The Monday After!

Welcome back everyone! I hope your Thanksgiving was enjoyable. Mine was interesting—mostly in a good way. As noted in my previous post, we headed to Pennsylvania for Thanksgiving and my high school class reunion.

We decided to try and avoid traffic by leaving early Thursday morning. Interestingly enough, it wasn’t so much traffic that was a problem, but the weather for the drive north. I caught a traffic report at 5:30 a.m., just before getting on to the Capital Beltway. It started with “We thought this would be an easy morning for traffic”--never a good way for a traffic report to start. A fairly large section of I-495 in Virginia was closed in both directions while road crews sanded because of ice. I lost count of the accidents we passed on southbound I-270 as we headed north. The highway was a skating rink and in DC, we like to drive fast. Ice and speed were not a good combination Thursday. Oddly enough, once we were north of Frederick, Maryland the roads improved. We crossed through the mountains in heavy snow on the PA Turnpike, but the roads were still pretty much OK. Things turned to the worse heading up I-79 just before our exit as cars were sliding off the road all around us. We narrowly missed being rear-ended by a Volvo station wagon, which veered over to the shoulder to miss us and slammed into the guardrail. Needless to say, we were glad to get to my mother’s in one piece.

Thanksgiving was fine. My mother managed to roast the turkey without drying it out, which was a bonus. There was plenty of football and the kids were good so all in all the holiday was decent.

Friday, I argued with my mother and brother, which is always a good time, and as a result my brother got up and left the house. My mother and I continued to “talk/argue” and I think we mostly cleared the air on a few issues. My brother eventually came back to the house, but I’m not sure if he’s speaking to me. Whatever. I’d like to know the discussion he and my mother had after I left Friday evening for the family night part of the reunion.

Friday night and Saturday nights were the reunion events. Friday was a family event and Saturday was a dinner. Both events were fun and even my husband had a good time. I recognized pretty much everyone. (The class was small—only 102 graduates) The attendees were mostly the regulars that have been coming to all the reunions anyway, so no major shockers. The guys are losing their hair and what’s left is turning gray. The women, myself included, all had freshly dyed hair to hide/mask the gray. Some had lost weight; some had gained more than a few pounds. The highlight (lowlight) of the evening had to be the drunks trying their hands/voices at the Karaoke machine. Good Lord it was painful. I would just like to state here that I have never tried Karaoke and have no plans to do so in the future. Just thank me now. The drunks tried to have a Karaoke contest and they put my name on the list, but I keenly ditched out to the ladies room. Karaoke and me—just not going to happen.

The drive home yesterday was mostly uneventful. Traffic was a little sticky here and there, but not as bad as I had expected.

When I started this post, I thought it would be more interesting and witty, reading back now maybe not so much--sorry.

Stay tuned for Part II of “Can you Still Be Friends 20 Years Later”