Reunited, and it feels so good!

I realized as I was headed out of town on Friday that I had, both tragically and classically, forgotten my camera, so I don’t have any reunion photos for you just yet. However, there were several cameras there, which means that sooner or later (hopefully sooner), facebook will abound with memories of the weekend, and when that day comes, I shall save them as… and share them with you. But only if I look cute in them. But seriously, who are we kidding? OBviously, I will look cute in all of them. I’m cute. That’s how I roll.

ANYhoe, the ten-year reunion of the Wilkes Central class of ‘98 was a weekend-long event. It started Friday night with drinks at “The Lounge” above Dooley’s bar in Wilkesboro. Yes, Dooley’s. Dooley, for those of you who don’t know, is the name of Whitney’s dog. We have long suspected that he was up to something like this, but Wilkesboro - that’s quite a commute. I guess some of those night classes* he took were business-related. And this explains why he sleeps all day every day. I just want to know whose car he’s driving back and forth with gas prices being what they are. If it’s mine, I expect him to chip in for maintenance and top off the tank.

Upon my arrival at Dooley’s, I saw at least ten people I’d been missing for some time and at least ten more I hadn’t really thought much about at all since 1998 but was ecstatic to see nonetheless. And then every time someone new would walk in, we’d all just look and think or say out loud, “Holy crap.” We just could not believe that they’d actually shown up. So we chatted and hung out and posed for pictures and caught up until I was about to fall over from exhaustion, and around 1:30, I staggered back to the lovely Michelle’s house, where I was staying (thanks Chelle!!). By that point, my expectations had already been exceeded, and we still had another full day of reunion fun ahead of us!

We slept in on Saturday, took our time getting ready, and rolled on over to the Apple Festival around noon. I got a caramel apple sample from Coach Tommy Johnson, who I’m pretty sure had NO idea who I was. We ran into Susan and Emily at some point and walked around with them until Susan left. Then Michelle, Emily and I wandered down the street just a bit more until we decided that it was entirely too hot and crowded to stay out there when we’d pretty much seen everything there was to see already.

Michelle went over to her parents’ house for a while, and I went to help set up for Saturday night’s festivities. Then I came back to discover that there was nary a full-length mirror in Michelle’s house. I called Emily, who saved the day by coming over to tell me what looked good together (since I couldn’t see my outfits as a whole). We both got ready and headed over to Roni’s Italian Restaurant.

Our excitement grew as we approached the restaurant and saw all the cars parked outside. We were fashionably late, so several reunion-goers had already arrived and were inside awaiting our grand entrance (ok, maybe they weren’t so much awaiting our entrance as just hanging out, but still…). It was a different crowd from the one on Friday night. There was some overlap, but there were several people who were there on Friday but not on Saturday and vice versa. In all, I think we probably saw 60-70 people from our class including (but by no means limited to):

• Julie Gilstrap, who came from Scotland. I hadn’t seen her, I don’t think, since I was in Edinburgh in 2004, althought we’ve kept in touch pretty well via facebook (thanks facebook!).
• Lee Spears, who came from frickin’ CHINA even though he didn’t actually graduate with us (he was whisked away to the School of Science and Math after sophomore year). I thought it was very cool of him to come.
• John Bowman, who also left us for the greener pastures of Science and Math, but who was also very cool to come back for our reunion.
• Matt Hagaman. And his fiancée (sniff sniff). The rumors were true. And alas, she seems lovely, so we didn’t feel it was appropriate to take her out back and deal with her. I guess we’ll just let her marry him and wish them all the happiness in the world.
• Sam Graham. Oh internet, if you only knew.
• The lovely Mrs. Emily Hogan, who was voted “most changed since high school,” although we’re really not sure why. She did get a haircut, but other than that, I don’t know that I see a whole lot of difference there. My hair is much shorter now than it was back then, and I didn’t get any votes in that category. What up with that, class of ‘98?
• Brandie Huffman, who was voted “least changed since high school” (evidenced by her name tag, which read “GO EAGLES!!” below her name), and of whom I hope to see video footage very soon. Not many people danced, but really, that was fine. She did enough for all of us.
• My buddy Wes, who lives with his wife probably twenty minutes away from me. I hadn’t seen them in probably eight years. Shame on us. We must repent of such long absences.

There were plenty more, but since most of y’all are bored because you don’t know these people, I’ll stop there. I skipped the picnic at the lake on Sunday afternoon because I had to get back to Raleigh, but before I left, I had brunch with Jim at the Coffee House, which seems to have recovered nicely from when that van drove into it a while back. I highly doubt anyone has ever called a meal at the Coffee House “brunch” before as it is essentially a generic version of the Waffle House. Oh so swanky. But brunch with Jim is lovely by definition even when the meal comprises hash browns and waffles with a strawberry-flavored fruitish topping.

I can’t believe it’s come and gone so fast. We have literally been excited about this reunion for the past five years, and just like that, it’s over. It was good times, though, I must say. Good times indeed. Mediocre food, perhaps, but the company would be near impossible to beat. I tell ya - it’s going to be hard to elope when the time comes and not invite some of those old friends to celebrate my wedding. We’ll have to have some killer parties all over the country to make up for it. Perhaps even all over the world. Yeah, I can handle that.

(*Whitney dreamed once that Dooley started speaking, and when asked how he learned English, he replied very matter-of-factly, “I took night classes.” )

oh my gosh times infinity

I don’t think I’ve mentioned this, which is completely unbelievable, but I’d better say it now or else it won’t get discussed until after the fact, and then the excitement won’t be as…anticipatory. I guess it won’t really be anticipatory at all after the fact, though, will it? I couldn’t be. But anticipatory excitement is the best, is it not? (What’s with these tag questions I’m so keen on tonight? I’m not British, am I?) Because after an event is over, the excitement really isn’t excitement at all. It’s more like nostalgia at that point, which is what I’ll have next week AFTER MY 10 YEAR HIGH SCHOOL REUNION THIS WEEKEND!!!!

Oh my gosh, I am peeing on myself just thinking about it! And I really can’t explain why. I mean, most of the people I really care about seeing are the ones I see fairly regularly anyway, so it’s not like we need a special get-together time to catch up. And it’s not that I don’t care about seeing all the other people who are going to be there. Quite the opposite, in fact. They’re the ones I am so excited to see. I am just so curious about what has happened to them in the past ten years. Where have they been? What have they done with themselves? Who have they become? It’s fascinating.

I really don’t even know what I’m expecting. I think it will probably be like meeting a lot of strangers for the first time who kind of remind me of people I used to see a lot. I don’t think I really knew them back then. The ones I did really know, I still do know. But these “new” people I’m going to meet - I really want to know them now. Maybe that’s the exciting part. Not that I want to know them, but that they’ve grown into who they are, and now I can know them. Really them. Not the fake, high school versions of them that were all wrapped up in popularity (or lack thereof), extracurricular activities and whatever else high schoolers find their identity in.

Now I just have to decide what to WEAR!

and now for something far less grown-up

Friends, I have had…another dream.

I was riding in a taxi, which seemed to be a normal-enough-sized taxi, except there were about eight people in it. There was the driver, someone riding shotgun, a blonde girl standing between them (on the gearshift, presumably), and then in the back, there was a girl from Alabama, DLF, me, my old college roommate Becky, and at least one other girl. I feel like there may have been two others in the backseat, but they didn’t do anything, so I can’t be sure of their presence at all.

Well, Becky was dressed all in blue because she had been to a few different places that day, all of which had blue as one of their major colors. I think at least one of the places she’d been was a restaurant of some sort whose sign was blue. When she explained it in the dream, it made sense even if DLF and I did think it was rather high school of Becky to color-coordinate with her daily places of business.

Anyhoe, Becky, DLF and I were on our way to a bar that was having some kind of event (otherwise, it would only really make sense for Becky to be going). I don’t know what the event was, but we were looking forward to it. The other cab passengers were also headed to bars, but those of a radically different sort from the one where we planned on spending the evening. These girls (the blonde in the front seat, the Alabaman and the other girl) were more of the stereotypical sorority variety. They were all dolled up in their going-out gear, and they were ready to par-tay.

DLF and I were trying to talk to the Alabaman, but Southern as we are, we could not understand a word she said. I’m pretty sure she was more of a…physical communicator anyway, though, because all of a sudden, a popular club song came on the radio, and the three girls (Blondie, ‘Bama, and Other Girl) stood up in the cab and commenced to dancing VERY inappropriately. Well, it was all DLF and I could do to contain ourselves. I thought we might explode from holding in the laughter. It was just that ridiculous a sight. And the poor cabbie couldn’t see for the blonde undulating in his face. He kept having to push her aside and lean over to see around her.

The end.

Thanks, Danielle!

I had fun with this, but if you don’t like it, blame Danielle. It’s not like you can do anything to her. She lives way over yonder on the other side of the world. It’s SPRING there, even. And it’s not like you can just go into SPRING and get her. It’s a whole other season. I dare you to even try.

How well can you…

cook? I have to say…I’m pretty good, but I don’t do it that often because I don’t plan ahead well enough to have ingredients on hand. I generally get hungry, decide what I want, go out to purchase ingredients, decide I’m too hungry to wait until I’ve cooked whatever it is I have the ingredients for, and swing by the Taco Bell drive-thru on the way home from the grocery store. On the upside, I have those ingredients for later. And THAT is the only reason I know I can cook at all.

sew? Ummm…hello?

clean? Hahaha. Yeah, let’s not discuss that. Well, ok, we can. I like to put the dishes in the dishwasher as I use them. Then, when it’s full, I like to run it. But after that, things start to break down. I don’t like to unload the dishwasher, so then I can’t put new dirties in, and they just pile up in the sink. My bathroom sink, however, is always clean. I wipe it down every night after I wash my face. Generally, although things may not be dirty, they are just strewn. I strew. I’m a strewer. It’s not unsanitary. It’s just cluttered.

sing? Like a Vienna Choir Boy

play an instrument? I can play the guitar…kind of. And I used to be able to play the piano. Back me up on this, please, somebody, because anyone who’s heard me lately would never believe it.

write? I mean. I like to write. I love it, actually. And people tell me I do it well, although that didn’t really start until college. Up until that time, I didn’t think I was very good at it, probably because my style didn’t fit so well into the writing mold required by standardized tests. Even when I took the GRE (after I’d realized I could write), I got a pretty bad score on the writing portion. So unappreciated.

read? I can read at a post-graduate level. Oh yeah. I’m that good.

paint or draw? THIS is worth laughing about. I sometimes try to use illustrations to define words or concepts to my students, and all animals come out looking like animals other than the animals they were intended to be. And all people are stick figures unless they need to be wearing clothing or have a chest cavity for some reason. The one thing I can draw kind of well is a big ol’ plantation house. When I taught level 1, we would talk about house vocabulary, and I would have them draw and write about their dream house. Their dream houses would inevitably be modest ranches - maybe a split-level if they were really ambitious. But mine… Mine was always a two-story, white house with columns, a wrap-around porch, a balcony, a porch swing, a bay window, two chimneys, and a gigantic old oak tree in the front yard. Not that I’ve thought about it that much.

tell stories? Well, I needed a dresser, and we needed a coffee table for our living room, so we set out one Saturday to scour the Goodwills of the Triangle in search of these items. But they are large items, you see, and we were in my car, which would not accommodate them and us, so we stopped by Lauren’s parents’ house to borrow their truck. Then we went back to two Goodwills to make/pick up our purchases before driving back across town to our house. Lauren, needing to return the truck to her parents, headed over to their house for dinner, but it’s quite a haul from there to here, and her mom didn’t want to drive her back over to our place.

Lucky for her, I was going to the airport that night to pick up VA, and the airport is MUCH closer to their place, so her mom just dropped her off with me at the Sheetz down the street from RDU, we picked up VA (after about a two-hour delay), and headed back into town to drop VA at her apartment before returning home (finally).

So we were in the car with VA, and she asked something along the lines of, “Lauren, what made you decide to come to the airport too?” And I proceeded to launch into the whole story of the day, starting with, “Well, I needed a dresser…” which Lauren found REALLY amusing. She said she probably would have just said something like, “Oh, I was at my parents’ house, and I didn’t have my car, so my mom just brought me to meet Beth instead of driving me 30 minutes across town.”

I said that was completely illogical to me, and that it only made sense to start at the beginning of the story regardless of whether or not the complete story is necessary information. So I don’t know if I’m good at telling stories. But I really like (or perhaps feel compelled) to tell them.

persuade? I’m probably really good at convincing people to do things they want to do deep down but feel they shouldn’t do for some silly reason of responsibility or societal expectation. Oh yeah. I’m an instigator.

resist those who persuade you? Same thing. If I want to do something, I am easily persuaded to do it. But if I do not want to do something, I am unmovable.

dress? I don’t dress. I OWN.

decorate a room? It takes me a long time to get a room just right, but I take great joy in seeing it come together. I love finding old fixer-upper stuff at the flea market, etc. to give a room a little extra something. I also like seeing completely mismatched things come together to complete a room. I find that very beautiful for some reason.

decorate a cake? I’m not very good at cake decorating. I leave that to Brookie. But I did make one spectacular “Wave of Babies” cupcake. And I am a champion cake-eater!

parallel park? On a good day, I’m a pro. But on a bad day, I may as well not even try. I just can’t get close enough to the curb sometimes.

dance? What? You mean you have yet to see me to “The Grind” or “Sexy Up/Down” or any square dance moves?????? Oh, friend, you are MISSING. OUT.

swim? I’m a Pisces and a once-licensed SCUBA diver. You be the judge.

focus group much?

I was at Borders this evening with my new buddy Jen, and as we were leaving, we wandered into the magazine section. I stopped to marvel at the airbrushing that was once Daniel Radcliffe, and then two other magazines caught our attention. First, there was Esquire’s E-Ink panel on their cover, which looks like it’s sort of blinking, and at first, you think it’s some sort of hologram, but then you realize that it changes even when it’s not (and you’re not) moving. Very cool. And we stood there for a full minute or two looking behind it and poking at it and trying to figure out where the ‘lectricity was, and I’m certain that we looked a lot like Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson in that scene from Zoolander when they’re trying to get at the files that are “in the computer.” Then Jen mused about how decades from now, when that sort of technology is passé, we’ll think back on that moment and laugh at how far we’ve come.

Then I noticed what I thought was an odd cover featuring Barack Obama in an airplane seat. It was just a strange setting to me for a magazine cover, but even stranger was the magazine itself. It was Vogue. But part of the cover text, I thought, was overlapping the magazine title, which happens sometimes. You know, we know what the magazine is. We don’t have to be able to read the whole title. It always looks the same anyway, and the features are more important.

But I was wrong, buddies. I was so so wrong. It was not a feature teaser covering Vogue’s title. It was a part of the title itself. Yes, I was looking at Men’s Vogue.

I did not know that such a thing existed, and then it occurred to me: Who is reading Men’s Vogue? Do men want to have anything to do with Vogue? Are men en vogue? Were men jealous that only the women got to waste money and time coveting the lives and possessions of those more rich, powerful and beautiful?

Yeah, I didn’t think so. Read this instead. It won’t make you a better person, but you’ll laugh and not feel bad about yourself.

from the best of cragislist

This is just amazing. I mean, it’s not like the man being addressed will ever read this. I somehow just don’t get the impression that he spends a lot of time on craigslist, but who knows? I could be totally wrong.

I should write more open letters. I like them. Where should I start? I’ve already written to Donald Miller, but that was a while back. I could write to him again. What about Brittney Spears? Sarah Palin? Colin Firth. Anna Kournikova, Michael Phelps, my pink tennis shoes, Drew Barrymore, Michael Cera, Moses, Heather B. Armstrong, Leta Armstrong, the apostle Paul, Val Kilmer (oh yeah, that one’s definitely happening), James Marsden, Zach Braff, Amy Grant, the snakes hiding in our yard, the higher-ups of Wake Tech (hmmm, maybe not), my little mustard-colored silk pillow, Craig (regarding his list), Bill Bryson, New York City, the morning drivers on Wade Avenue, the Popes Urban I-VII.

Your thoughts?

writer’s block

You may have noticed that sometimes I disappear for a while, and then I come back claiming that I’ve been busy or that nothing interesting has happened, and while it may be true that I’ve been busy, I rarely fail to write for lack of interesting material. The inside of my head is a constant three-ring circus with a running list of responsibilities and ways to procrastinate facing them in one ring, hopes and dreams for the future in another, and Broadway shows starring me in the third. Plus I teach ESL in real life, so there’s always something to say.

I don’t write sometimes for one of two reasons. Either (a) I’m afraid that what I really want to say would reveal too much about me to the world, or (b) I’m trying so hard to write in my “unique voice” that everything comes out sounding fake and cliche. Even now, I’m worried that ‘a’ is the case.

So I spend my time and fill up valuable internet space talking about craig’s list ads, tv shows and ridiculously dressed mannequins, or re-posting video montages of tattoos that utilize human bellybuttons to depict cartoon animals poking each other in the anus. I mean, I still think that post was funny, and I really wish I could have been inside my mom’s head for the time it took her to realize I was totally kidding. But the point is that those things are ultimately pointless.

Can you tell I’ve been studying Ecclesiastes?

If I rewrote part of the second chapter, replacing Solomon’s experiences with my own, it would read something like this:

I undertook great projects: I wrote articles and dreamed up book ideas. I made crafts and scrapbooks and took all kinds of pictures. I rocked t-shirts and was said by some to be “fashion forward.” I bought computers and electronics and all manner of kitchen gadgets. I also downloaded more music than I ever intended to listen to. I amassed shoes and clothes. I acquired sassy, stylish home decor—the delights of the heart of woman. I became cooler and more desirable in my own opinion. 

I denied myself nothing my bank account could support;
I refused my heart no pleasure.
My heart took delight in all my work,
and this was the reward for all my labor.

Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done
and what I had toiled to achieve,
everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind;
nothing was gained under the sun.

Nothing. In reading the first chapter, you’ll notice that God is mentioned only once as having placed a heavy burden on men. I don’t know if the heavy burden is the work we do to try to figure out the work that’s worth doing, or if it’s that there’s so much here on Earth that we’ll never know or understand, and we spend our whole lives wading through it to try to achieve something worth achieving, or if it’s just that work sucks as a consequence of sin (Man was always put to work. It just wasn’t crappy until after the Fall). But whatever the burden is that God has placed on us, at least we know that God is there. Solomon makes some mention of him at least.

In the first half of the second chapter, though (that’s where I am in the study), there is no mention of God at all. He comes in at the end of the chapter, but I’m not there yet, so back to the first eleven verses. It’s a whole list of amazing things Solomon accomplished in his life - good, valuable, helpful things - the stuff of legacies even, and he calls them all worthless. That’s hard for me. It struck me yesterday, though, that God didn’t make the list of things tried and failed, and that perhaps all of the things on the list are worthless because He wasn’t one of them.

The same goes for Onward Hoe!. I’m not saying I’m going to stop blogging. I’m not even saying I’m going to stop posting the ridiculous, immature bits I know we all love. I think all I am saying is that I want to try not to be afraid of being completely real here…although I’ll still mostly likely decline to share almost all the details of my love life with you. Sorry, internet. It’s not that interesting anyway.

good for airplanes, my church, the Arctic, etc.

My boyfriend recommended some books for me to read, and since I value his every thought like the precious drops of heavenly wisdom that they are, and since I’ve been wanting one of them for a long time, I decided to hit up Barnes and Noble after church today and pick up a couple of his suggestions. I had some money on a gift card, and I didn’t want to spend much more than that, so I only got two of them: On Writing Well and Bird by Bird. I’ve already started on the former, and I’ll let you know how they are, but what I really want to show you is this:

I went into Old Slavey after making my purchase at B&N, and I found what appears to be a mannequin who was VERY cold. I mean, what do you see? I count no less than six shirts being displayed here, and apart from the fact that the thought of wearing this outfit is just weird, actually doing it would be completely impractical. Just imagine how often you’d have to do laundry if you wore six shirts every day! I suppose you could just wash the bottom-most one(s) and rotate the rest for the following day(s). But you know that the amount of effort it would take to arrange them just so every morning would not be worth it, especially when you realize that there’s no way they’d stay like that all day. The top one would be the only one visible by lunch, and then you’d just be hot and sweating, unnecessariliy soiling six t-shirts.

It does look kind of cool, though. Maybe I could make myself just one shirt that looked like it had five more underneath, peeking out just so.  If you’ll excuse me, I have some sewing to do.

another day of sweet, sweet unemployment

As you can see by my twitterances (aka tweets, twits or another word Amaris used once that was NOT the correct terminology), it’s been a super busy day. It started bright and early. Well, mostly bright because it was about 9:30. Anyhoe, I had to finish watching a DVD that I had to return to Blockbuster later, so that was item numero uno on the to-do list. It was a rather bizarre little collection of Parisian vignettes directed by different people. I had no idea that that’s what it was going to be. I knew that it had a lot of famous actors in it, and that there were therefore probably a lot of different story lines, but I imagined it to be more like Love Actually set in Paris. Instead, however, it was a long string of very short, unrelated little films. And once we got that figured out, I really liked it, but for the first 45 minutes at least, Lauren and I were very confused. We just kept waiting for the stories to weave themselves together, and then there was this extraordinarily strange one about a hair product salesman who goes to this Asian salon and gets beat up by the salon’s owner. Truly, truly weird.

There was also a really creepy one with Elijah Wood and a vampire. But a lot of them were really cute. If you’re interested, it’s called Paris, Je T’aime. Check it out. And speaking of Elijah Wood, if you haven’t seen Everything is Illuminated, do yourself the favor of renting it. If you’ve ever tried to communicate in another language or culture, you’ll appreciate it.

So I finished watching that, and then I watched a couple of episodes of Arrested Development on Hulu (which is SO great…both the show and Hulu). Don’t worry. It wasn’t wasted time. It was on the to-do list. Check! I was so so productive.  I went to Target, I returned things to the mall, I got a Swarovski crystal necklace, I went to church, I met like thirty people who may all come to our home group (but probably not), I went to Dunkin Donuts with Lauren, Whitney and JBeau (it’s going to become our “Central Perk” with our version of Gunther - a man who shall be known only as “Dreds”). The only thing I didn’t get done was the lesson planning, but having done all those other things, I am now free to lesson plan the rest of the week away! With a few episodes of Arrested Development each day to break up the monotony. I’ll let you know how it goes.

in preparation for my 10-year reunion

A VERY special thanks goes to DLF for turning my attention to this. Yearbook Yourself. You can put in a picture of yourself, and it will show you what you likely would have looked like through the years in yearbooks. For example:

Here I am in 1954. I’m not sure why my glasses have gone askew. Maybe I had a run-in with the school bully right before the photographer arrived. But then why would I look so happy? Hmmmm…maybe the school bully had a run-in with ME. Either way, I love these glasses, and I’m diggin’ the super-short bangs on this one. Too bad I couldn’t pull it off in real life.

Ah, 1960. Though the bangs have grown out (and I’m certain it took six years to get them to this point), the glasses are still kickin’. I’m not sure what’s up with this dress, though. I feel a bit like a pilgrim.

1964. I tell you what - I would have ROCKED OUT some glasses in the 50’s and 60’s. I kind of like this hair-do too. And oddly enough, whatever I’m wearing here is strikingly similar to what I wore in my actual senior yearbook photo 34 years later. And not to toot my own horn, but I have aged really well.

1968 - I think I’ve seen this somewhere before.

Here I am in 1976, and if I’m completely honest, I think I look really cute. Obviously I know this isn’t really me, but let’s face it. You know you think I’m cute too.

Just a couple more to go…

Well, at least we know that if the rest of me drowns in 1982, the top of my head will stay afloat what with that inner tube resting on my forehead.  I don’t even really know what to say about this. It’s just that spectacular.

And finally, 1994. Ah 1994. Wow. Just wow. Do you remember how much hairspray this would require. Lucky for me, though, I didn’t really need it. I just had to hot-roll it the night before, and then my bangs would spring magically into place upon brushing. For comparison’s sake, here is my actual seventh grade yearbook photo. See the bangs? Inspirational, aren’t they?