and we'll have fun-fun-fun till your husband spills red wine all over you

Had a very good weekend, which after the week I had, was very needed. Friday night we spent in, had Indian food delivered (hurrah for living in the city) and played Scrabble. We have ourselves so loaded with activities and seeing friends (SnB, kickball, etc.) during the week that we felt we just needed a night in with each other.

Saturday was Crazy Aunt Purl's barbeque. I made my famous candy-crack brownies (named from the exclamation "oh my god, these brownies are so good, they're like crack!"). I do have to be honest that it is not my recipe: it's from a book: The Chocolate Bar, which I highly recommend. The barbeque was a lot of fun. We got to see Aunt Purl's lovely little house, and fab back yard, and even the burned out crack house! Rich actually said, "this is such a nice neighborhood; you'd never think there would be a crack house here." Which you wouldn't. But to read more about the crazy kissin'cousin crackheads, read this.

We had to leave the barbeque early to make it out to Cinespia to meet assorted kickball/SnB friends. The film was "Some Like it Hot," which is zany Marilyn at her best. Everything was going nicely, different groups of friends were mingling, and then the junebugs arrived.

Junebugs. In Los Angeles.

Let me state for the record that junebugs are one of the reasons I avoid Kingsburg (Rich's hometown, about 20 minutes south of Fresno) from Memorial Day to Labor Day. These brown beetles are about the size of your thumbnail fly and often hiss. I hate junebugs.

Up until Saturday, the only place I've ever seen junebugs is in Kingsburg. But apparently, they like cemetaries, too. So, at about 8:15 p.m., they start their mating ritual, which involves thousands of them flying around trying to get a little lovin'. Unfortunately, they seem to like landing in hair. I'd like to think I maintained my composure, mostly. It took self-control of steel not to go running to the hills, but I tried to look sane to the friends of friends (the real friends know me too well to be fooled).

But I was not the only person ill at ease with the bugginess. Richard, with his cherubic locks, was also freaking out when the junebugs would go for his hair. Unfortunately for me, he forgot he had a big yellow plastic party cup filled with red wine in his hand when he freaked out. The wine went all over me, my cute turquoise tank top, and, most heartbreakingly, my so-brand-new-I-just-finished-sewing-it-this-afternoon tiered prairie skirt. Red wine. I almost cried. But I'd had enough wine not to get overly agitated.

Lucky for Rich, the material was very patterned, a swirl of flowers and geometric shapes in pinks, blues & greens. After pre-treating it and then washing it, the skirt was fine (tha tank top, not so much, but it was a $10 Old Navy one, so I wasn't so worried).

Sunday was fun. We went & saw "I Am My Own Wife" (2004 Tony award winner for best play & best actor and 2004 Pulitizer Prize winner for best play) at the Wadsworth. So good. It's the true story of a transvestite who survives the Nazis and the Communists in East Germany. I highly recommend it. After we came home (we went to see a 2 p.m. matinee. We were the youngest people there by at least 30 years. There was actually a tour bus from Palm Springs that brough retirees in. Boy, are old gay men grouchy), Rich took a good long nap and I worked on the shrug. It's supposed to me in a modified moss stitch, but I must have dropped a stitch somewhere (probably at Cinespia with all the red wine), so I had 6 rows of 1x1 ribbing. If this were a crochet piece, I'd rip it out, but it's knitting (which is not my strong point), the yarn is so busy, it's hard to see the pattern anyway, and it's a birthday gift (needs to be completed before I leave for Lake Tahoe on July1) for a non-knitter (she'll probably never notice the mistakes).

As my SnB leaders, Shannita & Faith, would say, "There are no mistakes, only design elements."