The fourth of July is always a bittersweet holiday for me.

Not for a deeply emotional reason, like because I have a family member in the armed forces (though I do greatly appreciate all that they do for us and am proud of my country), but because every summer it always feels as though the fourth of July represents the beginning of the end. Here we are in the throes of my favorite season, enjoying all of the delightful sun and warmth and watermelon juice dripping down our chins, then along comes July fourth and BAM! summer is all downhill from there. Before I can determine how much SPF to wear on any given day, fall is already here. School is back in session. Cookouts and pool days and suntans are over. Winter depression is right on the horizon.

Also on the negative side: fireworks.

To be honest, I am a bit of a hater when it comes to fireworks. The only fireworks displays that I find worthwhile are those at Disney World, particularly the ones at Epcot each night that are choreographed to music and fancy mood-lighting around all of the countries and which probably cost more than twenty times my monthly mortgage payment per night just to make people oooh and ahhh for less than thirty minutes.

I am a fireworks gold digger.

So each summer beginning about a week before the fourth of July when people decide to start shooting off their own hillbilly, jankety fireworks in their backyards I begin to get fiercely irritated. Really, what is the point of them?

Are these fireworks cool to look at? No. Let’s be honest, they’re from the temporary retail place that used to be a used car lot which has an an obnoxious hand-painted sign on an old piece of plywood that reads CHEAP FIREWURKS! and they’re really loud and not even pretty when they burst up a soaring twelve feet into the sky and they’re LAME.

Are they loud and obnoxious and horribly annoying to my ears? Yes, yes, and yes.

Are they really worth all of the money that people spend on them? Can you eat them or wear them? Then the answer is obviously NO.

Do they make my dog turn into a raging lunatic? He has totally made himself an appointment at the loony bin.

Needless to say, I wasn’t exactly thrilled when we came home from spending the fourth at my parents’ house around ten o’ clock that night to see our neighbors parked in the empty lot across the street from our house lighting firework after firework, one right after another. The proximity of the explosives to our house, coupled with the fact that Oliver was so hyped up and nervous that his eyeballs shot out of his head and were dragging along the floor next to him, put my eight-months-pregnant, tired, cranky self a tad bit on edge.

All I wanted to do was drag myself into bed and call it night, but of course first priority was to let Oliver outside to go pee one last time before bedtime. Somehow I managed to lure him out into the backyard in between BOOMS! and WHEEEES!, but unfortunately he was only able to sniff around and hold his shit together for three seconds before another firework exploded and he came unglued and ran back to the house, scratching like a fool on the sliding door to be let inside like a little pansy.

That was the point when I was all, okay dog, if you enjoy the feeling of your bladder brimming with urine and on the verge of exploding, similar to THOSE FIREWORKS THAT WE ALL KNOW AND LOVE, and would like to endure that kind of torture until 8:00 tomorrow morning, BE MY GUEST.

And with that, he went into his (own) bed in the laundry room for the night, and I went to bed 60% agitated, 40% feeling like a bad mother knowing that he’d have to hold it for what would surely feel like a sweet forever, and 10% high on residual firework fumes.

Now repeat this scenario until approximately next Sunday when people decide that the fourth of July is actually over and quit with the stupid fireworks, and that is the current story of my life. In fact, right now? At 8:28 in the evening, when it’s not even dark out? FIREWORKS BEING LOUD AND OLIVER BARKING AND FLIPPING OUT AND MAMA IS GOING TO LOOOOOSE ITTTTT!!!