Neighborhood Independence Day
Yesterday was Independence Day. It’s the day when we celebrate our nation’s independence by sneaking across state lines to skirt our home state’s fireworks laws.* It’s a day when people with normal jobs get to sleep in, while stay at home parents get to wake up a half-hour early because their toddler rose with the sun, started banging on her bedroom door to be let out, screamed when I didn’t immediately come running, and then woke her brothers to enlist their help in rousing me from bed.
It’s also a day for cookouts. This was a perfect excuse for our neighborhood to get together as several families recently moved in. So we held a neighborhood-wide potluck on Independence Day for everyone to meet the neighbors and learn their kids’ names so we’d know whom to blame when we catch someone picking our flowers.
The previous evening saw a competing neighborhood-wide pizza party. You see, our neighborhood is experiencing a bit of a war between the Mormons and the Drinkers. Our neighborhood houses five Mormon families, giving us the highest Mormon concentration in the state. The Mormons are very nice people, but they live by some strict rules, one of which is “no alcohol.” The Drinkers are also very nice people who also live by some strict rules, one of which is “all social gatherings must include alcohol.” Therefore we wind up with competing get-togethers where the Mormons make things as family friendly as possible; elsewhere the Drinkers set up a giant keg while parents chase their kids to ensure their cup contains a legal beverage.
The Drinkers threw the pizza party; the Mormons threw the potluck. As a non-Mormon family that also has nothing against alcohol except for the taste,** we could attend both events as they were on different nights. The pizza party was mostly a dud for us since the food arrived about an hour later than we expected and far too late for Abbie to wait, Ellie had to leave early for work, and the whole thing was broken up by rain that could best be described as “horizontal.”
Determined to whoop it up at least once over the holiday, we prepared for the potluck. I whipped up a sufficiently Iowan salad containing pineapple, fruit cocktail, mandarin oranges, pudding, a tub of whipped topping, and half a bag of marshmallows. Ellie made an angel food cake to satisfy her jonesing for angel food cake if for no other reason. We then fed the twins since I doubted anyone’s pot would include Nutramigen, packed up the kids and an assortment of picnic supplies, and headed to the potluck.
The host set up an assortment of wading pools for the kids. We let Abbie run free to splash in the water. She played in the pools briefly, but left to terrorize children twice her age by trying to steal their inflatable pool toys. All hope of her returning to the water was lost when she discovered the tables of food left tortilla chips and watermelon within her reach.
When it was time to eat, I piled a plate full of assorted glop, confident that Abbie would eat at least some of it while I could finish the rest. Ellie fed her a hot do while I moved through the line, filling her with beef, salt, and a few nitrates. By the time I returned, all she wanted was to pluck a few berries off my plate before bounding off to chase a ball.
The twins started in the stroller while we ate, but they started complaining before I could finish my second hot dog. We then took them out and set them down to lie and scoot and across the grass. They were happy down there for a while, especially since they could teeth on the nearby stroller wheels, but eventually they started crying around my second trip to the dessert table. We held them for the rest of the gathering with ample help from the legions of neighbors who love holding babies.
After eating, we took time to socialize and meet the new neighbors. Before long, we had to return home for several reasons: The twins were getting tired, the weather was getting too cold for Abbie to play around the water, and it was bath night. It was just as well that it was bath night since Abbie had watermelon juice all over in spite of her continued proximity to wading pools.
* Missouri gets Iowa’s fireworks shoppers. Iowa gets Missouri’s casino gamblers. It’s a fair trade.
** Typical college-era conversation:
Drinker: “Try this.”
Me: “Does it have alcohol.”
D: “Yes.”
M: “No thanks. I don’t like the taste of alcohol.”
D: “You can’t even taste the alcohol. Just take a sip.”
(I begrudgingly try it.)
M: “I can taste the alcohol.”
D: “Yeah, isn’t it good?”
It’s also a day for cookouts. This was a perfect excuse for our neighborhood to get together as several families recently moved in. So we held a neighborhood-wide potluck on Independence Day for everyone to meet the neighbors and learn their kids’ names so we’d know whom to blame when we catch someone picking our flowers.
The previous evening saw a competing neighborhood-wide pizza party. You see, our neighborhood is experiencing a bit of a war between the Mormons and the Drinkers. Our neighborhood houses five Mormon families, giving us the highest Mormon concentration in the state. The Mormons are very nice people, but they live by some strict rules, one of which is “no alcohol.” The Drinkers are also very nice people who also live by some strict rules, one of which is “all social gatherings must include alcohol.” Therefore we wind up with competing get-togethers where the Mormons make things as family friendly as possible; elsewhere the Drinkers set up a giant keg while parents chase their kids to ensure their cup contains a legal beverage.
The Drinkers threw the pizza party; the Mormons threw the potluck. As a non-Mormon family that also has nothing against alcohol except for the taste,** we could attend both events as they were on different nights. The pizza party was mostly a dud for us since the food arrived about an hour later than we expected and far too late for Abbie to wait, Ellie had to leave early for work, and the whole thing was broken up by rain that could best be described as “horizontal.”
Determined to whoop it up at least once over the holiday, we prepared for the potluck. I whipped up a sufficiently Iowan salad containing pineapple, fruit cocktail, mandarin oranges, pudding, a tub of whipped topping, and half a bag of marshmallows. Ellie made an angel food cake to satisfy her jonesing for angel food cake if for no other reason. We then fed the twins since I doubted anyone’s pot would include Nutramigen, packed up the kids and an assortment of picnic supplies, and headed to the potluck.
The host set up an assortment of wading pools for the kids. We let Abbie run free to splash in the water. She played in the pools briefly, but left to terrorize children twice her age by trying to steal their inflatable pool toys. All hope of her returning to the water was lost when she discovered the tables of food left tortilla chips and watermelon within her reach.
When it was time to eat, I piled a plate full of assorted glop, confident that Abbie would eat at least some of it while I could finish the rest. Ellie fed her a hot do while I moved through the line, filling her with beef, salt, and a few nitrates. By the time I returned, all she wanted was to pluck a few berries off my plate before bounding off to chase a ball.
The twins started in the stroller while we ate, but they started complaining before I could finish my second hot dog. We then took them out and set them down to lie and scoot and across the grass. They were happy down there for a while, especially since they could teeth on the nearby stroller wheels, but eventually they started crying around my second trip to the dessert table. We held them for the rest of the gathering with ample help from the legions of neighbors who love holding babies.
After eating, we took time to socialize and meet the new neighbors. Before long, we had to return home for several reasons: The twins were getting tired, the weather was getting too cold for Abbie to play around the water, and it was bath night. It was just as well that it was bath night since Abbie had watermelon juice all over in spite of her continued proximity to wading pools.
* Missouri gets Iowa’s fireworks shoppers. Iowa gets Missouri’s casino gamblers. It’s a fair trade.
** Typical college-era conversation:
Drinker: “Try this.”
Me: “Does it have alcohol.”
D: “Yes.”
M: “No thanks. I don’t like the taste of alcohol.”
D: “You can’t even taste the alcohol. Just take a sip.”
(I begrudgingly try it.)
M: “I can taste the alcohol.”
D: “Yeah, isn’t it good?”
posted by Matt at
11:58 PM
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