"What? Oh, you mean the big explosion just now? That was nothing, don't worry about it! It's just our neighbor with his cannon is all!"

Happy Memorial Day! Our holiday was started early this year by our neighbor, the proud maker and keeper of a small cannon. No joke. A cannon. A monster just goes ‘bump’ in the night, but this thing goes ‘BOOM!’ all night long. What is more, last night our neighbor kept it loaded with not just the cannon equivalent of a blank, but with pretty fireworks as well. Of course, said fireworks exploded right over our house, so they were heard instead of seen, the opposite of what many retires say children should be like. I can forgive the noise pretty easily, though, because the mere fact that the man has a cannon is simply too awesome for words. He once told me that he took it down to the Ohio River and launched a tennis ball across. If noise is any indication of power, then I believe him. The first time I had a friend over during the Fourth of July I had a heck of a time explaining the window rattling explosions to my buddy. “What? Oh, you mean the big explosion just now? That was nothing, don’t worry about it! It’s just our neighbor with his cannon is all!”

My family is well suited to this neighborhood, though. This morning I woke up to a rain of plastic pellets on my window as my dad tried to chase the squirrels off the birdfeeder. When I came for breakfast I took my turn with the pellet gun, too. My aim is terrible. Luckily the squirrels have been hit enough that they run at the sound of the little gun, so I scared them off without even pinging one.

For fear that someone will start screaming about cruelty to animals, I will now inform you that our little old pellet gun could MAYBE take out a fly. Even a direct hit barely stings. I know from personal experience. I feel more guilt over the ant traps we set out in the summer.

I learned an important lesson today: sleeping in the middle of the day results in some really weird dreams. I think I already knew that, but today I actually remembered part of them, and they were really weird, even for me. There was something about sea lice, only they weren’t really sea lice, and looked a lot like little green circles with eyes and legs. I thought they were nasty. Who dreams about sea lice? And Darth Vader was in it, too. He was mourning his broken family with Luke and Leia. I haven’t watched Star Wars in over a year. Sea lice and Darth Vader. Who woulda thunk it?