And That Haunted Me All the Way Home

Last night I went to a high school reunion of sorts. It was an unofficial thing, organized through Facebook about a week ago, one of those, "If you happen to be visiting your parents for Christmas, come out the day after and drink" things. I'm not sure if I would have gone if Cas hadn't been going and told me to come, and if I hadn't seen the organizers messaging back and forth on Facebook about wanting to do it at my dad's bar, prompting me to jump in and say, "Sure, do it there, I'll reserve space." So, yeah, I wasn't entirely sure how I felt about the whole thing, but I went anyway and I ended up being really glad I did. There weren't a ton of people there; probably only 30 or so people cycled through throughout the night (most on purpose, and a few who just happened to show up at the bar and notice a big group of familiar people; the bar is sort of consistently a high school reunion of sorts during the holidays anyway). Fortunately, all of the people who showed up were people I was happy to see. We didn't even have to spend much time playing the, "So, what are you doing with your life now?" game because Facebook means most everyone has at least the basics on each other's lives and we just had to fill in the specific names and details. I found it interesting that everyone who showed up seems to be doing really well for themselves. People are living all over the country (oddly enough, I don't think anyone who showed up last night was someone who still lives here in the city where we went to high school), everyone is either in a good relationship or seems satisfied being single, everyone has college degrees and is starting out on what seem like good career paths. I went home thinking, "Wow, everyone in my class is doing really well for themselves!" And the nicest thing is that the majority of us are doing some version of what we said we wanted to do when we "grew up." I was still thinking about that this morning when it dawned on me that I last night probably gave a slanted perspective because I'm pretty sure that the only people that actually go to reunions are the people who liked high school and the first place and who aren't afraid of the "What have you been doing with your life?" questions. I don't actually have anything to back this up, but I'd venture to guess that if your post-high school life so far involves living at your mom's house and working as a school janitor, you're not likely to want to go to a reunion. (Or maybe that's me. I just know that I wouldn't subject myself to a reunion scenario unless I felt--as I do--that things are going reasonably well for me and there's no way I'm going to become someone else's, "Did you see her? It's really too bad, she had such potential..." stories. Not that living at your mom's house or being a janitor are necessarily bad things for YOU, they are just not my personal idea of a successful life...don't want to offend any janitors or mama's boys out there...) Anyway, it was good to see everyone, and I think maybe I wouldn't mind doing a bigger one of these things in the future. Although do you think people still do class reunions, or has Facebook made them completely obsolete for our generation? Last night proved that it is, in fact, fun to see each other in person, but it's not like we had much actual reuniting to do because most of the people there had commented on my Facebook photos at some point within the past three months.

This morning I went to Cas's baby shower. She and Jay are having a baby in April! A baby that I keep joking was conceived while Penn and I were visiting them over the summer (well, the dates DO more or less add up!), to which Jay always retaliates, "Yeah, we may have been conceiving, but I bet you two were practicing for when you're baby-making, too!" I'm excited for her, and wishing I was closer to where she lives so that a) I could help her get ready and help her after the baby comes and b) so that I could practice a little bit on someone else's infant because, seriously, I've never changed a diaper before in my life. I'm glad I at least got to go to her baby shower. Do you want to know something sad for me, though? Cas is so incredibly tiny and skinny to begin with that her waist size now when she's five months pregnant is the same size as mine! And the only thing I'm pregnant with is burritos and rum balls. Haha. I need to get back into my workout groove this week.

Anyway, I have a plane to catch in the morning. I'm going home to my guy and my pets. Hooray! More about Christmas in the near future. I'm off to go listen to Kanye West's Love Lockdown on repeat about six thousand times and then I'm crashing. I'm addicted, and I don't really know why. I mean, I actually do like Kanye West more than you might expect, but I'm not generally listening to him on a loop. All I know is that this song wrenches my insides because the lyrics and the tone are perfectly descriptive of every failing relationship in the world, or at least every one that has ever failed on me. If this were a different year, I'd probably be listening to it and moping. Instead, I'm just sexy snake-dancing around the bedroom and then hitting play again, because Kanye is definitely not singing about me right now.