On the 4th Eyenie, my friend since elementary school(!) and recent LA immigrant, came down to the South Bay to share in the patriotic spirit.
When you're fifteen everything looks like it's just happening to you.
Bound by their genetic inability to beat me at Clue.


I think everyone was a little bit taken with Eyenie, and afterwards they gave me a lot of crap for hoarding her all night. Chris's cousin Nicole said it best: "I know you don’t have a lot of close friends, but jeeze you gotta talk on the phone more often, or something."
Franco! How I love Franco! His folks speak mainly Spanish to him and the rest of the family speaks mainly English to him and consequently just runs around saying gibberish that nobody can understand. But with feeling! Here he just enjoyed a little strawberry shortcake.

Three drinks. Two girls?
Eyenie and Chris always take really cute pictures together. She inspires him to be a little goofy, I think.
That's Chris's sister Sheryl on the left and his aunt Martha on the right. Vargas women are known for their feistiness..
So I got in trouble because when Eyenie arrived I dragged her down the block to crouch in the shrubs with me and slurp margaritas while we reminisced. And while we were gone everyone cooked dinner, but nobody knew how to cook the portobello mushrooms and zucchinis that I prepared, so they were made after everything else and the only folks who ate them were Eyenie and me, which is a shame kind of, because I overcooked them, and they weren't really as good as they could have been, but Eyenie like a true friend joined supported me during my guilt and culpability by eating the charred portabellos.

That girl knows how to work military chic.
This photo has a sort of "morning after" quality, don't you think?