Today is July 4th, which doesn’t mean much outside the USA but it’s kind of a big deal around here. It was always a big deal for me when I was a kid, too. I remember family barbecues and going to watch the fireworks with my parents & cousins every year. We’d put the tailgate down on Dad’s truck, and we’d all pile in the back and joke about whether or not A Mountain would get set on fire again that year. (It did, more often than not.)

No, not just “a mountain” but the peak known as “A Mountain” to the locals on account of the giant “A” on it. Don’t believe me? Here’s a picture:

I didn’t know until just now that this peak is actually named Sentinel Peak. A Mountain had always been enough for me. Believe it or not, it’s not the only peak with a giant A on it in Arizona, either. Tempe Butte, which sits pretty much right in the middle of Tempe, AZ has a big A on it too.

Arizona, I tell ya. There are interesting stories behind both of these peaks and how they came to have A’s on them, but I’ll leave that to you to discover. I didn’t actually set out to talk about the Mountains A, that’s just where I ended up. (That’s kind of how my fiction writing goes too, more often than not.)

I wanted to talk about the Fourth of July. Independence Day. The day dogs don’t know they should fear until it’s too late and the big scary booms are going off. I don’t get together for family barbecues anymore, because I don’t have any family locally. My husband and I usually grill something (today he’s smoking pork ribs, yum) and when I start hearing the fireworks going off I’ll wander down to the end of the driveway to watch—a benefit of living a mile away from our town’s “Liberty Fest” site: I don’t have to do crowds or nature to get my fireworks on.

Anyway, the 4th is usually just a day off work, a day of rest, video games, and Netflix bingeing. This year, the 4th is a chance to catch up on writing (or write blog posts, ahem) and live my dream of working for myself for a day. I guess that’s kind of a celebration of independence, now that I think about it. Sitting at my favorite coffee shop in the middle of the week, drinking “freedom chai” and writing my ass off is a holiday tradition I could get behind.

Maybe later I’ll do something patriotic. For now, I should probably get some of that writing done.