Hi, kids! I’m taking today, through the rest of the week off from work. Today is my 7th anniversary at my P.O.E. Yay! Coincidentally, I am spending the day at the spa. I think this should be my new tradition. Every April 12th I spend at the spa.

My cousin, Kirsten, and I are going to the Korean naked lady spa. Not naked Korean ladies, well not exclusively Korean at least. It’s a Korean spa, for women, and the women hang out mostly nekkid. So we call it the Naked Lady Spa. It’s my first time there, but I’ve heard marvelous things about it. And it’s fairly in expensive.

Kirsten and are going to get a package that includes a Body Scrub, Body Moisturizing, and a Massage. When you get the Body Scrub, you have to arrive early, because they want you to spend at least 30 minutes pre-soaking in the jacuzzi pool. Oh the torture. This is where the naked comes in. No bathing suits allowed. Then you are in a room with lots of other naked ladies, on an assembly line of Body Scrubbing. And they scrub you, from what I hear, EVERYWHERE. Except your face. E-V-E-R-Y-W-H-E-R-E.

There are these rooms, these hot rooms, with rock and sand and stuff, that you can sweat in. It’s recommended you hang out in one of these rooms after the massage. When the day is done, you are supposed to be softer than a baby’s butt. People tell me they’ve never felt so soft, or so relaxed, in their lives. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Tomorrow I am going to be in Vancouver, so head’s up, Canada. If you see me, feel free to ask to touch my arm to test for extreme softness.

I found this to be amusing, and somewhat spooky.

Me and the garbage men are going to have to have a little talk. The last couple of weeks they have been using my bins to block my access to my driveway. So I have to get out of the car and move them, before I can park my car. I’ve looked at everyone else’s bins, around my neighborhood, they don’t do that to anyone else. What’s up with that? I am careful to put the proper side out, facing the street. Am I not moving them close enough to the street? are they too far back on my driveway? What is it?

God I hate a passive aggressive garbage man.

I don’t know if all of you realize how old I am, given my obvious childlike wonder with the world, but this summer would be my 20th reunion. Yes, it’s true. I am that old.

I did not keep in touch with my high school friends, except for one… Julie. I left Tulsa a month after graduation. I came back six months later, for a wedding, when I was 19. But that’s it. Like most things in my mind, I’ve taken the memories of high school, for the most part, and backed them up to to DAT tape, and they now sit gathering dust on a shelf. I don’t even have a DAT tape drive anymore. When Julie and I do talk, she’s always reminding me of stuff I did, or said, or things that happened, things that are fuzzy and vaguely familiar. Almost as if I knew someone who had those experiences, I’ve heard their stories, but they didn’t happen to me. And yet I can remember Julie as clear as day.

Even when I was in high school, I wasn’t all that. I wasn’t popular. Or particularly unpopular. I wasn’t completely inactive in school activities, but the ones I did participate in tended to be smaller, less prestigious ones. Red Cross, Key Club, French Club, National Honors Society. I had friends on various social levels, although few on the upper echelons. No cheerleader friends. I was in honors and AP classes, but by no means a star in any of those classes. Except maybe a couple of quarters of Physiology, when I would compete with my friend Michelle for highest grade. Mostly, I was in the middle of the smart kids. I was middle ground all around. My high school experience peaked in my junior year, if you can consider that a peak in life. I didn’t go to prom. Maybe I knew, even back then, that this was just not the high point in my life. I feel sorry for those for which it was. I didn’t go to my 10 year reunion, and couldn’t think of a reason why I would. Julie was living in Bolivia at the time, and if she wasn’t there, there was no reason.

Until last night, I was officially on the Missing List. I liked being on the Missing List, it was mysterious. I could be anything, while I was on the Missing List. I fancied myself an international spy. Fluent in Russian, unfortunately. No one needs spies who speak Russian anymore. Maybe I am currently stationed in the Middle East, learning to speak scary new languages, since that’s where the government says the terrorists are. [Hence the belly dance classes!] Or maybe I am in Africa, working with other doctors on the frightening AIDS epidemic. Or maybe I am living in an ashram, and I’ve shaved my head and now everyone must call me Sunbeam. Who knows? I was on the freakin’ Missing List. I could be anything I wanted.

But, like any good spy, fluent in Russian, my curiosity got the best of me last night. And I found the website for the Class of 86 reunion. And, in order to see the details… I had to register. I caved. My spy instincts got the best of me. But not enough to fake my name. I am now no longer Missing. I’m bummed. But, it’s not like anyone was looking for me anyway, there is a message board with a thread of “Looking for….” and no one was looking for me. I looked over the names of the classmates who have registered. Some of the names sounded so familiar, but again, like names I’ve heard in books maybe. I couldn’t attach faces to most of them, let alone memories.

Am I going, you ask? Well, I gave it a great deal of thought. I wondered if I would be depriving myself of recapturing some truly precious memories. If this, like the prom, was one of those Life Experiences everyone should have. I thought about it for about two minutes. And then I realized it conflicted with the Eels show at the showbox. No way am I missing the Eels. I mean, come on… it was only high school!

But I’m starting to feel a bit better. Except for the coughing thing. I have watched an extraordinary amount of Star Trek: The Next Generation – They play three hours of it back to back on some channel – and lots of other day timey television.

anyhoo… I’ll be back later. After the nighttime cough medicine wears off. yum!