Yesterday evening, hops and i went to a very nice garden party at the home of my (i think i've got this right now) cousin once removed. Oh heck, the Mexicans and the Indians really have a better system, if we were both from Mexico he'd just be my cousin. Of course, then he'd be my cousin with swine flu, but I digress.
To begin again: my mother's cousin, who lives within 30 minutes of me, threw a fabulous garden party and invited me. Hops and I attended.
Right off the bat it was clear that my second cousin (or whatever) really knows how to party: they were serving Rombauer chardonnay, which is our favorite chard so far (though we haven't given many chardonnays a fair shake). Also, tasty pinot noir, a bar tender, a really nice spread of cheeses, cold cuts, roasted veggies, and the like -- which I didn't get to graze much of because I found myself stuck in the unfashionable end of the backyard, but I'll get to that.
My cousin and his wife are lawyers, and most of the attendees at the party were lawyers who wanted to talk to other lawyers about lawyer stuff -- or about gardening, since this was a garden party. I am interested in and knowledgeable about many things, but lawyering and gardening really aren't among my interests. But the weather turned nice for the party, the view from their yard is unbelievable, and the pinot noir and mini-sangwiches were free, so i was pretty happy.
we found ourselves in the lower part of hte back yard, on the astroturf, at a little table, when a woman approached and struck up a conversation. she turned out to be my second cousin once-removed's across the street neighbor. And to my great relief, she admitted she was not a lawyer. Soon enough, her husband arrived, and was a lawyer. I pointed out that I had thought I was going to find two people at the party who weren't lawyers, and hops said that this couple was two people who weren't lawyers, which is technically true, which we all know is the very best kind of true.
We spent the next several hours chatting with these folks, and with my cousin's son (i give up trying to name the relation) who i like to pretend is near my age, because he's under 30. i feel bad that i haven't spent more time with my bay area relatives -- it's been nearly 2 years since we've seen these folks. In any case, that's something for me to work in in days coming.
Our new friends from across my cousin's street were/are super friendly. They (well, she) wanted us to come see their backyard, which was not nearly so well arranged as my cousin's, but which afforded a wonderful view in the opposite direction. Eventually, as the party officially came to a close, the wife went back to her house, got out on her balcony, and shouted for us to come over. Ha! So we did.
In their back yard, they had a view of the rolling oakland hills (whereas my cousins have a view of pretty much the entirety of san francisco, marin, the golden gate, and its copious fog -- a view that must be seen to be believed). they also had two things (technically four) that my cousins do not have: one dog and three chickens. We got a tour of the nether regions of the backyard, which included a grassy area. the grass was transplanted from my cousins' yard when the cousin removed his grass to put in astroturf.
now, i had worn to this party my vibram fivefingers, because i'm stubborn and those are teh only shoes i'm going to wear from now on, unless it's raining heavily (people think they are "water shoes" and i guess they are but that doesn't mean they're waterproof) which it wasn't. i also wore shorts because again, i'm stubborn, i get uncomfortable in long pants, and i really only have one pair of long pants to my name, and they were dirty. so there i was in my water shoes, so called, my shorts, in tall grass, surrounded by mosquitos. today, i have at least 6 giant raised bites on my right leg, you know, all over the stunningly painful running muscles, plus a good number of bites on my left calf, and a whopper on my right forearm. i think i narrowly escaped head bites.
i could not sleep last night on account of the itching. sigh.
the friendly neighbors gave us 3 eggs from their 3 chickens (1 and a half chickens lay 1 and a half eggs in 1 and a half days, they told us, then asked us: how many days does it take for 1 chicken to lay an egg? (they seemed impressed that we knew the answer. that's an old one!)) and i scrambled them up this morning. tasty, fresh eggs, even though hops sat on them when she got in the car. each of the eggs had the chicken's name penciled on it (so awesome!) and each of the egg shells was a totally different color -- including one that was decidedly green.
after dropping our eggs off in the car (where they would later be sat upon by hops, in case you missed that detail the first time i mentioned it), we went back to say our farewells to my cousins, and second cousins, and my once-removeds.
oh: an aside: one of the things that was really odd last night was being asked repeatedly: "how do you know the Flanders?" (where "Flanders" is an anonymity-preserving stand-in for the last name of my cousins). "Flanders" also happens to be my mother's maiden name, and my grandparent's last name, and generally, not a name that i hear bandied about and so correctly pronounced as i did frequently last night. my reply was, "i am one!", after which i had to try to explain the family tree, which led me to think i shouldn't use this as my reply, but then i kept on forgetting that because it was really a good answer to the question even if it was difficult to justify and people kept on walking off before i was done charting the tree. Even our friends the across-the-streeters kept hilariously referring to my cousin as my father's cousin, though i corrected them dozens of times. Har!
By this time we were well past the "everyone leave" hour so we finally had a chance to chat with both my cousin and his wife. she said that as one gets older they feel the need to reach out more to family, which really concerned me, because, as i said, i was feeling exactly that need, and logically that meant i was getting older. sigh.
in all, we had a great time, and i found out that she might read this blog, which frightens me greatly, because i sometimes use naughty words which, though my mother also reads this blog, i'm sure she mentally blocks out to maintain a nice mental image of me, whereas my cousin's wife probably just thinks i'm a foul-mouthed lout, which, to be fair, isn't far from the truth. but i'm a foul-mouthed lout who runs barefoot, so it all kind of balances out.
i suspect and hope we'll be seeing more of my bay area familiespeople. i suspect because my cousin's wife said she'd be rustling us all together, and i hope because i reckon i'll do it if she doesn't, on account of i really ought to.
but for now, i've got to go get some calamine lotion for my legs. argh.
