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2002-07-04 | 4:52 p.m.

Parade this morning with Bambi and her kids. Jasper really learned to chase the candies this year, though his reflexes still aren't as quick as his cousin Rojo's. But Rojo is five, and Jasper is three. Three and three-quarters.

Two of my long-distance friends, Stephen and Frank, had expressed reservations to me about my plans to attend an official Fourth of July event in this climate, but as I anticipated, everything here was pretty much as it has always been. Actually, it wasn't even quite as good as usual.

The only memorable-slash-patriotic thing I saw was a float that featured living people posing as the soldiers on Iwo Jima (front) and firefighters erecting the flag at the World Trade Center (back). We were encamped at the very beginning of the parade route, and already, by the time we saw them, the firefighters had given up their pose and were waving blithely to the sidewalks, while the Iwo Jimans were still frozen in a backbreaking arrangement. If they didn't relax before the parade was done, they're going to be hurting tonight.

Funny to me how put out Stephen and Frank get over the patriotism. It doesn't bother me as long as it doesn't turn ugly. What gets to me is all the damn Fishtians. This is a very churchy town and it seems like every church in town has got a flatbed truck in the parade so they can play amplified music. And then they've got the whole damn congregation following behind trying to convince the rest of us to "come on out" this Sunday.

The music is often unspeakable. Sure, it's not so bad when a big gospel group comes thumping down the street and everybody wants to dance. But the white people, the Lutherans and the rest of them with their tepid la la la stuff-- it makes me think of those SNL skits with Will Ferrell and Ana Gasteyer playing the too-hip middle school music teachers Marty and Bobbi Mohann-Culp. I really want to tell them, you know, you're never going to get ANYBODY into your church playing that music.

But whatever. It's not my problem.

After the parade, Jasper and I went down to the waterfront park where the parade ends and had Filipino food (chicken adobo, pansit, and lumpia) for lunch. But it's not very much fun because we don't have any affiliations here anymore and it's a town where people are really segregated by group affiliation. They congregate with their congregations, they set up camp sites with their extended families, but there are not a lot of people just wandering around in twos or threes. I guess we just need to join something and then we'll fit in, eh?

I was sitting there thinking, I wish I knew one other mother like me in this town. Just one.

Even after all this time, there is still a part of me that just absolutely hates this place. I like my house well enough, and I can defend the town against the criticism of others, but it's an intellectual exercise, it doesn't come from my heart. I still don't really like it here. I want to live somewhere else, where I can be a part of things without trying very hard.

Sometimes it feels like I live on the Internet. There's no way I'd ever consider being here without it.

There are fireworks at the water park and also at the marina tonight, but I think we'll skip the shows. I don't know why, but I feel a little vulnerable going by ourselves. Last year we went with my Mom and Rojo, and that was fine. But just my little boy and me, with so many hoodlums around? Nah. Sometimes I'm all over stuff like this and then other times, I can't be bothered. I sound like my grandmother. She used to sit in her armchair and say that all the time. "I can't be bothered." And she was right--she couldn't.

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