Indiscriminate Age

You know you are getting old when you think of a holiday as just another day. Unfortunately, I must be aging significantly because today felt like just any other day. We didn’t go to any parades or fireworks displays. We didn’t have any sparklers or poppers. We even neglected to create our traditional tri-colored beverages. The kids didn’t care about the whole fireworks thing as they saw big fireworks with Kev’s family last weekend and had no preference one way or another where sparklers are concerned, so we just skipped it all.

On the flip side, perhaps I’m still a bit young at heart because I loved the creating and eating of our patriotic sheet cake pancakes and the red, white and blue ice cream sandwiches. I haven’t had an ice cream sandwich for years because they always have chocolate in some form or another and chocolate is bad for me. So, I really enjoyed creating my own! My pinwheel cookies didn’t turn out quite as pristine as I had hoped, but that was in large part to some universal cookie problems we’ve been having over here that I’m pretty sure are related to a change in the consistency of the margarine we use. It has been highly frustrating for both me and Matthew as recipes we have used for years are suddenly not working as they should. For instance, this particular cookie recipe is the same sugar cookie recipe I’ve used for decades but it was so soft and sticky this time that even after two days in the freezer and with no time allowed for defrosting, the dough was soft enough that I could cut it easily and had to be careful so that the logs wouldn’t get smushed as I sliced them. Seriously, it is ridiculous. They still taste good though and since I was the one making the dessert decisions, I made the ice cream sandwiches nice and thick. They were so tasty!

Whether young or old, Independence Day was low key for us this year. I guess we did at least honor our country by eating the most American dinner the kids could think of-hamburgers, chips and dip. But overall, we didn’t really do the whole big celebration bit. That doesn’t mean that our feelings about our country have changed, I think it just means that we are all focused on other things this year. And I think that’s ok. In our hearts we are still true red, white and blue. The outward manifestations of that were just a bit more sedate this year.