I went to happy hour with my mom. I figured out how we will get along; I think we butted heads all this time because..I expected her to act like a mom all the time. I wanted to come home and have the world stop because I was there. I wanted someone to put money in my bank account and make my favorite food and cry when I left. Of course, that's not all of it, but RIDICULOUS, right?

I think my mom has the potential of becoming a good friend. Afterall, our brains are wired the same way. Even though we have different opinions, we're both the same crazy woman who could speak 5 different languages if we wanted, but cannot ballance a checkbook if our lives depended on it. She is my best resource for all things about teaching. I roll my eyes at her hardcore Lutheran talk, but secretly miss going to church with my family. I used to be mortified that my mom listened to rock instead of easy listening, and that she drank beer instead of iced tea or a small glass of red wine.

I didn't see it at the time, but I had ( have) a really cool mom. We were celebrating her birthday and I asked " so how's 45?" She said " oh, its way awesome." It's so hard to believe that she was a mom at my age. I could never ever ever do it!

So right now I'm talking to redhead Jeff from freshman year. He found me on facebook. Stupid facebook; the source of we-were-friends-for-like-a-day-but-now-we're-on-the-same-website-lets-catch-up!Jeff was the first guy up here that I "dated". We met at one of those lame freshman mixers. I was standing by myself watching this guy play guitar on stage and Jeff approached me and said something really dumb like " so do you like music?"

He asked for my number and we started hanging out after class. I just liked having attention, since all the boys in highschool I had known since 1st grade. Turns out he was a Baptist preacher's son. And yeah, like the stereotype of the pastor's kid, he rebelled in any way he could. At the time I was going to church a lot. I didn't really drink and thought that maybe I would like to get married when I was 21-22. Jeff showed up to church late one day, and I noticed there was a little blood seeping through the back of his shirt. Turns out he had *just* gotten a tattoo. On a sunday night.

We started drinking together on school nights because our classes were too easy and there was nothing better to do. He played guitar, but probably only took it up to pick up girls. He was good at it though. He hated his dad, and loved to sing and play "praise and worship" songs after 3 or 4 shots of vodka. I smoked my first cigarette with him. He was a major asshole, but I didn't care because I was tired of being in my goodie-goodie pretentious intellectual bubble. ( The ironic thing was that Jeff was probably smarter than I was ).

We lost touch because we met other people. I found out that the church where his father preaches is the biggest church in the wealthy town next to the town I teach in. I named some of the teachers who I know go there and he knows the families. The world is so small.

But yeah, he's still a jerk with a jerk job. It's always nice to catch up, but even nicer to realize you made a right decision to let some relationships go by the wayside...

29 days til 23 :-o