CousinFest '09 date confirmed

I am so terribly excited! CousinFest '09 will be taking place over the Fourth of July weekend, July 2-5. One of the reasons for my great excitement is that the fireworks we'll be watching are the ones displayed from the suhh-waaaanky clubhouse in Susie's neighborhood; my family is accustomed to going to the local Payless parking lot where fireworks are set off while our fellow citizens sit in battered lawn chairs in the backs of their pickup trucks, eating Doritos, talking NASCAR and yelling at their kids, who are trying to stab each other with sparklers: "Travis, I'm gonna haul off and belt you one if you don't stop that sh*t right now! You're fixin' to put out your sister's eye with that thang!"

I'm thinking in Susie's neighborhood, there is probably a separate fireworks display for the kids and the nannies, so that the adults can be free to sip their wine and murmur "Oooohhh! Aaaahhh!!!" in their cultured Southern accents. Susie will be the one standing up and hollering, "Oh, look, did y'all see that one? It was PINK!"

I wonder if Carol will refuse to raise her hand as a visitor at Holy Spirit for the third year in a row. Yes, I have been keeping track. And yes, I am holding a grudge. Two years in a row, she's left me hanging to stand up and say my name and where I'm from while she slumps there in the pew, snickering wickedly at me and refusing to make her presence known.

We don't know yet if Lilly can come: she is very busy with work and with working on yet another college degree; you'd have thought she'd be content with that MBA, but no....She has to go on proving that she's smarter than the other three of us put together, but we do not hold that against her. She, in the same manner, is gracious and forgiving of the fact that, compared to her, Susie, Carol and I don't have the brains God gave a goose.