Last weekend was crazy...
-- Friday, it stormed. We lost four huge trees, had no power all day, and all the food in the fridge spoiled. I know that what happened to many, many others was much, much worse, but that's what happened in my world. I had taken the day off from work and planned to spend the day resting up, cleaning up, and glamming up for my 40th high school reunion the next day. I couldn't iron my new clothes, re-charge my camera battery, or do much else.

-- Saturday started off great. I was tense about seeing my old classmates and having to hold in my stomach all day. Couldn't find the camera battery. Couldn't find a ring I intended to wear to the reunion that afternoon. Was at the critical hair-drying stage when I realized that the toilet was flowing over, and it was time for me to leave to get to the store on time for the sketch classes that morning. Couldn't find the plunger, and wasn't smart enough to know how to turn the water off. While I was bailing out the toilet, I could feel my hair drying flat and frizzy. Finally found the plunger. It made such a cool sound when I used it, and the way the water splashed all over my feet and the walls was totally refreshing. That's why I was 30 minutes late getting to Scrapbook Generation that day. I stayed an hour and a half, then headed back home to get ready for the big hoopla.

-- The reunion was fun. We were a small class of 30-something, and we had almost 20 people attending our three-hour get-together at the community center. My five best high school girlfriends were all there, and we had tons of fun. At one point, when I was busy organizing everyone for photos and lining them up the way that looked best, one of my friends said "you act just like you always acted." I'm assuming she meant bossy. Anyway, we were quite a group back in the late 60s. We called ourselves the Psychedelic Six because it sounded cool, and I swear that we were so sheltered and naive that it wasn't until many years later that we realized that psychedelic had something to do with drugs.

-- The girls. All six of us went to all 12 years of school together. Debbie (it was always a pain having two of us with the same name) is a high school librarian and has been coming to Scrapbook Generation and taking classes. She was the idealist of the group, and also the one who tied my shoelaces and zipped up my coat before I learned how. We walked home from school together and sang duets at church. It's been awesome to reconnect with her as adults. Tanya, a polio survivor, is a recently retired school counselor. We never considered her handicapped, and always held her crutches or helped her up and down stairs. It was just what we did. Her sunny disposition and gorgeous singing voice were legend. Donna works for the University of Missouri Extension, and was always the tomboy of the group. If girls' sports had been available back then, she would have been awesome. Patty is a bank vice president, and we always envied her height and slenderness and sweet nature. Vickie's family owns and operates the "milk in the bottle" dairy, Memory Lane, and her business had just been walloped by the storm the day before, with part of the roof being torn off, and a truck blown down in a valley. Vickie was always petite and popular and full of energy. Like all high school gals, we laughed, argued, and laughed some more. It was great to spend some time with them again -- with only the laughing part!

-- A scrapbook moment. Naturally, I was thinking scrapbooking when I was at the reunion. I have a photo of five of the six of us when we were seniors. We were dressed up for yearbook pictures, and we're sitting in a row on the bleachers. I made the rest of the bunch line up the exact same way as the old photo, and we took new ones. I'm going to make a scrapbook layout of then and now!