I've decided something kind of radical, even though it is not very radical for me, it might be for another. Last night down at the gardens watching the fireworks, I felt exhausted and spent. I sat in my father's nylon chair, having stepped in dog shit for the 3rd time running back and forth barefoot between people to make sure the children were comfortable and safe, and that the adults were content and happy. I was with people, my dad, my sister and her kids and their kids, my family, some neighbors and their children... and sometimes, there are times, when you are with people where you feel you are with them, and the conversation flows like a thick river where you may be swirling alone in your own raft, but you are still all in the same place, bumping each other, and the laughter or the sadness is mutual, and the space is shared.

But last night, it was like being in a large hollow auditorium where there is a chill that is in those places that is never explainable, and nothing can be understood because of the acoustics so conversation is strained, and there is always one certain someone running the show like a chicken with her head cut off, and each of the other persons sitting stoically in his or her own assigned foldable aluminum chair with the words "ENTERTAIN ME" superimposed on their foreheads.

The huge bursts of the fireworks display only looked obscene to me, too extreme and too loud, too much. I thought to myself the headline in the local paper "The biggest and brightest show in town history" and then thinking to myself, "It'll just set their sights too high for next year. They will come to always expect this kind of show and when it doesn't happen they will mutter with dissatisfaction, feeling gypped even, 'Remember that show in 2006.... Now that was a fireworks show...'"

All I could think when I came home was, "Lord, let these people pile into their cars, wave goodbye, and with your swift divinely kick, please skeddddle them out of my neighborhood."

Oh, I could rip my skin off with the feeling I have been courting the devil who wants me to belong to them. No, no, I tell him, you scoundrel, you're not going to fool me into thinking I should be their prank monkey; but then, I suffer so when the brownies are not cut uniformly enough, or the toilet might not be clean enough when they use it. Or I might not be forever the wonderful aunt, sister, daughter I know they need and wish for... But it is all too much. It's too big and the payoff is dismal. All I see of it is leftover on the front porch this morning, the garbage of the mess they make and leave and I wake to the afterwards, to sweep away alone.

So here is the plan, my radical proposal. I read that Richard Brautigan once, in a drunken stupor, burned all of his phones in his fireplace at his ranch in Montana. BINGO, I thought to myself. I seriously considered cutting the cord that runs along side the house that makes that bird chirp in it's cage once too often during the day.

Instead though, I know we have been blessed with off switches in our generation. It's not quite as cool as the drama ritual of burning or cutting, but it is quite effective. The phones will be OFF.

And I will hide the remotes. Yes, the children will be able to turn the televisions on at the source, but they won't. Without the sweet feel of the remote to caress under their tiny fingers, it will keep the blasted thing at bay.

And you my pet, my lovely, my darling black window to the world, I will put you away in the back of my closet and there you can sit in a stasis. Turning you off to a silent coma, you're breathing machine disengaged as I detach you from the thing that brings you life.

Yes, I will read only novels and poetry, eat well, drink water, walk or ride bikes to places, and spend 3 summer days with a toe in the water, lying on my back, making the clouds into images that inspire my soul to deflate it from it's belching, gassy bloat of TOO MUCH.

Have an average, quiet, mundane nothing-to-write-home-about rest of the week everyone.