it's been a wild past few days, so i'm just going to post the photos with brief descriptions of what we've been up to.

i'd seen a news story for some weird specials that the general manager at the rancho bernardo inn has been posting on his twitter account. one of them was his survivor special which basically let you reduce the rate of your hotel room by every luxury you were willing to give up...all the way down to no lights, no AC/heat, no BED...for $19. i recruited l and t to join us on our indoor camping adventure. we packed up our motorcycles as a trial run for motorcycle camping, and rode the whopping 5 miles over to the resort.

this was NOT roughing it. sure, there were no lights in the main room, but there was still a light in the closet and a heat lamp in the bathroom. sure, there were no towels or shampoo, but there was still a flat screen tv and a private patio overlooking the pool. sure, there was no regular bed, but there was still a pull-out sofa bed! there was even toilet paper in the bathroom!.

we got dinner off the resort, but came back in time to enjoy plenty of time in the hot tub with the beers that jeff had so thoughtfully packed over for us on the vespa.

the next morning, we enjoyed breakfast overlooking the golf course, and then t led us on the tour of the fountains all around. it was silly, but you know...we had to get our $19 worth. ha ha ha. afterwards, we packed up the bikes and rode home.

our real estate agent (aka, ben's mom) invited us to join her and some of her associates at the annual Louisiana State University Alumni crawfish boil.

all-you-can-drink beer and a gigantic box of crawfish, corn, and potatoes.

there was waaaaaayyy too much beer and food available for us.

some of our real estate agent's other clients happened to be friends of ours, which made the event even better. jeff was definitely suffering by the time we headed home in the afternoon. poor guy.

what better way to celebrate memorial day than with guns and meat? greg and i both picked up shiny new red ryder BB guns from walmart.

l & t invited us over to shoot BB guns and eat way too much good food. we are totally proud to be Americans.

the day still isn't over. we've got people headed over to sit in our 80s-fantastic hot tub that jeff totally cleaned and purged of any remnants of the previous owners. and we'll probably eat and drink some more.

it's been a packed weekend, and just a steady reminder that summer is upon us. hooray!

camilles (9:31pm, 5.25.09)

jeff is home, safe and sound, and fast asleep in his own, snuggly bed. he crawled into bed right around 9pm and did his best to convince me that it was bedtime for me, too, but i knew that i am still wide awake, while he'd already had 1.5 friday, the 15ths.

it's amazing how he manages this around the world travel, but he's a trooper, and a sweetie on top of it. he brought back some yummy looking candy and cookies for me.

this weekend will be another busy one, full of chores and disneyland and friends and rock band.

our favorite bar down the street (literally down the street, like less than a 10 minute walk, how cool is that?) has instituted a rock band night on mondays. we think we'd probably blow the competition away. i mean...it IS poway. how many people over 21 in poway are rock band experts like we are? ha ha ha.

camilles (9:31pm, 5.15.09)

seriously...as summer gets closer and the days get longer, the time spent at work seems to stretch out for an eternity.

but, inevitably, the day is over and i'm back at home, and i know that i only have to make it through 3 more nights before jeff gets home. then 2. now 1.

when i got home today and began the usual routine of watering all my veggies, imagine my delight to see my lemon cucumber was bursting with flowers! yesterday, i was just guessing that it might be threatening to bloom, and today it was a sea of yellow. there is also evidence of at least one pear tomato growing, and i'm sure plenty more to follow.

this weekend i need to transplant the seedlings that i've been trying to toughen up with full days out in the open. i've got a couple more tomato plants, bell pepper, a (very sad looking) eggplant, and a bean seedling. the tomatoes and bean should survive, but the bell pepper and eggplant...well, now, let's just say i'm worried if a slug decides to munch on either one.

i'm not wearing shades because i think i'm too cool for this photo. i was just wanting to get a photo of my hair in the sun, and it was too bright.

it's looking kind of greasy and flat (it is!), and you can only see a glimpse of the color, but it's there.

camilles (8:23pm, 5.14.09)

as i was out front watering the lawn, a couple of cars came driving slowly past.

i tend to make an effort to avoid eye contact with strangers, but i couldn't help but notice the occupants of both cars staring as they passed.

a house went up for sale a few doors down over the weekend. jeff and i visited the open house, just to reassure ourselves that our house was, in fact, nicer (and it is).

the people driving by must have been checking it out.

and when they saw me out front in the middle of the crusty lawn, holding a leaky hose, in my old man plaid shorts and skull and crossbones t-shirt, purple and blue hair catching the fading rays of the sunset, i wonder if they thought "that just might be the crazy neighbor on this street...".

and i wonder if their agent was sad that i couldn't have stayed in the backyard for a few more minutes.

:)

camilles (8:06pm, 5.13.09)

every house has one, right? the creepy side yard that nobody ever has any real reason to ever go into?

my house as a kid in LA had one. my bedroom looked out into it. there was a creepy wood pile that was probably full of black widows. the only cool thing i ever saw in the creepy side yard was when a stray cat had kittens under the shed that was at the entrance to the creepy side yard, and when the kittens got big enough to wander out on their own, they played on the wood pile.

our new house has a creepy side yard. it even has a pointless gate blocking it off. well, i suppose it was probably used as a dog run at some point. the previous owner probably had a pitbull.

see what i'm talking about? creepy! it's like the haunted space that has been forgotten. perfectly good space, but too dark to be good for growing plants. instead, it makes a good local landfill.

what is this roll of vinyl? it's very big and yellow, and covered with spiderwebs. i'm tempted to list it on craigslist and see if somebody will just take it away.

did i mention that when we moved in, we only had 2 semi-functioning window screens? all the rest of the windows were naked, so if you opened it, buggies were able to fly in and out as they saw fit. we felt pretty fancy when we paid our cash and got screens installed on all the windows and a sliding screen door in the kitchen.

anyway, we located one of the missing screens out here. i don't think it could have been saved.

we may actually find some use for the random roofing material that was shoved back into the corner, seeing as our covered patio leaks like nobody's business. for now, this roofing paper and whatever will stay in the creepy side yard with the black widows and ghosts that live in it.

that's a giant rock in the back left corner, up against the fence. the (alleged) pitbull that lived in the side yard must have been trying to escape under the fence, so a big boulder was put in the way.

at least the neighbors' bougainvillea is pretty.

they probably planted it along their side of the fence to keep whatever evil was on our side of the yard out.

camilles (6:25pm, 5.11.09)

when i was in kindergarten, there was a little boy named danny who had a crush on me. floating back over the fuzzy memories of 1983, i seem to recall being dared to kiss him, and there were resounding boos all around when i would only kiss him on the cheek. one day on the playground, he brought me a pair of beaded heart earrings that matched a beaded heart bracelet i would wear to school every once in a while. i have no idea where he got them, but i remember being so embarassed by such a sweet gesture from my first little boyfriend.

i promptly gave them away.

you see, the earrings were for pierced ears, and my earlobes had no holes for them. (ok, and i was too embarassed to be shown such lavish attention from a boy.)

i wasn't allowed to get my ears pierced until i was 13. neither my grandma or my mom had pierced ears, so it seemed a very exotic, rebellious thing to do.

it was 1991, and i was at the peak of my dorkiness. i made my mom take me to the mall, to the store that sold gawdy gold costume jewelry called b'jangles or something. i was ready to do it.

i was 13. i was finally getting my ears pierced.

and i sat there in the chair while the lady was getting the piercing gun ready...

and i was crying.

crying, crying, and crying.

crying because i was scared.

not necessarilly because it was going to hurt, but because i was worried my mom was going to think less of me for going through with permanently altering my perfectly good earlobes.

it took me a little while after poking those holes in my ears that i realized it didn't really matter what extraneous holes i might put in myself (i followed the original two up with 3 more) or color i dyed my hair or career path i chose, that even if my mom wasn't particularly pleased with every decision i made, all i hoped for was that she could be proud of the fact that i am not afraid of being happy being the person that i am.

whatever responsible choices i make or impulsive whims i might chase, the woman i continue to blossom into got her roots uner the watchful eye of her mother.

happy mother's day, mom!

* * * * * * *

there is just a hint of hay bales behind my left shoulder in this photo. that's the fallbrook fertilizer feed store.

my regular motorcycle gang was nowhere to be found today, so i took a ride out to fallbrook (avocados, anyone?) all by myself. it's taken me almost a year of riding my motorcycle to get the confidence to ride any distance alone, but today was the day. 80 miles of cruising along, not worrying too much about crashing and maiming or killing myself on the road.

while i was riding home, i was happy to remember what it felt like to conquer a fear.

camilles (8:15pm, 5.10.09)

i'm a vivid dreamer and look forward to the adventures that my wandering mind decides to take me every night. with the exception of when i've drugged myself or am feeling sick, i usually have the good fortune of being able to recall what i dreamt about in pretty good detail.

sometimes my dreams are bad. like when i've been stressed out.

last week, i was dreaming that i was part of some sort of hiking expedition, and had been given the responsibility of being in charge of one of my coworkers. he's a real-life coworker, but in my dream, i was supposed to be showing him how to scale the side of this rocky cliff we were on. for a brief moment, i stopped concentrating on him, which is when he got too much momentum sliding down to the edge of the cliff and shot right off the side. i just sat there, listening to him screaming and screaming as he fell to his death.

i woke up in a cold sweat.

usually if my dreams are bad, i can control them and make them good. and MOST of the time, my dreams are just interesting or funny. sometimes i'll dream about being on vacation or about people that i have been wanting to see. and sometimes they are just so grounded in reality, they become odd.

last night i dreamt i was doing something in my office at work, and somebody was standing at my door talking to me. totally normal office. totally normal coworker. he had a little bit of a cold, so i reached over to the right to pluck a tissue out of the tissue box that sits on my desk, and just as i was pinching it, heard "OW!"

turns out, the location of the tissue box in my dream JUST happens to be the location of my poor husband's eye when we are lying in our real life bed...and i had just poked him in it.

fortunately i didn't do any damage, other than waking us both up. poor jeff. i'm lucky he's such a sweetie.

camilles (4:02pm, 5.9.09)

i like to cook. i don't proclaim myself to be a gourmet, but i can appreciate fresh ingredients and i enjoy putting them together in ways that taste good.

one of the perks of our new home is that we are walking distance from the saturday farmers market. jeff and i picked up some tasty-looking veggies, including the zucchini and crookneck squash in the picture. since dinner tonight was navy bean soup courtesy of a leftover easter hambone, a soup mix, and the crockpot, i was freed up to do a little experimenting when i got home from work.

after slicing and scraping the zucchinis, i chopped up the crooknecks to go into a stuffing.

sauteed a little onion, garlic, the squash, and some sliced up roasted red bell pepper in butter. while everything softened, i tore up a piece of white bread for bread crumbs.

mixed the veggies, breadcrumbs, a few tablespoons of fresh goat cheese, and a couple sprinkles of dried dill all together, and then filled the hollowed out zucchinis. set them to bake for 25 mins in a 350 degree oven.

i had enough time to go out and water the veggies i have growing in the garden (tomatoes, lemon cucumbers, sage, and basil), dump the slugs i had trapped overnight in a buried cup of beer, and refill the cup, before slathering up some sourdough with clearman's cheese spread and swapping the squash out to let the bread broil. not the most attractive spread, since everything ended up being the same color, but for the most part, it was a tasty meal.

helen arrives with a friend tomorrow to stay with us for four nights, so i'm sure we'll be busy! we are looking forward to having guests staying in our crazy little house.

camilles (7:47am, 5.4.09)

you don't often catch me promoting stuff here other than the occasional restaurant or swap meet, but i have to share how proud i am of my long-time internet friend cindy pon and her huge accomplishment of releasing a novel, silver phoenix.

this is no self-published, small deal. she got herself an agent and publisher and everything. do you know how hard that is to do?

anyway, i've never properly gushed about how excited i was for her, and how deserving she is of nothing but success on this crazy venture.

jeff and i made it out to her local book signing yesterday, and i picked up a few copies. she had quite the crowd lined up to get a chance to speak with her for a few minutes. jeff snapped a quick picture of the two of us:

now, i can't wait to read the book!

camilles (7:47am, 5.3.09)