Happy Independence Day

I'm not sure when I started hating holidays, and I truly wish I didn't.

It's mostly my fault, as my second ex-wife would say. I'm incapable of planning ahead, when it comes to social engagements, and I wonder why that is.

No doubt part of it is the lingering effects of my strange, sickly childhood, once we'd moved from (socially rich) Royal Oak to (socially barren) Bay City.

I missed a chunk of my childhood completely. Lying in bed for months, with no friends and no physical activity.

Sometimes, I fear I will recreate that realty in my old age.

Then again, as I move around the city, I realize I am still blessed with good health and physical stamina, when many others my age are bent, broken or supine.

Life, at times, is a battle requiring endurance.

Then again, it is a privilege, and a joy of overwhelming proportions.

That is how I feel here today, sitting alone in this dreary flat, dreading my upcoming audit, bereft of company -- again, of my own doing.

So the boys stayed here last night. We had a plan to escape the crowds and noise and go to a movie later today. That sounded like a perfectly good way to escape the fireworks to me.

But their Mom had a different plan, so they are with her instead, out at a lovely beach far north of here. Her plan is the healthier one, the better one. But I do worry about that sprained right ankle on our soccer player.

He still is limping when he walks, and I wonder whether a day at the beach will help him be practice and game ready by this weekend.

That's one of my problems -- I worry too much. Especially about the future.

After all, I have no control over how fast his ankle heals. I've iced it and warmed it, and made him elevate it and given him Ibuprofen. I've told him what a lovely new friend told me, which is he should practice using his ankle in warm water to "write out" the ABC's -- an exercise that ensures every last ligament and muscle gets a workout.

But that ankle will get better when it's ready to get better.

As for my audit, I can't control whether I'll get a total idiot or a reasonable person showing up at my door next Monday morning. This is a "field audit," so the IRS is invading my personal space, even though I've never taken a home office deduction (mainly because my accountant said that often triggers an audit.)

I don't want to be audited. It scares me. Not because I cheated on my taxes; I didn't. But I can't disprove a negative. I've managed to pull together most of the records proving my innocence, but others were lost in those laundry room floods, the first of which happened when I was on a business trip to Tucson the very year they are auditing me for -- 2009.

That trip was when I saw my first Roadrunner. These are amazing creatures. They race along upright as if they are New York City businessmen with briefcases late for a meeting.

Most of us always seem to be racing somewhere or another. We rarely stop to reflect on what, if anything, our lives mean collectively.

I've been trying to get my mind around all of the new "collaborative consumption" startups I write about for 7x7.com.

A decade ago I was the founding editor of 7x7 Magazine. That was a different era, there was no Facebook yet, and no iPhone.

Facebook has changed things in a bad way, I fear, but iPhones may ultimately be changing things in a better way.

Having "virtual" friends is nice, I suppose. My ex-girlfriend and I are Facebook "friends" but we never meet, never talk, and never share anything important. Having her there is little more than a reminder of what existed between us.

I've long since stopped clicking on her profile. She's as lost to me as a person who died.

Death is a difficult subject for all of us. Not only do we spend much of our time living in denial of the certainty of our inevitable end, the fear of dying ironically often causes us to take less risks while we are still alive.

Physically, I'm not much of a risk-taker. Although at the moments I've chosen to push myself, I've grown and developed in ways I previously could not have imagined.

Socially, taking risks has been even more challenging, though when I've done it, even better things have happened.

It goes on and on, this line of thinking. Everything is connected to everything else. That is why I am an environmentalist.

Or maybe I'm just crazy.

The plums droop lazily on our backyard tree. They are so richly sweet and tart, much like a sexy woman wanting to seduce a new man.

I stand out there, waiting expectantly. The breeze is steady, sometimes insistent. The winds seems to be saying to me that a treat will be yours, if only you are patient.

Why should I be patient at my age?

Because death has not yet been my fate, perhaps. I am alive. And as much as I may hate fireworks, my neighbors love them.

And so this Independence Day, for me, will be an endurance test. Listening to the bombs going off around me, set by people celebrating something or another.

I celebrate words and stories. That is all I have to say about the subject (for now), but oh boy, those plums sure are juicy!