It still wasn't as scary as when the creepy girl crawled out of the TV at the end of The Ring

Allow me to sum up my weekend in fifteen words or fewer: wind, wind, friends, wine, cookies, wind, chips, wine, wind, boat, board games, wine, wind, wind.

In case you didn't get that, it was windy. "Too chilly to jump in the lake" windy. "Is that tree going to fall on us?" windy. Tragically, "no campfire tonight" windy. At one point I asked no one in particular how it could be so dang windy for so dang long, and although logically I agree with the friend who replied that surely there isn't a finite amount of wind in this world, I still think that if the weather was going to be like that, the Weather.com prediction for the weekend should have said, "Dust Bowl. Minus the dust. No campfires for you, ya hear?"

Despite the less-than-ideal-for-summer-cabining weather, however, we all had a lovely time. As usual, we had a fantastic spread of both sweet and savory treats, and as usual, I ate entirely too many of them. I got a bit of color on my pasty white self, and my team kicked some proverbial ass in Taboo. I even found a few quiet moments to steal away with my vampire book. All in all, thumbs up on the weekend, I'd say.

Speaking of the crazy vampire book, I was reminded this weekend that, despite the number of grown women who are obsessed with this series, Twilight was, in fact, written for children. How do I know this? Because we had children with us at the cabin, and their twelve-year-old eyes lit up when they saw me pull my book from my bag.

"You're reading TWILIGHT?!?" my friend's daughter and her best friend exclaimed. "Do you like it?? Oooh, it is SOOOO GOOD!!!"

I'm not sure if I was suddenly the coolest grown-up at the cabin or the strangest one, but both girls excitedly gushed to me about how good the sequels are and how poorly cast they think the upcoming movie version is. (Edward is not nearly attractive enough, it seems.) They asked me how far I was in the book, and when I explained that Edward had recently told Bella that she could tell her friends they were secretly dating, both girls swooned with the memory of it all.

I would like to think my relating to the current obsessions of preteens ends there, but last night, flipping through the channels while I ate my dinner, I stumbled across the opening credits of the Disney Channel's exclusive Jonas Brothers movie Camp Rock (something else we heard a lot about this weekend) and I will admit, I watched the whole damn thing. If it redeems myself any, I didn't enjoy it. Seriously, it's no High School Musical, folks. But I'm just going to step right out of this hole before I dig any deeper, OK?

On an entirely different note from an entirely not-G-rated film, how many of you have any recollection of The Serpent and the Rainbow? I brought that one up during a late-night conversation about the scariest movies we've ever seen, but the truth is, I don't really recall if it was inordinately scary or if I just saw it at a particularly fragile age. I've always been a big old 'fraidy cat who could find horror in a bowl of oatmeal, so it wouldn't surprise me if the movie wasn't nearly as scary as I remember. In fact, despite how much it traumatized me, I really don't remember very many details. When I read the plot summary at IMDB, in fact, the story didn't even sound familiar at all. So tell me. Was The Serpent and the Rainbow the movie in which some sinister scary man planted a bug larva in a woman's makeup compact and it later grew under her skin, beneath a big nasty red welt, which finally broke open to allow hundreds of tiny spiders to crawl out? Does that ring a bell to any of you? Because that horrifying scene has been embedded in my brain for 20 years now (and I'm sorry if it's now embedded in yours), so I really ought to know from whence it came. Also, I ought to know that something like that is highly improbable in real life, and therefore when I feel the beginnings of a zit high on my cheek bone (an area typically not at all prone to acne), I should tell myself confidently that the sensitive red spot IS, in fact, just a zit, and no swarm of spiders is going to crawl out of my skin later this week. I mean, not that I'd ever think such a thing. Particularly not today. Nope, not me. (If you'll excuse me, I have to examine my cheek in the mirror once more.)




P.S. Are you all ready for Blog Share 3.0? I am not, since I've yet to write a single word of my anonypost, but ready or not, Blog Share is this week. If it's anything like the last two, you can expect to read secrets and scandals and catharsis galore. I haven't decided which route to go yet, but I'll be hiding out somewhere on these here Interwebs come Wednesday. See you then.