Should old acquaintence be forgot? Oh, hell yes!

There's really way too much going on and I have no idea what to say about anything right now.

I went to my class reunion last Saturday. I didn't WANT to go, I kept telling them NO but they kept calling and I decided to go to get them the hell off my phone. It also gave me an opportunity to buy a new suit. Calvin Klein. $320. Well, that was the tag, I got it for $69.99. When it was delivered (yep, I got it on line) I had buyer's remorse and decided I would wear my old stuff, I'd rather have the 70 bucks, as I would probably need it to pay the bar bill I fully intended to incur at this shindig. I was also nervous about the skirt, which I had doubts about to begin with. I don't wear skirts. The jacket was yummy, cobalt blue, lined, fit really nice. But the skirt, like all women's skirts, ended up being an inch and a half shorter in the back because it hiked up where it went over my butt. I don't know WHY designers can't seem to figure out that, unless you're a runway model, women have butts and it's just a geometrical fact that a skirt will have to lay on said butt. They need to be a bit longer in the back BEFORE one puts them on. But NOooooooo. They're perfectly even on the hangar. Not on you.

Anyway, I hemmed and hawed and my son talked me into going to Macy's and getting a pair of black slacks to replace the skirt and I wore it and it was okay. I was working the name tag table. With someone from my class who was always, well, let's say a character. I, on the other hand, was a fat nerd, which was ever so much better.

I think she was stoned. Perhaps in tribute to the early 70s, which is when we graduated, I'm not sure. I spent over an hour at the check in table with her. Sort of. I spent over an hour, she probably spent about 25 minutes. She needed a break, she needed the bathroom, she needed a smoke.

It was the same old stuff, every damn reunion is the same. A bunch of aging people, some of whom I remembered, some of whom I recognized and some of whom I gushed "Oh, my GOD, you look WONDERFUL!" when, in truth, I wouldn't have recognized them if they had walked into my living room and introduced themselves. I told 27 people I didn't recognize that I'd know them anywhere.

Then we looked for name tags. I had the front of the alphabet, my companion the back. I would look through my tags, not find the name and say to her "Do you have Susie Smith?" She would continue to talk to other people. I would repeat the question. On the third time she would turn and say "what?" "Do you have Susie's name tag?" She would turn back to whoever she had been talking to. I would then start plowing through her tags. She would ask:
"What are you looking for?"
"Susie SMITH"
"Oh, I haven't seen her come in"
"Do you have her name tag?"
"Who?"
"Susie SMITH"
"Is she here?"
"Yes"
"I didn't see her come in"
"She right in FRONT OF ME"
"Who?"

I spent a lot of time handwriting name tags.

I sat at a table with the same people I sat with for the last four reunions. I ate ordinary tri tip and drank too much Bombay. There was chocolate cake, coffee, an "open mike" half hour which consisted of no one telling anything even remotely funny, a D.J. who was playing stuff from "Off The Wall" which was released about 8 years AFTER we graduated. The hubster wasn't with me. I had no one to dance with, which was actually okay, because when he's with me I have no one to dance with.

I gushed and hugged people who claimed to be glad to see me and I responded in kind. When I thought about it I realized...we didn't like each other in grammar school, we didn't like each other in high school, we never kept in touch and yet, every reunion we now pretend to like each other. I have a feeling we don't, but no one goes to a reunion in order to avoid people.

I said my three good-bys and walked to the supermarket, which is around the corner from the banquet room behind the bowling alley where the reunion was held. It was cold. I mean bitter cold. And raining. I got detergent, dish washing soap and something else...oh yeah, a pound of coffee. Which isn't a pound anymore. I checked out, got an extra 20 bucks and called a cab.

I called the cab at 10:45. It showed up a little after midnight. The store was closed, the coffee shop was closed, everything was closed. I was outside in the cold and the gin had worn off. I gave the driver my address and told him how to get there. He dumped me out about 5 blocks from where I live. What the hell, I could at least walk it from there. So me, my heels, and the bags of Tide and coffee hoofed it the rest of the way.

I am NOT going to the next one. NOT, NOT. NOT!

I came in, changed in my jammies and made a cup of tea. The hubster never looked up, he was laid out on the couch watching "Legends of the Hidden World Class I Play Poker on TV For A Living" tournament, coming to you from downtown Commerce, CA. I went to bed with an SNL re-run and the cat, who was cold and smelled just like his litter box. I came to the conclusion he was breaking wind. And that was my Saturday. A boring party in a storm, a cab driver who couldn't find his own hand in front of his face, a long cold walk and a flatulent cat.

The cat, btw, turned out to have some sort of bacterial infection. The vet has given him a shot, and we now have two weeks worth of pills to give him.

I was thinking I would like to go to Wisconsin and hang around in Madison, protesting the union busting and the Koch brothers and eating free pizza. I know about the pizza, we bought them a couple on Saturday. Mac and cheese pizza. Which makes sense, I mean, Wisconsin? Cheese?

But then I thought, how would I GET to Wisconsin, we still don't have the car registered, gas is on it's way up to 47 dollars a gallon and if I thought I was cold here in the urban village last Saturday night, God only knows what it's gonna be like in WISCONSIN!

Although, faced with the prospect of freezing to death in Madison while eating the heart attack on a plate known as the mac and cheese pizza (it looks wonderful, but, I'm afraid, may probably be the inspiration for the phrase "to die for") or giving the cat a pill, well...Wisconsin's looking better and better.