I Met CAMILLA (OF CAMILLA AND DARWIN). Another DK Member Checked Off my Poop Bag List!

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

Yes, you read that correctly.  I met Camilla and Darwin when she flew to my house Friday for Labor Day weekend.  Camilla and I joined DK around the same time and I always liked her comments and advice and thought she surely must be a wise and learned grown up. Little did I know she was barely out of diapers and typing her answers from her LeapFrog Leaptop Santa brought her for Christmas.

Seriously, Camilla was a bit younger than me and when I found out I was old enough to be her older sister I was a bit taken aback. Still over the years, Camilla and I have become friends and have expressed a mutual interest in meeting each other. It finally all happened this weekend.  When I went to pick her up at the airport Friday night, Hayley tagged along with me.  Camilla and I texted back and forth about where we were meeting and she let me know when her plane had landed.  While I was waiting for her to disembark, I texted Doris (Knox and Flash) that we were waiting and I was sure she would have no trouble recognizing me, because I had let her know I was wearing something orange and I was stunning.  Doris (Miss Y’All I am just the sweetest thing) texted back that I had one out of two things correct, which made absolutely no sense to me because I really was wearing an orange shirt.  Luckily for her, I had no time to pursue the matter, because I had bigger fish to fry at the moment.

 

I don’t want to say Camilla has led a sheltered life, but after she got off the plane, we waited and waited and waited and waited for her to emerge from her gate and finally she texted that she was at gate D-25.  Because I am a wee bit older and wiser, I quickly realized that meant she was standing in the airport right where she had exited the plane and had opted not to follow the large group of passengers who had gotten off the plane with her as they quickly moved towards the exit.  I made a mental note to warn her never to take part in the “Running of the Bulls” for many reasons, not the least is I think it is barbaric and secondly, the bulls would surely get her as she stood there saying to herself, “why is everyone running in that direction?” 

I had to explain to her that security wasn’t overly fond of people who ignored signs that said, “No one allowed past checkpoint,” and busted through the secured area running and yelling, “Don’t worry about us. We are just going to meet a friend at Gate D-25.”  We knew that would have no good ending, Finally, out she came, looking exactly as I expected and I had no trouble recognizing her and when I asked her if I was as beautiful as she expected, she seemed momentarily confused as she answered, “yes, but I did not expect much.”  My biggest surprise was that she only had a backpack and a camera bag with her and I whispered to Hayley I wondered if people in Utah changed their clothes daily.  I bow to her packing skills because the same trip for me would require a minimum of two bags and a carry on.

 

Let me just say, I am not the “kiss and tell” type, but I feel I owe it to Camilla’s fans on DoodleKisses to give a full accounting of our visit and treat this blog as a bit of an expose’ and blow the lid right off of the Sandra Dee (I am sure I will have to explain that reference to Camilla) image we all have of her. 

First of all, Camilla is a bit of a rebel and likes to walk on the wild side.  She also has a sarcastic side to her and I love that in a person. We had no trouble communicating with each other except for the first day when she asked John and me how many times we had been to Intercourse and if we would be willing to go there again.  I was still tallying our total and counting out loud…..his birthday, our anniversary, Christmas, New Year's Eve, anytime I finish watching Ryan Gosling in Crazy, Stupid, Love or Adam Levine singing on The Voice, after John’s had several Rum and Cokes….and still in the process of telling her 20/20 was on that night, so things didn’t seem hopeful when she said she meant Intercourse, Pennsylvania. Once we figured out that she wasn’t just asking extremely personal questions, we assured her we would get her to Intercourse, PA.  Camilla can be a persistent little devil and even after I suggested we could skip it and just stay home and take lots of pictures of Fudge and Vern, she wouldn’t stop shouting “Intercourse”.  Finally, just to shut her up, I said that John would drive us to Intercourse and she immediately began asking if John had Blue Balls in mind, too, for another stop along the way.  John corrected her and said, “I think you mean Blue Ball, because I try and avoid Blue Balls if possible.”  If all that weren’t enough, she continually asked John if she could see his big lens and I finally jumped in and said, “Look, Camilla, this is not an episode of Big Love or Sister Wives and John’s big lens is our business.”   It makes me wonder a lot about Utah.

The other big secret that I will reveal here is, Camilla does all her photo-editing lying on the bed on her stomach.  I don’t know if this is the way she does it at home or if her devious mind devised this method as a way of preventing me from learning any of her editing secrets.  Most of the time as I was watching her do her stuff, I was praying hard that the creaks and breaking noises I was hearing and feeling were not coming from my own back. I will say this when she was helping me edit she was like the daughter that I have never had and most of you know I have two of them.  What I mean by that is she was not yelling at me, shaking her head like she was looking at the dumbest person on the face of the earth, and after a series of lightning quick clicks and one, “that’s how you do it, mom,” getting mad that I could not replicate the steps without further assistance.  No, Camilla was much, much nicer when I turned to her and said, “I have no idea what you are doing and could I just continue to send you my edits?” 

 

Despite our slight age difference, we have discovered we have a lot in common other that just the obvious….youthfulness and good looks. We could easily eat three carbs at one meal (Karen, don’t read the rest of this) and probably still order dessert. I do think, however, that my standards for food are a bit higher, especially after she told me that she was legendary at her elementary school for once eating a burrito off the floor, despite the fact that it was not even burrito day at school that day.  Thank goodness, we had chosen to take her to our fanciest restaurant, The Olive Garden, and not our second fanciest restaurant, Taco Bell, or I would have been a nervous wreck after hearing that story. After that, I was also very careful to sweep up the floor after lunch and made sure to tell her the sweet potato I was putting on the floor (in a bowl) was for Fudge and Vern. Also, because I was trying to be a good hostess, I did ask her once if she would prefer I threw the Sand Tart cookies she was scarfing down directly onto the floor or would she rather continue to run around holding four in each hand while simultaneously stuffing one or two into her mouth.  I never did understand what she answered back because her mouth was so full and twice, Hayley almost lost a finger when she reached for a cookie the same time Camilla did.

We both love Christmas and think Thanksgiving is just a day before Black Friday (her words).  We both spend too much on gifts. When we were much younger, we both collected dog figurines and stuffed dogs and wanted a dog since the day we were born. We are married to men who people think are much smarter than we are and others feel sorry for, but we know better about the smarts and know they are lucky to have us.  We both love many of the same movies and a good cheesy romance novel.  I will say though that her vivid descriptions of the book Fifty Shades of Grey (which I have not read, but own) and her scathing reviews of the main character and women who love him left me fifty shades of red and Hayley fifty shades darker.  Innocent, I think not. Hayley, Camilla, and I went to Target one night just to wander the aisles looking for things we didn’t know we needed, but once found, wondered how we lived without it. We all agreed life is just better with a Target store nearby.  Both of us couldn’t wait to come home and download our pictures to our computer and see what we got and hers were always far better. 

 

On Sunday, we had a mini meeting of some DK members at a beautiful state park in PA.  Camilla got to meet the founder of the Photography Group, none other than F, or as I like to call her, Miss DOF, as in “I am overly obsessed with Depth of Field!"  In fact, I have my suspicions that her first name is really Field.  She also got to meet the adorable Calla and Luca (and another cute Doodle revealed soon) and F got to meet her long lost brother, John. John and F immediately began talking about PBS shows, their fixation on the weather, and other stuff that caused my eyes to glaze over. I started to feel a little paranoid when they stopped talking several times when I approached and I think I saw them mouthing “dummy” to each other a couple of times after I said something.  Of course, they denied it and said they were saying “yummy” about all the wonderful food Cheryl brought for a picnic lunch and by Cheryl, I mean Cheryl and Finnegan who were both there, too.  Cheryl put together the best picnic lunch ever and even had a cloth tablecloth for us to put over the picnic table.  I call that pretty fancy and in our house, cloth tablecloths are an anomaly and really only something we have seen in the movies. Cheryl is such a pretty and classy lady, BUT (and there is always a but with pretty and classy ladies) she had a tendency to agree with whatever F said, including that the orange bikini (I smell a loophole) should be retired forever. I made another mental note to keep those two apart, because I could tell that all that adulation was going straight to F’s head and soon John, Cheryl, and F, with their newfound friendships, would be pointing their fingers at Camilla and me and saying stuff like, “which one of them do you think is more mature?” F is lucky I love Calla and Luca so much and it warms my heart every time I see them and now that I have met Finnegan, I guess I can overlook Cheryl’s misguided loyalty to F.  Finn looks exactly like someone put Vern in the dryer and shrunk him and he loves his mama very much and all three Doodles behaved wonderfully, despite the heat and humidity.  

GBK, Look at my great three Doodle shot :)

Rounding out our meeting were none other than Janie (Jackson and Jilly), her daughter and husband, who stopped by on the way to a party.  One of the reasons I love Janie, besides the fact that she is adorable and sweet, is because she always shows up with dessert. Janie somehow knows when everyone’s birthday is and stopped off to give Camilla some delicious birthday cupcakes, which I think made me almost as happy as Camilla since we were running out of sweets at home.   Janie and I have vowed to go on a road trip next year to the Vera Bradley Outlet sale in Indiana and I hope it happens. She also has a lovely family and I immediately loved her daughter, Katie, when she said she loved my blogs, and I would be remiss if I did not add, so far all the DK husbands I have met have been great and Tom was no exception.  We had the most wonderful time, BUT despite the fact that we had the Matriarch of the Photography group, the official edit queen, and three other members of the Photography group in attendance, we did not get ONE group shot.  We were too busy talking and laughing, but I do blame the oversight on F, because she is the leader and she never mentioned a group shot!  I think the heat and humidity had her off her game a little, although Camilla said she got a Hokum and it made her very happy.  

 

Our small group that day was mildly suspicious (don't think I didn't notice Janie leading the pack) that Camilla’s visit coincided with the DK calendar time and I know no one will believe me when I say it really was just a coincidence.  Camilla does make my pictures look so much better, but I could have continued to bombard her via email like I normally do, rather than in person.  I will say if you have any event in your life coming up that you need a great photographer, Camilla would be worth every penny paid for travel expense and the large grocery bills you will incur. The girl likes her sweets, so have lots of those on hand, or I would be afraid. Oh, and make sure she knows you practice the “5 second rule” in your home.   I also learned to take Camilla’s compliments of, “oh my heck, that is awesome,” with a grain of salt, because she used the exact same words when she saw John in his biking spandex. 

On a side note, I am very concerned about what photos Camilla may post in the future because she emerged one night from her room and told me she had just spent a long time editing my thighs.  Finally, I would also like to say that I never dreamed I would meet so many wonderful people when I first joined DK and who would have thought that a 24 year old woman and a 56 year old woman would enjoy spending time together when the only initial thing that brought them together was a love of Doodles. Oh, and in case you think it was just me, one of the last things Camilla said to me was, "I know this might scare you, but I could seriously stay here for one month."  Another mental note to self: go home and label a jar "Sand Tart Fund" and start saving now for the next visit. All joking aside, come back anytime, Camilla.

Our day at the park (pictures taken by most of us)!  F and Luca. Luca destroyed Camilla's squeaky toy she uses for Photo shoots. F, You owe Camilla $1.00!

John with Finn, Luca and Calla, Tom, and Cheryl!  

Laurie and Camilla. We decided to turn sideways to look thinner and it turned into an "Awkward DK Photo". Janie and Katie are trying to look away!

John and me trying to have a moment and Camilla barging in.  Actually, F was originally in this photo, but made us crop her out. Since we are rebels, Camilla left one tiny area on the right side showing F's arm, just to prove we can't be bossed around.

Cheryl and Finnegan! Camilla took this great photo, but I take credit for Finn's head tilt because I played my harmonica to get his attention.

Calla and Luca

P.S. Janie, I hope you have some more shots of your family to add. We really are a disgrace to the Photography group!

[Joanne ~ Spud*]

I am lavender with envy.  You know though, I had fun just reading this wonderful blog!  P.S. John, I have that shirt too! 

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

Thanks, Carol. Yes, you are not allowed to step away from DK for one minute :) LOL

[Carol and Banjo]

Whoa!!!!   I go away for 5 days and miss all the fun!    Another great DK get together!   I need to plan my get aways better!!!!     Wonderful photos!!!  

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

Thanks, Bonnie!

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

Thank you, Linda!

Cheryl, John enjoyed all the dogs. I guess I didn't know I was married to the Dog Whisperer. He always says I am the Dog Yeller :)

[Bonnie and Kona]

Fin is such a handsome doodle. It sounds like John has skills Laurie hasn't revealed in her blogs. I had no idea he could be another dog whisperer. I'm delighted you could all get together!

[Cheryl and Finnegan]

Bonnie, Finn is a mini me to Vern LOL-- or Vern's little brother as I've started calling him.  Finn adored John who was kind enough to hold all the dogs at times :)  John is the dog whisperer as far as FInn's concerned.

[Linda, Charlie Brown and Beau]

Laurie ~ once again a wonder blog!  Thank you for sharing this special get together with all of us that were not  there!

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

Bonnie, I missed you. Glad you are back safe and sound. Yes, never forget, our little Camilla has a spicy side :) Thank you!! Finnegan reminded me so much of Vern in other ways, too. What a cutie.

[Bonnie and Kona]

By the way, Finnegan is much smaller than I imagined. Vern just out of the dryer is a good description.