I spent a lot of time going through the motions over the holiday weekend. My feelings about July 4 in recent years have been duly recorded in this publication and rest assured they haven’t changed, or maybe they have changed but not for the better.
We went to a cookout at my sister-in-law’s and the weather was very beautiful. My sister-in-law has an extremely shady (in the tree way, not the RuPaul’s Drag Race way) and rambling deck in the backyard and there was lots of room to spread out and enjoy being there. Our dogs were once again mostly charming all weekend long (I had no reservations about dropping them off at school on Tuesday morning, however). Now that it is summer, they spend a lot of time in the yard wearing themselves out like wholesome country children. Everyone sleeps a bit better, in spite of everything.
If I had to make an argument for the four-day work week, aside from “duh” it would be this: for a weekend to really be worth something, you need one socializing day, one chore day, and one relaxing day. Saturday was our socializing day and then Sunday I puttered around doing all of my weekly janitorial service duties (empty office and bathroom trash, clean toilets, wipe counters, change sheets – sorry to come off like an Instagram life hack person but this makes my life 150% less shitty) so I didn’t have to do any of it on Monday, aka the relaxing day.
One July 4 observance I didn’t (and would never) forgo was watching Independence Day, a holiday classic whether you want to admit it or not. This year I chose the extended version, which admittedly is not improved by the inclusion of the deleted scenes, even the ones featuring Brian Krakow. (No offense to Brian Krakow.) Do I have to even say that this movie still slaps? I think my husband does not find this fixation of mine endearing but I can live with that. KICK THE TIRES AND LIGHT THE FIRES.
Another notable takeaway from the weekend is that we finally began watching The Durrells in Corfu. I say “finally” because by all appearances this is a show created specifically for us, two gentle-minded middle-aged white people with liberal arts education pretensions who are coming to grips with the fact that Downton Abbey was, in fact, fiction. I also think someone in the algorithm department at Prime Video (that’s definitely what it is called) had to be scratching their heads wondering why these dorks would check in to Hotel Portofino and linger over All Creatures Great and Small but resolutely refuse to touch The Durrells with a ten-foot pole. Blame it on Leslie! Everyone else does! (That’s a Corfu joke.) In any event we are enjoying it and will definitely watch it through to the end, at which point I hope another season of All Creatures will be shortly upon us.
If you are also looking for something new to subscribe to and are a fan of TV and specifically crones on TV, I would like to recommend Cronecast! Cronecast gave me the gumption to create my own new logo thing and in return I would like to suggest you subscribe to it. Crones on TV is a rich topic, not that you would know it considering how women are rarely factored into much of anything. Just ask Louisa Durrell!