrying. We looked like a mess, but we were too excited for ourselves to care. Also not pictured:

There were no national anthems, no fireworks, no true families, but we had a great evening. The night was our last big outing, our sort of farewell to our night life here. It was another friend's last night in town–when I woke up to type this, she was already three hours into her travels–so our original group of friends has dwindled quickly. We're the hangers-on, the last bits of those that have to leave.

The soirée had us thinking of home for obvious reasons, & for once I forgot about all the tasks in between. It will be so nice to watch Joe & Dad starting the fire, getting our dinner going while my youngest cousins run around the backyard & the Ladies sit on the deck. It will be nice to sit around a table with Joe's sisters & the families that they're building, each of us sharing our year's adventures.

Hope you had a happy, safe holiday. I'm back to packing!

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