My cousin, Valerie, celebrates her 15th birthday today. She’s the youngest of the cousins on my mom’s side, but towers over most of us.

On Saturday, family and friends will gather at her home to celebrate. She bought a special dress for the occasion, a white cocktail dress. She won’t have a Mass nor court of chambelanes y damas. There’s no waltz, but she will dance with her father and padrino. Of course, there will still be food, drink and dancing.

I like the bending and adaptation of tradition. In fact, I think every quinceañera I’ve been to is different from previous ones. I’ve seen to co-quinceañeras, quinceañeras celebrated during the 16th birthday, full courts (14 couples), courts of just girls, courts of just guys (Lori and I did this), seen girls wear white gowns as well as colored gowns, seen a waltz, seen a choreographed modern dance, seen slide shows, and more.

But there’s constants. The girls are always surrounded by proud parents, friends and extended family.

And the party is fun.

Question of the week: Did you have a special celebration for your fifteenth birthday? What was it like? For guys, were you ever a chambelán? What was that like?

I was just called out by my brother Adrian for admitting that I’ve never eaten at Pink’s.

He claims I have no excuse. I’m from LA. I live just a few miles away from La Brea and Melrose. I have transportation. I don’t have any particular dietary restrictions that would keep me from eating a hot dog. It’s an LA landmark, thus he reasons, I should have eaten there.

I shrugged.

Nunca se me ha antojado. (It’s never called to me). The line doesn’t help much either. I once waited 45 minutes in the cold for a hot dog, but that was in Chicago and for Hot Doug’s. Even Anthony Bourdain ate there.

La pregunta: Anything you haven’t done in your city that is a “must” by mainstream guidebooks or magazines?

I’m bringing back the questions. If you have suggestions for future QOTWs, let me know via email (see contact page above).

I got an email today. It went something like this.

I found your friend’s blog. Now I got a huge crush on said friend!

I smiled and thought of the timeliness of my friend’s email. I’ve been thinking about blog crushes these days.

The blog crush isn’t really about looks, but looks definitely help. Rather, the attraction is centered around a talent for expressing ideas or telling stories. The blog crush is just like an intellectual crush, but it starts online.

I’ve been blogging a while and over the years I’ve had a few blog crushes. They wear off when said blogger begins blogging sporadically or stops all together. Sometimes the crush just wears off as I get to know him better.

My current blog crush is Jay Smooth. I think he’s my first internet “celebrity” blog crush.

Question of the week: Do you have blog crushes? Or have you had a blog crush?

Last night I joined Pachuco3000, Chimatli, El Chavo, El Random Hero, Wendy Carrillo (who goes to USC, boo!) and Leticia of Thats So Paisa for the monthly bloguer@ gathering. We met up at La Carioca in East LA for beers and $2 waters (really, they charged us for water).

After talking about Halloween and Día de los Muertos plans, I learned that Chimatli had also just finished reading Gustavo Arellano’s new book, Orange County: A Personal History.

“You’re from the same place, right?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I told her. “Well, my mom is from the same place, El Cargadero.”

“Did you grow up in Orange County too?”

“Oh no.”

We both liked the book and discussed some of the things Gustavo wrote. I don’t have time to get in to a full review (I should be packing). However, I can say that I really enjoyed the autobiographic aspects. As I learned more about Gustavo and his family, I learned more about my own family history and roots. While everything felt so familiar to me, Chimatli found some things curious, like how Gustavo addressed his grandparents.

“Do you call your grandparents something like that too?” she asked.

“Yeah. I call my mom’s parents — the ones from El Cargadero — Papa Chepe and Mama Toni. But on my dad’s side, the Guanajuato side, we call them Grandpa and Grandma.”

I never thought this was odd. It’s easy to generalize your personal experiences and make them seem normal. But Chimatli made me wonder. Could such labels be associated with gente del rancho? Wendy chimed in and suggested that the labels may correspond to the role your grandparents played in your upbringing. Perhaps the mama/papa was emphasized because the grandparent played a surrogate parent role or lived with you.

Or it could all just be a family thing. So I went to the expert on my family, my mom.

Mom admitted that all she and her cousins addressed their grandparents as Mama ____ y Papa ____.

“Mama Toni’s dad was Papayito. I don’t know where the -yito came from. [His name was Juan.] There was your Mama Chila, Papa Chepe’s mom, too.”

I’m still curious, thus the question of the week.

La Pregunta: How do you address your grandparents?

I love looking at my site statistics. That’s how I find out someone linked to me (WordPress isn’t always updated) or that someone in Arizona spent an inordinate amount of time going through the archives.

The best part of stats is the search words. I’m surprised at the words or combination of words that most people type in to a search engine. While most people get here through something expected like funny Chicana/o t-shirts or costumes, there are some words that just make me scratch my head.

This week I got: super hot Chicana p*** (rhymes with corn)

Really now? I mean, I may be super. I’ve been called hot once or twice. I’m definitely a Chicana, no doubt there. But p***? Dude must have been disappointed (yeah, I know my gender bias is showing). All he got here was a question of the week post on telenovelas (see the comments).

La Pregunta: Do you get puzzling searches?

I’ve been craving chocolate cake (with or without flan on top, fine by me) or cupcakes. And yes, that might be a hint.

La Pregunta: Do you have a sweet tooth? What’s your weakness?

When you’ve been blogging for a while, you realize something. People quit blogging all the time. Some of my favorite bloggers no longer post or took long breaks from their blogs. They’re off becoming attorneys or working on their dreams of becoming professional writers. Sometimes, we just realize that we shared too much and need to take a step back.

Anyway, one of my favorite bloggers was the Daily Texican. He stopped blogging when he moved to Seattle for law school a few years ago. One of my favorite DT features was the “cholo word of the day.” DT defined Caló, Spanglish, or common Spanish phrase (e.g., chota, Entiendes Mendez). He’d also use the words/phrases in clever sentences and translate them for non-Chicana/o consumption. I loved the translations.

In honor of DT, I’m focusing the QOTW on Caló and Spanglish.

La Pregunta: Do you use Caló and/or Spanglish words/phrases in your daily life? What’s your favorite Caló and/or Spanglish word/phrase(s)? If you’d like, define the word/phrase a la DT (see above for an example).

A few weeks ago I was hanging out with a good friend who is having an amazing summer. Still, she confided that something was missing: the summer romance.

I smiled to myself and didn’t say anything, but it made me think of this list written in the big loopy handwriting of a young woman. The summer romance is on there too. Making out on the beach at night. Falling love. Champagne trick? I’m not sure…

I didn’t make my own list or tried to fulfill that list. If I did, a trip to Salamanca, Guanajuato would be on there. I’m missing Salamanca more than usual, mainly because I usually visit around this time of year (except for 2005, I visited in December). My summer just doesn’t feel right without a visit to Guanajuato and looking through pictures won’t suffice.

La Pregunta: What do you need to make your summer feel complete? Or, what’s your quintessential summer activity?

Grandma and Grandpa’s house didn’t have much in the way of entertainment for kids. There was never anything worth watching on a Sunday afternoon (this was before I found M*A*S*H* entertaining). There were no toys, no video games, and the only jigsaw puzzles Grandma owned were those really tough 500-piece puzzles.

Despite all this, I was never bored, especially when all my cousins were around. Tía Lupe and her five sons — all older than me — lived directly across the street. Tía Lucy and tía Mary also lived nearby. Together they could add nine kids to the mix. Tío Johnny lived further away, but he’d often visit on Sundays too. And of course, my siblings and I were down for games. We’d easily have a group of a dozen kids ready for a game. [Note: my dad's younger siblings' children were too young to play or not born yet.]

We played freeze tag and other variations on tag. When we tired, we’d sit on the broad porch and play war or old maid with a deck of cards (but hiding them from Grandpa who didn’t approve). My favorite game was Colored Eggs.

First we’d ask who was in an who was just a spectator. The spectator cousins — usually the younger ones — would be forced to sit up at the top of the porch out of the way of those in the game. Next, all cousins would put in a single foot to choose a Wolf via the “eeny, meeny, miny, mo” method.

Once the Wolf was chosen, the remaining players would take seats on the porch and silently choose a color for his/her egg. The Wolf would stand out in the middle of the front yard and eye his cousins on the porch steps suspiciously.

Wolf: knock, knock.
Kids (I think we were supposed to be chicks): what do you want?
Wolf: an egg!
Kids: what color?
Wolf: [chooses color] purple!
Kids: we don’t have that color!
Wolf: [chooses another color] sky blue!

At that moment, the cousin who chose sky blue would jump down the steps and begin running around the house in the counter clockwise direction as the Wolf gave chase to get his egg. The rest of us would get up to see from the edge of the porch was our cousin dodged plants, stray cats and parked cars in the driveway and tried to make it back to the porch safe. If the Wolf caught her, then she’d have to trade places and become the wolf. If not, the game would continue with the same Wolf. (Bea, if I have any of the details wrong, please correct me. My guess is your memory about this game would be more accurate.)

I hated being chased or being the Wolf as most of my other cousins were older and could run faster. It was still fun, even if I did end up scraping my knee or dirtying my dress.

La Pregunta: What was your favorite game as a kid?

I’m defining game as an indoor or outdoor competitive activity without any props that required electricity or batteries. The only energy you needed was the kind you get with a large group of kids.

When I was growing up, my mom never watched telenovelas. I doubt she had time to sit down with four kids running around. In fact, the only time she watched TV was when she ironed clothes or folded clothes still warm from the dryer. TV was just background noise.

The only people who watched telenovelas at home were Papá Chepe and Mamá Toni. When I was 8, my parents sent me and Danny to their home in el Cargadero, Zacatecas for a few weeks during the summer. I played all day with the kids in el Cargadero. In the evening, I’d settle in front of la tele with los abuelitos, to watch the latest chapter of Rosa Salvaje. Rosa (Verónica Castro) was the perfect heroine. Ricardo, Rosa’s wealthy love-interest, was swoon-worthy. And what’s more scary than evil twin sisters with big ’80s hair and shoulder pads?

I loved it.

But then I came back to the states, third grade and the Disney afternoon. I forgot all about Rosa and her rags to riches story.

In the next ten years, I’d get hooked on only two more telenovelas, Baila Conmigo and Soñadoras.

Since 2000, I haven’t paid much attention to the telenovelas that always confused me as a kid. A blonde person speaking Spanish? Really? Where were all the brown people? It wasn’t all so confusing. After all, I did learn plenty of insults and words like “idiota,” “jamás” and “engañar,” but the acting was bad and the plot lines were predictable. Plus, I had way too much going on to tune in every evening for an hour.

La Pregunta: Are you a novelera/o?