I did go with my sister to her little mini-reunion last night. It turned out that it was at a sports bar, so there was alcohol on the premises. Oh my lord, was there ever alcohol.

That guy that my sister and I are both kissing? He was her prom date. Twenty years ago. It’s totally ok that I (as a married lady) am kissing him, though, because I am 99.9% sure that he is not into girls at all.

I think I had about four vodkas with cranberry juice, and I? Do not hold my booze so well anymore these days. You’d think I would’ve learned my lesson after that incident with the wine a couple of weeks ago, but apparently not. So I woke up today with an unbelievable hangover, cancelled my playdate with Danielle because I felt so wretched (I’m so sorry, Danielle!), and I’ve been trying to fake it that I’m fine all day because I don’t want to give my dad any fodder to lecture me about how I shouldn’t drink.

Besides, I woke up to this face, so I kind of had to try to get my act together:

I’ve been nursing water, ibuprofen, multi-vitamins, and Pepto-Bismol all day trying to make myself recover. It worked pretty well. I met up with some of my friends from high school for dinner tonight at a pizza place that was sort of Chuck E. Cheese-ish, and I actually felt ok by the time I got there.

See? Do I look hungover? I think I made a pretty decent comeback. I do still feel pretty lousy, though. Hopefully I’ll be totally over it tomorrow, because I’m planning to eat my body weight in ham, turkey, dressing, and sweet potato casserole. Oh, and we’re making cake. Mmm.

My parents are at the airport as I type this picking up my sister. Catie is napping, so I thought it was best that she and I stay here, rather than wake up a grumpy, under-napped toddler, just to strap her into a car seat for a little road trip out to the glorious Jackson International Airport. (The “international” in that title always makes me giggle. I think there’s maybe one flight a month to Mexico, but I guess that’s enough to qualify as international.)

I’ve warned my parents that they should expect that all of the toddler hugs and snuggles that they’ve been getting for the past week to come to an abrupt end the minute my sister sets foot through the door. Catie adores Tracy (she calls her “Dacy”), and I know she will be absolutely ecstatic to see her.

This evening, Tracy is supposed to go to a little mini-high school reunion of her own, and she’s invited me along since I’ll know a lot of the people there. Most of them graduated with her and are a few years older than me, but it could be fun. The problem is that a lot of them are super-conservative, born-again Southern Baptists. Which means there probably won’t be any alcohol there, and lord knows I’m going to need a drink if I’m going to spend an evening with them and have to keep my big bleeding-heart liberal mouth shut.

I’ll probably go anyway. There will be at least two people there who I don’t get to see often who I really like, plus getting to hang out with my sister is usually pretty fun. And this also means that I’ll get a second use out of The Hot Shirt, because I didn’t pack anything else cute. So I guess that’s good.

Btw, have I mentioned that I miss Dave? Because I really, really do. And so does Catie. Ever since we started letting her talk on the phone with him, she now brings me the phone constantly, asking for Daddy. And when I tell her that no, we can’t call him right now, she cries. Poor kiddo. Oh well, only four more days until Saturday.

Last night was – oddly – totally normal. It’s bizarre to me how there are some people that you can go more than a decade without seeing or speaking to, and then when you do, it’s just totally natural. You just pick up where you left off and it’s all smooth and easy.

One of the girls who was supposed to meet up with us, Allison, was a good friend of mine and a close neighbor when I was growing up. Sadly, she couldn’t come because her baby came down with a fever, so she stayed home to take care of her. It was a bummer, but hopefully I’ll see her next time.

The other two girls, Melanie and Michele, have obviously stayed close friends over the years, so it was a little weird at first that they have this entire rapport with each other, and I didn’t really fit into the equation. But then after a few minutes it was totally relaxed and fun and nice. I even got an apology from one of them about an incident in high school, which I never really thought was her fault to begin with, but it was nice to know that she thought of how the whole thing must have affected my feelings.

It was also funny that Melanie married a guy who we went to high school with – even though they didn’t date in high school and weren’t even really friends at the time, if I recall correctly. Apparently they started dating a few years after they finished college, and now they’re married and have an adorable baby girl. Weird, but very cool.

So yeah, it was good. Great, even. We’re going to try to get together one more time before I leave town – and hopefully Allison’s baby will be better by then so she can join us. Maybe I’ll even remember to take my damn camera out of my purse next time, since that was one thing that I intended to do and totally forgot. Oops.

Oh well, my mom did get this one of me and Catie:

It cracks me up because Catie was saying “CHEESE!” when my mom took the picture. I have no idea how she learned that, because we sure didn’t teach her to do that. But I think it’s a contender to be the next picture on the sidebar thingy over there on the right.