You can’t go home again. But you can always feel like an awkward, moody teenager.

High school wasn’t bad for me.  It wasn’t great, either.  I had my share of unreasonable teenage angst and questionable fashion decisions.   

I went to a large high school.  While I wasn’t one of the cool kids, it never bothered me because I had friends who were just as uncool as I was.  I was an odd combination of nerd and wannabe arty rebel—think National Honors Society, editor of the literary magazine, a bit of backstage theater work, ska-and-punk music lover, and a horse wrangler for a Girl Scout camp on occasional weekends.  Plus, I was weird and awkward.  I once wore a pair of pants with battery powered Christmas lights decorating the outside seams, and I tended to read novels behind my text books. 

I keep in touch with a couple people from my high school, as we went to college together and remained friends.   When I got the invitation to my ten year high school reunion, I had two simultaneous thoughts. 

1) Ten years?  That can’t be right. I’m fairly certain I’m still like 26.  I know I’ve been 26 for a few years now, but it’s a good age. 

2) Sparkles and I can go together, and we can get drunk and make snarky comments.  And that is what reunions are truly about.

After I bought the ticket to the reunion, I found out that the ever illustrious Sparkles had to work—and she has the type of job that you can never, ever, call in sick unless you are already dead from the plague.  My other friend lives across the country and wasn’t about to spend $500 on a plane ticket just for a reunion.  So I was stuck flying solo. I considered bringing my husband but tickets were $60.  And while I thought that I may be able to have $60 worth of fun, it was unlikely that my introvert husband would have an additional $60 worth of fun with people he had never met.

I was strangely nervous about the whole thing.  Batman pointed out that it was highly unlikely I would be made fun of, as we were all adults now.  I reminded him that with copious amounts of alcohol, anything was possible.  

Low points of the evening:  Two people called me by the wrong name.  Including our guidance counselor.

High points of the evening:  It was actually cool to see everyone all grown up.  Most people seemed about the same (which is a scary thought in itself) except, you know, older.  There was no snobbery going on, and while everyone kind of gravitated towards people they knew, I spoke to almost everyone there.  There was a constant litany of the same three questions:  What do you do?  Where do you live/have you ever left the city?  Do you have a family?

I'm glad I went.  When I got home, Batman asked me how it went.  I told him it was fun--and assured him that none of my high school crushes were remotely attractive anymore. 

List of Five Things Going on in My Life

1)  Batman is taking the Missouri Bar Exam in nine days.  This means that I don't really have a husband for a week and a half.  I have a grouchy, Red-bull drinking, permanently-attached-to-a-study-guide person who sometimes is in bed when I wake up.

He's been studying at Borders to cut down on the distractions.  Apparently interrupting him to show him a video of kittens being cute, I mean really cute, like baby-panda-bear-sneezing level of cute, is an unnecessary distraction.  He and I must have completely different definitions of "necessary".


2)  I'm creating a Lorax-themed toybox.  I bought an old wooden toybox from a garage sale about ten years ago and I found in the garage recently.

I've primed it, drawn the pictures on, and now I just have to paint it.  It's awesome.  One of my hidden talents is that I can reproduce cartoons perfectly.  This made me very cool for about three days in sixth grade when everyone wanted me to draw them a picture of the Simba from the Lion King.

  

ONLY YOU CAN SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT.  No pressure or anything.  Except if you don't all the bears and fish and birds will die horrible drawn-out deaths.

3)  My family is going to Cozumel in two weeks.  I can't wait.  Batman will have just taken the bar exam and so it'll be lovely to be able to kick back and relax.

One thing we're going to do is go SCUBA diving.  Everyone in my family except my sister-in-law is SCUBA certified.  This sounds like fun, right?  Well, kind of.

My step-mom is certified but she only did it because she said she would if everyone else does.  Peer pressure is nothing compared to family pressure.  I get the feeling that she doesn't really like diving and now that she knows everything that could possibly go wrong, she doesn't want any of her children anywhere near the water.

She wants us to watch a refresher DVD before we go.  And practice in the pool before we leave.  And practice in the pool when we get there.  And never get farther away than five feet from the dive master when we go down.  And she'd prefer if we never actually SCUBA dived. 

She's taken to randomly quizzing us about potential SCUBA-related disasters.  We'll be eating dinner and suddenly she'll ask "Quick, what do you do if your regulator comes out of your mouth?  What if your secondary regulator isn't working?  WHAT IF YOUR DIVE BUDDY ISN'T PAYING ATTENTION?"

She's a bit of a worrier.


4)  I have two interviews coming up in the next two weeks.   Yes, I'm that awesome.  Now if only I could convince the interviewers of that fact...


5)  My friend Crystal just moved back to the St. Louis area.  We've known each other since high school and we were roommates for a year in college.  It's awesome to be back in the same city with her.

She just got engaged and I've nominated myself to be her unofficial wedding planner.  I like making lists, I have plenty of free time, I enjoy shopping, and I have tons of opinions---I'm perfect for the job.

Today for you, tomorrow for me.

There is one good thing about breaking my iPod:  I started rooting around my old CDs for something to listen to while in the car.

I rediscovered this:

And I'm not talking about the horrible, horrible movie version.  No, I'm referring to the Broadway soundtrack.  I think I may have blocked out my love of this musical because of that awful movie.

Yes, it's cheesy.  Everybody has AIDS (haha Team America) and everyone does drugs.  The bad guy is named "Coffin" for godssake, they might as well just named him Hitler.

But it's still fun.  And I still know every single freakin' line.

"December 24th, nine p.m. Eastern standard time, from here on in I shoot without a script...."