Graduation Day

It's Sunday, lazy time by the fire and catch up day. I haven't blogged in so long I'm not sure I even remember how. Life sneaked in and took all I had to just live, it didn't leave me anything to blog with. The next few blogs will catch you up on why I haven't had time to blog the last few months.

Let's start with Graduation

My boys graduated in May. With all the others all I had to do was show up and look pretty, sit through the ceremony, have a few pictures taken and go home with a sigh of relief that I had somehow managed to pull it off once again. Not this time.

I home schooled because I felt it the better choice for my children. They didn't need to learn how to do recess, they got plenty of play at home. They were all very accomplished at eating so that made lunch wasted time too. Then there is the fact that no one, absolutely no one, can be prepared to take on The Demon Seed and The Devil's Advocate. They can make a school shooting look like a Sunday picnic. Being close friends with the school administrator put me in a position of having far more to do with any school (with the exception of attending) than I ever wanted to be. But weighing the pros and cons I decided it was better to be a little more involved than planned rather than being sued by the school system for something one of them did.

The week of graduation started nice and peaceful, the sun was shining, the weather was beautiful and then I get the call. We don't have a photographer, he is in the hospital with the flu. I will NOT apologize for the thoughts that went through my head concerning his condition and possible outcome. So at the last minute I am running around trying to find someone, anyone who isn't already booked up. Just as I was considering throwing a Nikon around the neck of the homeless man that stands at the corner of K-Mart I remembered another close friend of mine is a professional photographer who hates children almost as much as I do, therefore avoiding any and all school functions. I begged and promised that none of them would attack him and eat his face off he agreed, as long as I run interference between him and parents. Didn't sound like such a bad job, I can run interference very well, so I promised. What I didn't see coming was all the gowns that were suppose to come already pressed with tassels attached to caps coming folded up in very small plastic squares, having to print out 200 last minute programs for ingrates that showed up without sending in their RSVP's and the computer system that runs the video being written in a programming language that might as well have been Chinese to us making it incompatible with our own system. I grabbed Demon Seed and sent him to work on the programming problem, which he had rewritten in no time so we did get video. I am ironing all those gowns and printing programs while other school officials were trying to keep the hoards contained and doing other last minute work. The poor photographer was on his own, he is now speaking to me again, but in rather clipped British tones. At some point during this fiasco I kicked off my shoes and promptly forgot where. I barely made it to my seat to see my own children receive their diploma's when the horror hit me that at one point their sperm donor and I had to go onstage to receive a handshake and a rose and I still had no shoes. It was like one of those dreams you have where you have to be someplace but can't find an important article of your clothing so you're in a panic. I am scanning the feet of those close to me hoping against hope that at least one of them wore a size 5 or at least close enough to it that I didn't clip clap up the stairs. No such luck, someone, probably me, had seated us beside a family of Donald Duck's on each side. I was resigned to go barefooted and just explain the chaos years down the road when anyone looked at the pictures. About that time here comes my friend, running down the aisle like a football player holding my shoes under her arms. She had found them in some far recess of the church. So at least I managed to go onstage with shoes on that were actually mine. The problem was we went onstage to be met by no students. Our brilliant students, you know, the ones that played around during the whole rehearsal? Well, they went to the wrong side of the stage. We both realize the mistake at about the same time and in our attempt to rectify the situation, let's just say our paths crossed like ships in the night and we still ended up on the wrong side of each other. Personally I was ready just to grab the nearest student off his/her chair snatch the damn rose and blame the photographer years down the road for taking the wrong pictures. I also knew that The Devil's Advocate being blessed with my patience must be thinking the same thing and was probably ready to just shake the hand and hug his principle. A little eye contact and one last attempt and we finally arrived on the same side of the stage.

Now it's time for the reception dinner. My friend knowing I can not be trusted around food did not put me in charge of any part of this so I could kick off my shoes and just enjoy all the good food.

The boys graduated with honors, the ceremony was beautiful, we have tons of great pictures and good stories to tell. My shoes? Well they are exactly where I kicked them off the second time and forgot about them. Lost once again in that cavern of a Church.