A new kind of cookout.

*before I begin, let me tell you all that I'm wearing shades today. Its overcast, but its a tad windy out and pollen is a-flyin. I bite my lips when the wind blows because I don't want my lips to be green by the time I get to work. I do believe that if it hadn't rained every 3rd day down here, itd be tons worse and I would not have survived yesterday.*

So as Saturday was La's birthday, Friday was my friend Karina's birthday. I knew there was a reason I liked her. Sunday she had a lil cook out and I told her I'd help her get ready if I could get a ride (she lives around the corner from me). She said sure cuz she really wanted me to be there. Aw!

So after a long night in which I closed the store late and for some reason couldn't sleep, Karina calls me at 9am! She said she'd be there at 1030. That gives me an hour more to sleep. Cool. She calls me again at 930 asking if she can change the time and could I help her cook. Right there I should have known it was gonna be a new thing. You cook AT a cookout, not before, right? Unless its potato salad, and I know you make that the night before. But I was still half asleep and now faced with the task of eating and dressing in a half hour.

So I get up, get dressed, eat, and wait. In the enterim I play with my lil cousin who was crying and sick, and watch this pastor on tv with my mom and Ms Lady. She went back home today guys! I'm happy for her but I'll miss her. So anyway, 10, 1030, 11? Where's K? She literally lives around the corner! Like, she lives across the main road from me which is only 2 miles. I call and she says she's preping. She'll be there soon.... I keep playing with my lil pookie doodles.

Fast forward past the trip to walmart and to the house. We go to her house and her mom and boyfriend are in the kitchen with all kindsa meats. There's turkey eggrolls, pork of some sort in the oven, yall know I don't mess with pork so I don't know what it was, mom's starting to marinate some chicken, K's starting on fruit salad, her lil 9 year old bro is making pudding... I mean the kitchen is popping. I was in there like this is not a hamburger/ hot dog situation. Did I mention K is philipino? Yeah. So some of this stuff I'd never had and it was more like dinner than bbq. When Karina said something to me about calling a friend about burgers, mom was like "oh this is plenty!" it wasn't, we'd soon find out. There was no left overs.

So we get everything packed up, chase down the dog who got out, and hit the road. By this time its like 130.

The cookout started at 3ish. It was at this nice quiet park in lil 5 points. Lots of tennis players there, and a big pavilion which we quickly filled up. People brought kids and babies, and someone brought BB guns, which started a girl vs boy fight over the guns, and aim practice. Then people started taking leftover buns in a bag and smacking each other with them, which led to a busted bag and bread everywhere... Which was around the time my camera died... Bah.

The food was too good. I had some sort of Asian noodles with veggies, the aforementioned turkey eggrolls with this sweet chili sauce, and of course potato salad. Flan! I had flan and it was pretty good. And meat on s stick, which people just kept calling meat on a stick as a sophomoric joke, and because they weren't sure what kind of meat it was. And of course there was joking and riding on people. My bff Bre made jokes about the things his girlfriend ate when she lived in Vietnam, and the phrase "uncle Paul was really yummy" came up. We even at one point came out with "guess what race I am," because if you looked at everyone you'd just be like, its a bunch of Asians, but there was Laos, Cambodia, Japan, Hawaii, and China, in addition to the other races mentioned earlier. So suffice it to say me and the white girl who were playing with this crowd of people were like, boy, we're boring and regular as a mug. Oh and there were 2 other Joys there too. THAT was fun *sarcasm*. Bre's lil brother kept saying, "Joy! Not, you, you! Not you, you! Ha ha ha!"

I had some deep convos too with my friend who just had a baby and another new mom who had the cutest lil baby. He had on a lil shirt that said "hi, I'm new here." melt! But yeah they started talking about child birth and making me wanna close my legs forever. Then there was talk of one friend who is separated from her husband, and that was just too deep for me at a cookout.

It got dusk and we the crowd dwindled from 40 to about 12. Slim was there, and his girlfriend Candi was so funny! She told us about her first fight with a girl a foot taller than her. I can't recreate the story with just words, but it was so funny. There was talk of body slams and how the girl came running from across the CLUB at her, with shoes in hand. I told them how Kesi said at the baseball game Asians are prettier in the face than me, and they said they were gonna beat him up, lol. I really feel like we'd still be out there talking if we had nothing to do. And if it didn't get really cold out.

So that was my Sunday. Now I'm considering having a cookout. If it was as much fun as that one...
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