u/kevin_church

First of all: I like the Fourth of July. It's my in-laws' wedding anniversary (this year is #50 for them!) and there's usually a good barbecue or picnic to be had. It's nice to celebrate what America came from and what it can be.

But we have to knock it off or at least restrain the hell out of ourselves when it comes to the personal arsenals that started going off on Monday and probably won't fully end until until mid-July because everyone stocked the hell up at Sam's Club and those tents that have become fixtures across the city. (Yes, that's an ugly sentence. Deal with it.)

Before you try to explode the entire sky this year, I want you to think about:

• The dogs. Every single year, the lost-dog posts start rolling in on the morning of the 5th. That's not a coincidence. A firework next door is, to a dog, the sky cracking open for no reason it can understand, and a scared dog bolts. Our Griff has spent the last couple of Fourths wedged in our shower, shaking, and he's one of the lucky ones with a fence and a chip. (And some tranquilizers from the folks at Zia Vet Clinic.) A lot of dogs end up at the shelter. Some of them end up in the road.
• The vets. There's a lot of them around here and for someone carrying (maybe undiagnosed) PTSD from a deployment, a string of explosions after dark triggers their nervous system and they're yanked back somewhere they've spent years trying to leave. If you know one and want to celebrate with booms, a heads up, or just knocking it off at a reasonable hour, goes a long way.
• The folks with sensory issues. For a lot of autistic kids and adults, fireworks are instantly traumatizing and it can take days for them to feel normal again. Yes, there's headphones and sensory devices, but they can't be expected to wear them 24/7 all through the first half of the July.

Finally, and I can't believe I have to mention this to people who live in the desert with me, but we live in the goddamn desert. One spark in the wrong arroyo can become a very bad night for a whole neighborhood. Despite the way our local police don't seem to enforce it, aerial fireworks are already illegal inside city limits, whether or not drought conditions officially exist.

The valley does not need our help catching fire.

So here's my whole ask, and despite some of the comments I'm going to see, it's not "don't celebrate the Fourth and let the socialists shit all over your freedom."

• Go to the free show at NMSU. Let the pros handle the aerial stuff.
• If you just have to do your own, stick to legal "safe and sane" fireworks, on pavement, with a hose or a bucket right there.
• Give your neighbors a warning, especially if you know there's a dog, a vet, or a kid nearby.
• Wrap it up at a decent hour. Midnight mortars three nights running is how you become the villain of the subdivision.

That's it. Have a great Fourth, eat too much, hang out with your friends and family, go watch professionals blow shit up.

ETA: Thanks to everyone telling me to go to Facebook and see how "the general population" would react to this. It's very helpful! /s

So, my (very smart) wife and I (a complete dummy) thought we could manage to paint and replace some interior doors over the holiday weekend.

This was not the case.

Is there anyone with a local handyman they trust for this kind of thing? It's not going to be worth it to the big licensed and bonded places, I imagine. We have the doors and will be installing them ourselves once they're painted — we just need them trimmed and to have spaces for the hinges mortised out.

I've searched and searched, I've reached out to Nothing support, but no joy so far. Does anyone have a fix for the Nothing X app not synching all the activity from the watch's records? I've had three days of workouts vanish in the last week and dammit, I need the validation.

ETA: Thanks, everyone! We're going with Zia but I appreciate all the suggestions!

Our vet retired earlier this year and it's time for our three small dogs to get their annual checkups, shots, etc. Anyone have any recommendations for veterinarians accepting new patients right now? The last place I was given just put me on a waiting list.

Obligatory pup tax:

https://preview.redd.it/7e3t6z3ceqzg1.jpg?width=1282&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=04bfdd2a8f20958e025e7ce5a46be305a51c0846