we drove out 47 miles into the desert to attend another family party. i say we went to the hot version of the ghetto. on the way, we stopped to visit with an old friend of twiddle thumbs's for about an hour. they have known each other since jr. high school. i've heard a lot about this guy but never met him and he got married and divorced on my birthday, so it was a bit weird. we brought pongo along and dresed him up in a bow tie--he was a hit! then we were off to the party.

i dressed up to make a good impression ;)

pongo made this silly face the whole drive down to the party!

pongo was a hit at the party as well. i felt even more out of place at this party because it was at twiddle thumbs's brother's in-laws. a stereotype is that black people have excellent bbqs and this sure looked like it, only i'm vegan now. it was hard for me too look at all the chickens on the grill without picturing that they were once alive. the only thing i could eat was the fruit salad. it was good though.

on the drive back, both pongo and twiddle thumbs fell asleep. i couldn't resist to take a picture. when we got back to the house and it turns out that i had done too good of a job locking the door. backtrack to when we left the house: as soon as we started driving away, twiddle thumbs wanted a towel because she didn't want pongo directly on her lap. fine, i put the car in reverse and headed back towards the house. i went in and grabbed a towel. i locked the doors. one of the locks wouldn't lock via key outside of the house, so i used my hand to turn the lock from the inside of the house. big mistake! i did this because i didn't want to be accused of not locking the doors. we walked to the back yard and the doors wouldn't open with a key. they're really tough to turn from inside of the house by hand and i thought forcing the key would break the key. all the windows were closed except for 2 in the den, but they were high up and there's nothing to step on once you get inside the house. one window screen looked like it had been opened before, but i just couldn't open it. twiddle thumbs phoned her sister to see if there were any more keys. i knew that there were no more keys, that it was all up to me to get through the window. i tried the screen again, and kept trying until i removed it. luckily, there was a bbq right next to the window and i used it for leverage.

i was up halfway through the window, on one knee, but too big to squeeze my leg through, with nothing to support me but my knee on the window ledge. the ledge was poorly made and it was starting to break. if i fell face first into the den, i would probably get fucked up but i'd be inside. if i fell back outside, i don't think i could manage to climb up again and there's no one else who could fit through. i knew jumping through now was my only chance but i was starting to get really scared. i threw my prescription sunglasses into the house so that i wouldn't crush them when i attempted to fall on my face. below me was also some musical instruments for twiddle thumbs's sister's mariachi group so i had to be careful not to land on those either! i really don't remember how i landed. i only knew i had to lift up my legs so they wouldn't get caught on the nail that was poking through the ledge. all at once i forced myself to just do it and next thing you know i was in the house, shaken but not hurt. just my knee was sore from resting on the metal grooves of the window ledge for so long. i knocked off the curtain in the process and was trying to get it back up but was having trouble because i was so shaken. i could still hear twiddle thumbs on the phone and decided to run to the front door so that no one would come over in a panic.

after all that, twiddle thumbs told me that her dad goes through the window all the time. great! at least her family won't think it was all my fault that the window ledge is splitting.

after resting for awhile, we decided not to go with our original plans of watching fireworks from the beach in marina del rey because we were too heat exhausted to drive out to a place we were not familiar with. i called my mom and she and her boyfriend were already at the queen mary to watch the fireworks and it wasn't even 7pm. we decided to go to downtown disney and watch the disneyland fireworks display. it was soooo crowded there. i cannot deal with LA holiday crowds. it was very hot. i was pissy. so we had a drink from jamba juice which i learned was not vegan, oh well. i had a shot of wheatgrass too. then we watched the crappy fireworks display from the parking structure. no one really knew where was the best place to view the fireworks. once the fireworks started, it was pretty funny to watch the stampede of families run from one side of the parking structure to the other. i wonder how many children were trampled.

pongo decided to make a bed out of the towel

then he redid his bed--careful, there's a dog in there!