Next year, we are staying HOME

Did you have a good 4th of July holiday??

Oh you did??

WONDERFUL!!!!

Ours stunk big time.

I really don’t know what it is about this town, but we never have a good 4th of July (unless we go over to friends). Is it the people, this town, the craziness of it all? I don’t know. But I imagine, it has to do with all of those things and more.

The day started off GREAT! I had everything planned out, everything was going according to plan. I made the ice cream mixture the night before so it would be chilled, the potatoes were cooling in the fridge for the yummy potato salad I had planned, the burgers, well they just looked marvelous.

I wanted to go ahead and get the ice cream started so it would be done in time for us to still go see the fireworks. They don’t start until 9:45 here so we had plenty of time to get there. (Or at least ride by downtown to see them) I just can’t bring myself to go downtown here. I don’t like it. It’s a major city to me and not the safest. It just plain makes me nervous.

Well, I couldn’t get the darn ice cream maker to work. Remember I bought this one at the Salvation Army for only 5 bucks. It worked in the store, I made sure of it. I could hear the motor coming on, but the little thingy that spins the paddle, wasn’t spinning.

Great.

Let’s try another outlet.

Nope.

Still not working. Oh well, no homemade ice cream for the 4th. No biggie.

We decided at last minute, to go over to a friends house. They live at the beach, but far enough from the main roads that we can shoot off fireworks and not get the cops called on us. Did you know it's illegal to shoot fireworks that go up in the sky in FL?? Well, now you do. :)

We get to the beach and all the girls see are the fireworks from the Jacksonville Beach display. We decided to just ride by there and let the girls see those and then drive on over to our friends house.

Boy did we mess up!! As we headed into the beach, the traffic really started picking up. Next thing we know, we are in a full traffic jam. I’m talking LOTS of cars and people. Why didn’t I think to take some pictures?? It was crazy! They had what they called “Citizens on Patrol” to basically wave red wand thingy around and attempt to direct traffic. The “Citizens” were more like Senior Citizens on Patrol. I felt bad for them, but when you get a few hundred thousand people wanting to leave a small area all  at the same time, you might want to just pay a real cop to do the job right. It was a mess. The beach was basically gridlocked. The whole beach. Ugh.

I don’t know my way around the beach well enough to take the back roads, and apparently, neither did anyone else.

We finally found a back road that Chris knew would led us back towards we wanted to go. Awesome. Let’s GO!

We drive down that road a few minutes and then “THUD!” What in the hack was that!?!?

We get out and look.

EGG!

The big ‘ole redneck truck that just passed by us EGGED OUR CAR! I mean, come on. It’s the freakin’ 4th of July for goodness sakes. You don’t egg people’s car on that holiday!

Halloween, yes.

Independence Day, noooooooooooo!

We get back in the car and try to follow them. Of course they are LONG gone by the time we get back in the car. We decided, well, since we are now turned around, let’s just go back the way we came and go back home.

We get back on the road and “THUD!”

O.M.G. They did it AGAIN! Twice. In one night. By the SAME truck!!

By this time, my blood was boiling. What do you do when you are driving, with your kids in the car mind you, and someone just starts throwing eggs at your car?? Do you stop to look up the non-emergency police number or do you call 911?

Well I called 911. I explained what was going on.  The dispatcher was less than enthused with my call.

“Ma’am, is this a life or death situation?” he asked.

“Well what do you think?” I asked him back.

“I’m transferring you to the NON-emergency number. Hold” he blurted out.

I get a nice lady, but there is an awful echo. I can hear myself talking like a second later in the phone. Which, by the way, makes it incredibly difficult to talk. My heart is racing as Chris is literally chasing this truck full of kids. Not fast, since it was in a neighborhood and we had the kids, but it was kinda fun. Makes me wish I was a cop…. in a town like Mayberry. Tee hee.

We finally catch up to them… then they went through an intersection. We stop and get ready to go through and the nice people of Jax Beach decide they would rather BLOCK the entire intersection. Thank you people of Jax Beach. You are too, too kind.

They got away. The dumb kids that egged our car, got away with it. And we didn’t even get close enough to get a tag number.

I guess it’s a good thing we didn’t watch up to them. I would have yanked them up by their toenails and given them a lecture along the lines of this: “How would you like it if someone egged YOUR mom’s car?? How would you like it if YOUR kids were in YOUR car and someone egged it?? Not so funny now being hung up by your toenails now is it?? Not such a prankster now huh???”

I then realized that I sound just like the mean old lady that lived in the neighborhood when we were kids and every time the ball went in her yard, she kept it. Just because she could.

You won this time eggers. But next time you might not be so lucky. We are nice people. The next people you hit with an egg may not be so nice about it.

Next year, we are staying home and doing sparklers and snakes.