Well, hello there!
This is a picture of me and my two good friends from high school, one of whom is a lawyer now and is probably drawing up some kind of legal "cease and desist" document to get me to take her picture off of my blog, and the other whose BIRTHDAY IT IS TODAY! HAPPY BIRTHDAY LISA!
And– so? Did you have a nice Thanksgiving? I barely know where to start, man. First of all, if you'll recall, I was going down to San Diego to have a festive Thanksgiving breakfast with my grandmother, aunt, uncle, and cousin. I did indeed get up at 6:00 am on Thanksgiving day, and was ON THE ROAD by 6:30. Yiiiikes! There was no traffic on the way down there, and it's a good thing there wasn't, because let's say this– my family was already there, waiting for the restaurant to open, at 8:45. They are morning people– all of them, which sometimes makes me wonder if I'm related to them at all, or just some kind of freakish, strawberry-blonde, night-person anomaly.
Anyhow, it wasn't really Thanksgiving breakfast– just breakfast, and then we went to see my aunt's art gallery, and then, after like a cumulative 90 minutes of socializing, my grandmother was all "ok…I'm going to go watch football," and my uncle took her home. I would've been offended by this, but this is pretty much common behavior for her, and I was not at all surprised to learn that later she complained that I "drove all the way down and didn't even stop by her apartment," when in fact she'd made it pretty clear that she wanted to go home by herself. Ah well– by that time I was already back on the road.
Which is when the traffic started. Did I mention the traffic, that I was not expecting, on freaking Thanksgiving Day? Oh yes, the traffic. The inexplicable San Diego/ Los Angeles traffic, the traffic that doesn't take a holiday. The traffic that made it so I left San Diego at noon, and finally pulled back in to my driveway at 5:00 pm. Yep. Four hours to go 120 miles. I did stop at this awesome barbeque place in Venice to get some turkey/ Thanksgiving related food, but still– that is a long time.
Now's when you're going to go "oh my God– you ate the food alone? That's just awful– you should have come over to our house," and I will have to reply– "Thank you, but no– I should not have come to your house, because I got up at 6am, then ate with a 97 year old woman who started complaining about me before I was even all the way out of town, then sat in traffic for FOUR HOURS, and by the time I got that food and got back home, I wanted nothing more than to eat some turkey and yams and then return my sweet bed, where I watched one episode of CSI, then went to sleep at 8:42 pm, as if I was 97 years old." Seriously, don't even worry about me, because I barely remember the night myself. Road exhaustion combined with tryptophan from the turkey really did me in.
Anyhow, the next day was Friday, and once I'd recovered from my minor case of Thanksgiving PTSD, I got back on the road and drove out to the desert, where I went to a high school mini-reunion that was planned on Facebook, of all places. I think it's safe to say I'm much less depressed and neurotic than I was in high school, so I always have a good time seeing people from the past, now that I have (somewhat) gotten over myself. Still, it HAS been almost 18 years since I've seen some of those people, and I didn't quite know what to expect.
Oh, I should also mention– I have an ongoing love/ not so much relationship with Facebook, simply because sometimes its so great to reconnect with people that you shared experiences with and really missed, and sometimes seeing people from the past makes you revisit alot of emotions that you might prefer to leave buried (mostly about yourself, if we're being honest). I have more to say about this, but this post is getting kind of long, so let's just say I had a really good time, and, even more than that– I was just really interested to see where people's lives had taken them, having now known some of them since we were all 8 or 9 years old. Maybe because I just love stories (writing or reading), I'm just always fascinated to see the series of choices people have made in their lives that have led them to where they are. Some people didn't show up, maybe because they weren't happy with where they are in their lives, or maybe because they didn't like us, or maybe they just aren't around here anymore. Some people we probably will never see again. Some people….oh, you know. It's a high school reunion. Use your imagination. I was trying to write a funny recap of this event, but it just turned nostalgic. So there you have it.
Saturday I drove back (more….traffic…..so….much….traffic….) So much traffic that I stuck my camera-phone out the window and took a photo.
Up next: a trip to the east coast next week for some holiday parties and meetings, and a brand-new cover for Hollywood Car Wash, which I will be debuting later this week. Oh, and also? I think you really should take note of the fact that I am smiling in the photo above— something I rarely do because I think it looks weird. So– there it is! Savor it!