C'mon, baby, light my fire.

I'm crazy about Independence Day.

It's my favorite holiday of the year. It's better than my birthday, better than Christmas, 'way better than Valentine's Day or even Halloween -- although Halloween is very cool because you get to talk to *so* many kids that night and it just begs for hamming it up.

But nothing beats the Fourth of July as far as I'm concerned.

For one thing, it *is* nice to be patriotic. I love the Fourth, because when you go to town for the annual parade, everything is decked out in red, white, and blue, and no one's burning flags or running down the government or each other. For one day a year, we're all completely united in our love for our country -- and that just *rocks*.

But that's just the beginning of the reasons I love Independence Day.

It's in summer. And summer is my favorite season. It's hot. It's not warm, it's not cool, and it is most definitely not cold -- it's *hot*. Lawns everywhere are still green because they haven't been overexposed to the heat. Lots of flowers are still in bloom (although the really pretty ones like bachelor's buttons and larkspurs are waning). Hummingbirds have settled into a predictable pattern at the feeder, and if I feel like swimming, the lake is warm enough to visit it for an afternoon.

But that's still not the whole package that makes the Fourth of July my favorite holiday.

There's the food -- hamburgers, hot dogs, chili dogs, steaks, chicken, or pork chops on the grill -- cold ham from the fridge -- roasted corn on the cob and juicy-ripe red tomatoes with grilled potatoes and chunks of peppers -- 7-layer salads and pasta salads and fruit salads -- and watermelon or s'mores or nanner puddin' for dessert -- with lemonade to drink or cold, condensation-dripping Coca-Colas -- or if you're really, really lucky, a cold Budwine from that one store in Georgia that still sells it even though you don't know where it was bottled or why Budwine tastes so much better than Cheerwine or Cherry Coke or Dr. Pepper or any other carbonated soft drink.......

Yet even the food -- as fabulous as it is -- isn't the best part of the Fourth of July for me.

Nope. It's the fireworks. I love 'em. I love things that go boom in the night.

I'm more than a touch pyrophobic, actually, and I think that fear feeds my fascination with pyrotechnics. I am an absolute sucker for fireworks. At Disney World, you know, I don't go a night without seeing fireworks of some kind. And I cry over all the shows.

So every year, I buy fireworks and put on an amateur show that would embarrass you if you saw it. I know it would embarrass you. I've seen it happen to all of my neighbors.

Heck, it kind of embarrasses *me*. We put our big speakers out on the porch and crank up the amplifier to play music with my very carefully planned fireworks. It's a solid twenty minutes of music and fireworks, and if I could just figure out a way to do it, I would add lasers, water screens and slide images like "Fantasmic" (one of the shows at Disney).

We didn't do the big fireworks thing last year. Wesley had to work on the Fourth, and so we had a smaller, shorter version on the 5th. It was a bummer, what with Amy out of town that weekend *and* no exploding things.

But I've just returned from Bimbo's, and I have this year's pyrotechnics all picked out, purchased and ready for the Fourth of July. I can't wait. I'm so excited, I doubt I'll sleep tonight. I bought some really *big* multi-shot thingamabobs, and I bought so much that Bimbo's owner, Ed, threw in some really big freebies and a whole gob of Roman candles. It'll probably take me two hours to get everything sorted and set up properly.

[Note: I don't actually buy Roman candles myself -- they're too small for my taste. But I love Ed, and he's always nice to me. He knows to expect me and my lists of things to buy. I'm so glad fireworks are legal in Tennessee. I would just die if I had to rely on "civic" displays.]

Which is what makes the Fourth of July special, right? I'm going to way too much trouble just to please myself. C'mon, baby. Light my fire.