the tale of the girl in the middle

i simply cannot get over the weather here. my brain and calendar on the wall both seem to agree that it's january. but not like any january i've ever seen! my phone call with leah last night was interrupted by what was probably an ice-and-snow-encrusted tree branch falling on the telephone wires somewhere in mission, bc. that's the january that i know. down here, it's freakish. now that the weather has gotten all of the rain it can muster out of it's system, it has decided that winter should be over, and spring should get a head start. on my vigorous, guilt induced walk the other day, i was shocked to see blossoms on the fruit trees. flowers are sprouting up everywhere, and it is actually warm out there. on saturday, girls clad in bikini tops were on the street, holding up signs for a carwash. i am still such a foreigner.

josh and i went to a wedding over the weekend, with friends of ours, mike and sara. the wedding took place 2 hours east of here, kind of in the middle of the desert. i now feel slightly sorry for posting a previous blog on how small of a town ramona is. ramona IS NOT a small town! holtville is. so we're pretty much driving through the desert, with nothing to see but the occasional tumbleweed for miles. finally, in the distance, we spot clumps of palm trees amidst houses. it looked rather like what you would picture in your head when you hear the words, desert oasis. we had booked a room for the night at the barbara worth resort, which was smack dab in the middle of the oasis. although, on closer inspection, we found that there wasn't much that was oasis-like about this so-called resort.

once we had checked in and got the key to our room, the 4 of us lugged all of our bags to it, entered, and just stood there and laughed. in the center of our tiny room stood one, solitary king sized bed. apparently, they had run out of rooms with 2 queens. there were suspicious looking holes in the wall, and when the lamp on the desk was moved so we could see the tv better, we discovered that it had been placed there to hide a hole in the desk! the wedding was quite beautiful. sara and i both wore our little black dresses and sipped pina coladas while listening to the cheesiest dj music possible. it was such a relief to finally sit back and watch everyone else scramble to catch the bouquet. before going back to our room, i managed to drag josh onto the dance floor and slowly sway with him to the music, for the first time since our wedding (he absolutely detests dancing, so this was huge!)

the outdoor jacuzzi remained the temperature of a cold bath for the entire 20 minutes that we could handle sitting in it, so, after hot showers, we got all cozy in the bed. mike graciously offered to sleep on a cot, which made me the lucky girl in the middle of the bed. i've never been too claustaphobic, but after a sleepless night sandwiched between sara's butt against my thigh and josh's elbow poking my ribs, i seriously felt the urge to thrash about and yell, "STOP TOUCHING ME!" instead, i marveled at how quickly mike breathes when he is asleep, and kept trying to tug the blankets away from sara who was stealing them from my husband.

all in all, it was a fun weekend, but josh and i agreed last night, as we pulled large amounts of blanket up to our chins, that 2 people in a california king sized bed, is definitely the way to go.

~heidi, snug as a bug