I've been living la vida Whale-o lately - going under water for days without breathing in order to finish final papers and presentations...and then surfacing like a big beluuuuga, like today, lurching slowly to the surface and blinking with one big eye and blowing all that ole water out and taking a deeeeep breath. ahh. It's as if I've been away. In truth, I don't know where things are in my house or anywhere. I offered someone a ride home last night and it took forever to find my keys, ..they were actually embedded in a long-opened bag of expired Christmas jelly beans..that's not embarrassing. Anyway, I took the time to dash over to Robert Laurence in Shorewood yesterday to get a haircut...which was a good decision because it was relaxing though I worried the whole time that the car was unlocked or worse that I hadn't shut the car door even..and I didn't see my usual person but a rather new gal named Chanel who was not wearing enough (I sound like a frump, and AM by the way) who started wackily complaining that her texturizing shears had been broken by someone else and no one else had any that worked...as she tried out EACH PAIR on MY HAIR...a little irritating but I was so sleep deprived I just started laughing out loud and she's like "You have to stop moving your head, I can't get these to work" which just made me laugh harder for her idiocy...but the hair looked done, for better or worse, and that effort hopefully was translated into a decent presentation score later in class.I didn't see the kids afterwards - had to run straight to class -- the first they saw the hair was this morning.

Last night's hair: And the baby freaked out and didn't recognize me. !! Horrid!!! I had to hang out behind her and talk and do my normal wacky voices before she was laughing and let me hug her. NUTTY! So I changed my hair to match hers and it went better:

So while I was getting my hair cut, Sarah Rich's mom was getting hers cut (this is what I'm saying, in Shorewood there is one degree of separation), and it looked fabulous by the way, but she mentioned Sarah was IN TOWN and across the street! How cool!  And then there she was, and she looks as you would expect...totally glamorous and friendly with that nightmarishly young dancer bod...(fyi she went to SHS and was in my class '86).  She looks like a supermodel, is a professor of contemporary art history in State College, PA and has a 2.5 year old boy named Daschell.  I should start an alumni sightings list! Let me just say to any alums reading this who don't live in the 53211 area, living here as an adult and parent doesn't feel like it does when you visit. I love running in to people who don't live here, because I can catch a little otherwhere from the interaction and it throws golden energy through my soul like a cleansing breath that feels like fresh Eucalyptus.  "NO NO NO" I say, "it's NOT great here, DON'T feel nostalgic," I say. But I am not sure everyone shouldn't move back and we could have a community of people who know each other well, without having to say anything.  Although I could do without the "You look great for being our age!"  yi. I like a little more age diversity than that!  I remember chuckling at a friend who has stayed here all along and she and her husband refer to people as being in "my class or your class" because the age range of friends and acquaintances in their lives is about the age of my baby...16 months...whom I feel I just recently gave birth to and who is my excuse for not being in babe shape, though I think the only time I was in that good a shape was when I was an exchange student in Germany doing pre-WWII exercise fuer Vernunft and jog/marching through the forest for gym class while Tchernobyl poured toxins into the ether and riding my one-speed with the ancient generator light on the front to get anywhere. But I digress.  I guess the fact that there's a 12-year age difference between me and my husband gives me a little humor about the issue. But I think I was age-curious since long ago, so this is nothing startling. I just like to feel preternaturally young I guess. :) 

So yes, if everyone who came back to visit thought, "Aww, life would be easy living in Harper Valley again", did it, it would be weird. Like with Sarah today...I walked away and almost turned back and asked her to do her silent dance to "Sound of Silence" that she did in 7th grade, with her (in my mind's eye) floor-length hair swooping around and her miming some kind of rope and cutting it. I remember the gold lame jumpsuit she wore to prom (?) and I thought she was SO cool. And here, now, she is, still cool, skinny, funny..and taking care of her mom.  I forget that it's different for all the people I see who come back - they're coming back FOR someone in the family. I don't have anyone like family like that, though I hope to instill it in my own kids.  I know the sacrifice it entails when I tell other people's parents about my own - off in different locations (divorced, yes, but that's old news), succeeding, living new lives.  They're free! They don't have to worry about whether to sell the old house, or go condo, or have me pick up my stuff. I picked it up years ago, along with a lot of theirs, and I store it offsite and pay dearly for it but can't really deal with the fact that those pieces of me that aren't of age yet for that are floating around. I need to know where they are still. It makes me want to go on one of those "Get Rid of It" shows and win them over to keep the stuff. :)  

Anyway, so Sarah, whose mom is still in Shorewood and is one of the loving faces who makes me almost weep with happiness to think someone from "old Shorewood" remembers me and is happy for me and my little brood here now...remembers Helen's name...is happy to see her, etc.  And Sarah...I remember a birthday party of hers...probably 16...and the movie Harold and Maude was playing and I'd never seen it before and I was deeply disturbed and it quickly thereafter became my favorite movie.  So next time I see her maybe you'll already have asked her about that stuff and I'll be issued some kind of blog restraining order by the alumni association, but I think it's kind of cool and required by me to report about things like this. I am seeing it as a little bit of a requirement for tenancy in the Village, just like volunteering and starting to raise money for the schools is as well. Hell, I might have some kind of psychic crossing (or one of us might get a job in a place that actually has a job market) and might move away. So for now, I'm the one who writes what I'd want to read if I were elsewhere and just wanted a little snapshot of Shorewood every once in a while.  I don't write much about those of us alumni who live here. Should I? I would like to write about some famous people who live in Shorewood but no one knows live here. Lois Ehlert, for instance! Others? Let me know!

Otherwise, see you 'round the village!