A 4-way in the house of broken love or how to dodge traffic worrying about your nuts

My July 4th activities to most don't appear on the exciting end of the spectrum, however, I will tell you about my Independence Day festivities.

Every year, at my casa, there is a Happy Birthday party for the U.S of A. No, we don't have a cake, because how is the U.S. gonna blow out 230 candles?

We usually have family, friends, and neighbors who attend the hoopla event of the year... at least at my house. We have smoked ribs, smoked sausage, smoked pork, smoked smoke, and smoked people... with a nice bottle of Chianti. We had it all. And to top it all off, we had the annual shooting of the spuds. We present to the crowd the *one and only* potato gun de la Independence. The goal, as every year, is to make it to the pond. We shot a few off before we had to go take shelter under the porch because of some sort of falling drops of liquid. We've never seen such a thing but others in attendance insisted that it was something called "rain". Whatever...

It was fun despite the fact that my neck was permanently set in one spot. I couldn't look right, up, down, or all the way left. I must have looked like Frankenstein the whole day. However, it is much better now, but it is far from being normal. I've never had something hurt this much in my neck. The weird thing was that I didn't sleep on it wrong or anything that I am aware of. It just progressed throughout the day (July 3). Who knows?.....

Well, considering my "condition", I decided to stay home instead of "going out" painting the town. I couldn't very well be comfortable so the best way for me to get through the day is to stay home and watch a movie courtesy of NetFlix.com, or take morphine, but I was out of it anyway. I was watching the movie until about 9:30 p.m. when I received a phone call from a friend who was broke down on the side of the highway with a flat tire. Upon his request, I drove to his location with the aim to help him get on his way.

Everything was going great until it became time to actually do some work. We had an opposite-of-heaven of a time trying to get the lug nuts off of the wheel. We were basically standing of the wratchet and jumping on it to get the nuts to come off. Finally we got them all off ..... except for the last one. It was stripped... and no, it didn't take its clothes off..... We tried to do all of this while trying not to get run over by cars going 83 mph right by us. All the cars would do as they drove passed us was honk. Why do people honk as they drive by? Does that make us feel better? "Oh... thank God they honked... I didn't know they cared!"

In summary, we wasn't able to put the spare tire on. The things wouldn't have fit anyway. The spare was designed for a different car, which wasn't the fault of my friend. Whoever owned the car previously put that in there. Who puts a spare in a car for which it doesn't fit?? Anyway, he had to get the thing towed away. Keep in mind I had to help my friend with my neck all to opposite-of-heaven. That made the experience all the more enjoyable. Man, that hurt like a booby....

Until next time, vaya con Dios. And happy birthday dad.

*one and only - meaning the only one present at my house that day.