my alter ego has pompoms.

happy weekend, favorite-readers! andiepants has been in weekend mode since about noon yesterday. the kiddos were dismissed at one o'clock yesterday for the homecoming activities. yep, it's homecoming in new mexico. hooray. as i walked across the playground to my waiting miss scarlett (mike stole howie today, but more on that later), i could hear the marching band playing proudly, the drums beating and the over-excited cheerleaders and football players "whooo!!"ing to their hearts content. and i have to tell you, possibly-cold-readers, that andiepants felt a big wave of nostalgia.

i'm not sure how many of you knew miss andiepants between the years of 1999-2003, so many of you may be surprised to discover how fanatically school spirited i was from the ages of thirteen to seventeen. oh i loved it! so in honor of new mexican homecoming, i'd like to lead my fine readers down a happy little trail of high school memories. if the thought of cheerleading, school pride, or anything of the sort makes you want to puke, i advise you to click the little red x now.

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..... ok. good for you, fearless readers. first a little history. andiepants grew up in a moderately sized town located north of buffalo that loves its football. not as much as creepy super southern towns where football players could all but murder people and it would be ok, but football ranked pretty highly. slightly below the lord and red meat, but definitely above most other things. and my town did not have homecoming; instead we had "TNT", which represented the two towns who opposed each other in the annual football game (t vs. nt). and like any other football crazed community, we had activities which led up to the big game during "TNT week."

our tnt week featured themes for every school day, including some themes that i'm sure are found all over the country, including mismatch day, pajama day, school color day, etc. however, we had one day, that i truly believe stands apart from the rest of the world: lumberjack day. and no, my school did not have some arbitrary weird obsession with our wood-cutting friends which caused them to include this burly icon into our school spirit week. this, my friends, was our school mascot; the north tonawanda lumberjacks, or, if you find yourself getting tired just attempting the entire proper name, you can abbreviate it, such as we did, and say the nt jacks. oh yes, i can hear all of my long island friends dying laughing at this exact moment. but there is history behind it! we're located on a canal, and there was lumber and we shipped the lumber and..... whatever, i'm just going to keep going.

anyway, we had lumberjack day. and as you have probably surmised, we dressed up as lumberjacks. now, you might think that this would be a bummer for adolescent andiepants who always seemed to want to skank it up during high school. but no! i successfully constructed the cutest lumberjack outfit ever, using a short jean skirt, a flannel shirt knotted at the waist, pigtails, a beanie and of course, black leather knee high boots. take that, paul bunyon.

if that doesn't make you want to vomit all over your computer screen, this next bit probably will. not only was andiepants on the dance team (called..... wait for it..... lumberjazz.... affectionately known as "lumberspaz"), i was captain. head spaz. i was that girl who hosted the dance team kick off bbq and made everyone play "get to know each other" games, the one who could never get her pony tail quite high enough, and who made sure that i spent a good amount of time curling my ribbons before i put them in my hair for spirit day. i bopped down the hallways of nths with school spirit busting out of my pores. now, several years later, i can recognize, accept and possibly even sympathize with the goth kids who sincerely and intensely hated me.

the tnt car parade was held the afternoon of the big game every year. my dance ladies and i would choose a theme, spend countless hours constructing materials and decorating our vehicle and then pile ourselves into it, yelling at everything we looked at, and"whoo!"ing until our faces turned blue and our voices were hoarse. i now feel very badly for anyone who might have had the very unfortunate luck to be stuck in traffic behind it. special shout out to my brother and his cohorts, who ruined the car parade for all following years, by having several accidents, and waving IBC rootbeer bottles out of the window (which look exactly like regular beer bottles). as a result, by the time andiepants was able to participate in her inaugural car parade, there were so many restrictions and "safeguards" that it was a shadow of what it used to be. thank you, danny.

my dance team performed our routines at half time, our pom poms whirling and ribbons flying around our forced smiles. we also performed during basketball season, but that was a distant second compared to the fun we had in the fall. the crisp air, the beautiful leaves, the stadium lights illuminating our block-headed, testosterone-filled male counterparts, as they tried to destroy each other on the field. it was a great time.

and, loved readers, i do find it so incredibly ironic when i consider the fact that mike and i probably wouldn't have been friends in high school. my future husband probably would have taken one look at me, all decked out in my vest and pom poms, and said "no thanks", went off to do his version of "extracurricular activities" and left peppy andiepants to bounce around the football field by herself or with "chad, the quarterback". to be quite honest, most of the people i currently love and consider to be close friends of mine would have given me a wide berth in high school.

how amazing personal evolution is! don't get me wrong, readers, i regret my high school activities not one bit. i had a fantastic time becoming involved in my school and in the community at large, and am thankful i took the opportunity to do so. but there is a time and place for everything. peppy andie has evolved to a more peaceful andie. my once frantic-puppy-like-energy has transformed into a more mellow state of mind. and i'm ok with it. i no longer have much interest in adolescent boys throwing themselves at one another. actually, it would probably be weird if that persisted.

behold.... andiepants in all of her school spirit glory. and yes, i did win most school spirited in the high school superlatives.

this was my first time experiencing a homecoming and not being in it, or at the very least, a part of the school. and though i had fleeting feelings of sadness and missed the shenanigans of adolescent andie breifly, i feel very comfortable with adult andie. and happy that i'm not so annoying anymore.

wishing everyone a fantastic weekend and being thankful for my own,

andie.