July Temperatures in September

Still hot and humid here in the pet eating state. I am going to a high school football game tomorrow night and I am not sure what you wear to a football game with temps in the high 80's at kickoff.  My youngest granddaughter is a "mini cheerleader" with my oldest granddaughter, a true high school cheerleader, so it is a game I cannot miss. And the icing on the cake is that my oldest grandson will be marching in the band. Three grandchildren/one activity. Cha ching.  

Tonight's harvest. The peppers are starting to outnumber the tomatoes. The tomatoes are getting smaller. I froze the tomatoes for spaghetti sauce and sliced all the peppers into strips and put those in the freezer, too.  I made freezer salsa out of the last picking.  We only have two tomato plants and two pepper plants. And we are officially in a drought here. I can't explain it. 

I should not even joke about the pets. It is a horrible racial rumor that keeps getting traced back to friend's neighbor's sister-in-law's niece's neighbor who heard that.  We are not from Springfield but the stories I have heard is how the Haitians who are here permanently and have become citizens are buying abandoned houses and rehabbing them to live in and how much better the community is looking. The rest of the immigrants are all here on the same visa's as the men in my town working at the greenhouses. I can't remember the numbers on the permit, but the company applies for the work visas with proof of need, the men apply in their country and, if accepted, come here for 10 months a year, 3 years in a row. After that they are no longer eligible for that visa. 

The men in our town (the dorm-apartments are male only) are mostly younger guys, mid-20's. They are easy to identify because they are so clean cut and wearing brand new clothes they purchase at the Walmart near the housing. They wear those short sleeved sports jersey things and athletic shorts and very clean tennis shoes. And they are so polite. I was talking to our mayor and he was told they make $5 a day in their country vs $17 an hour here. They pay federal and state taxes, somehow our state legislature has outlawed paying local taxes - even though the company and the workers are both willing. They do not want to do ANYTHING to jeopardize this opportunity. My son is in law enforcement and there have been very few calls to the complex.  I really think two overall, and they were for very minor infractions of the rules of the complex. 

Our town had lots of rumors on facebook about how people's "friends and family" who worked at small businesses in the area experiencing lots of shoplifting and theft. The store owners got together and issued a statement that this is untrue. And our local police department issued a statement that they have not received any complaints from store owners. 

Anyway.  The saddest part is that the immigrants in Springfield are now afraid to send their children to school. Families who are legal tax paying citizens are living in fear. Certainly we can do better than this. 

High School Graduation

Even my kids were appalled to learn that I was old enough to be attending my 50th high school graduation reunion.  If you have been following my saga I have spent many weeks trying to lose 50 pounds off my body and 50 years off my face as well as more than 50 dollars on various tops and bottoms since I am fashion challenged. 

The next year the photographer offered color. 

I do want to be clear that I went into this with a bad attitude (based on reunions 40, 25 and 10 years ago), but this was one of the goals set by my best friend when she was diagnosed with cancer for the second time. She even talked another friend and all three husbands into attending. 

The day was getting closer and I was coming down with a cold. The morning dawned and I had absolutely zero voice. But I did have a hair appointment with a new hairdresser.  She did something to my hair.  It did look very nice the day after.  I took a pad of paper and a purse full of cough drops with me. 

The full invitation for this event in our small town was four days long. Not that everyone was invited to all four days of activities.  The first hint was on Thursday on our class facebook page. A photo of someone sitting at a table in a restaurant at a golf course in a nearby town appeared with the caption "where is everybody". The next post was from the "administrator" saying that there were four tickets available for $109 each to the Doobie Brothers concert that evening at a place 2 hours away, if anyone else was interested in attending. 

Friday was on the invitation.  An all day golf outing at a local golf course with the "administrators" stacking teams so that a poor spouse who knows no one would be put in groups of other classmates and spouses.  That evening was a cocktail party, outdoors on a patio of a local establishment. We did not attend the cocktail party since we thought we would run out of conversation for the following evening. 

I should mention at this point that the temperatures in our area were in the upper 90's the entire weekend with "feels like" temperatures crossing the line into 100. 

So, now to Saturday.  I got my hair done in the morning for no reason I can fathom. We had discovered that the reunion dinner for $75 per person was also being held on a patio (instead of an air conditioned room) at a resort nearby. I knew it would be a frizzy mess by evening, but there you are.  

While we were busy getting ready, the class had been invited to participate in a pool party in the 98 degree heat at the resort under a cabana where they would be drinking and playing cards. In bathing suits while others are holding phones with cameras. 

We arrived about 15 minutes early so we could pick our table and did get the only table in the shade. Unfortunately we were surrounded by large pine trees on both sides so we could barely see around them.  On the other side of the pine tree beside me was the entertainment. 

Of course our $75 each included an open bar. There were two kinds of beer, a dry red wine, a dry white wine and lots and lots of liquor bottles. With all my cold meds I was drinking ginger ale. My husband doesn't drink public so he enjoyed an off brand sprite. My friend tried the white wine and switched to ginger ale. So there that went.  

The entertainment was a classmate singing 40's and 50's hits to a karaoke machine. We did not realize it was live until he was almost finished. The sound system got even louder when a DJ took over. 

They announced the food was a buffet in a nearby door and we went in to discover - a taco bar. I later looked up menus at the resort and this option was on the "Hors D'Oeuvres" menu page. 

We talked to maybe four other people. A girl that had moved out of state 49 years ago was there and my friend did speak with her. It was dark on the patio by then so it was too hard to have a paper conversation. No one made any efforts to speak to anyone other than their friend group. Our husbands, who don't really know each other and did not attend our high school, really enjoyed the weirdness of the party and were just hilarious. By the end of the evening we were planning some dinners out with just our three couples. 

I should mention how smart we were to get a table early, even if it was behind a tree and in the corner, as there was not enough table seating so other people were standing around high top cocktail tables or balancing their plate of nachos on their laps to eat their dinners. 

And in retrospect, couldn't we have had a frozen margarita machine? 

I excused myself to go to the restroom and just made it back for an unannounced group photo. I knew there were others still in the restroom, some groups in the hallway and even more who had left right after the taco bar who did not make it into the photo they knew nothing about. It turned out that we had hired a photographer for the event and there are now over 300 photos on the facebook page of a certain group of people and their spouses.  If we had known we had a photographer, we would have asked him to take a group photo at our table. 

After the photo we all hit the road. Husband and I came home and made scrambled eggs and toast.  I woke up in the middle of the night since my feet were covered in mosquito bites.  I suffer from something actually called mosquito syndrome where my mosquito bites swell up like giant hives so this made for a fun few days. And I guess a wiser person would have sprayed her feet before going to an evening patio party in August. 

My cold got even worse and it took 3 days to get into the doctor. And that morning, the office called to cancel me because my doctor was sick. They could get me in the next week.  I said no. I do feel about 70-80% better now and spent my allowance on every over the counter remedy they make. 

We did jointly agree that this will be our last class reunion.  The end.