Being the neurotic mess of a human that I am, it stands to reason that in and around momentous family or social occasions I go from charmingly obsessive to freakishly insane. Over the past five days, there was not only Thanksgiving, but also my ten-year high school reunion, my mother’s birthday, and Our First Holiday as a Married Couple, which is supposed to mean something I guess.

Because my graduating class is a bunch of slackers, our actual reunion was cancelled due to lack of response and rescheduled as an informal get-together at a local watering hole the night before Thanksgiving. After a Wednesday morning spent covered in flour and pie crust, I cleaned up, threw a nice shirt into my suitcase, and headed for Franklin.

It was hard for me to get really excited about this whole reunion drinking thing – none of my friends were going, and I have this horrible trouble with matching names and faces that tends to get worse with each cocktail. I tried to unburden my troubles while mom made the stuffing, but she was feeling the early effects of Holiday Plague 07 and kept having to leave to cough or blow her nose. After a dinner with the family where I was too worked up to eat, I spent 15 minutes circling the bar and chain smoking, trying to psych myself up for what would, at the very least, make a great blog post. Three cigarettes later, I touched up my (already heavy) makeup, strapped on my big girl heels, and tottered up to the door.

Which was locked.

For a moment, I wasn’t sure what to do. Peering up, I could see people at the pool tables, but I didn’t know who to call to let me in. In the meantime, an elderly couple approached the entrance, making a big racket and prompting a waiter to crack open the door and gruffly inform us that Incontro was closed for the evening. I took it as a sign and went home to watch Hairspray with my sisters. Anticlimactic does not begin to describe. I made up for it by drinking a whole bottle of wine, which, really, is the only way to make it through 1.5 hours of John Travolta in drag.