Anne's Graduation Day

Yes, I know, it's been two weeks since my last confession. . .lol. Ok, the past two weeks have been insanely crazy (am I allowed to use those two words together?). So, I'll take this in chunks and try and catch you up to speed since I know that some of you are dying to hear.

We'll start with my trip home to PA. Because I was so sick, I didn't go up the day before my niece's graduation. I woke up early instead to drive up to be there in time. Actually, I only got about three hours of sleep. Had made a CD of Sam's GB videos the night before and watched some while I ate some yogurt. Man, they were better than caffeine. Some were so funny! Somehow I managed not to get tired for the whole drive. I'll blame it on caffeine and antibiotics. lol The only annoying thing was that there was road destruction 6 miles before the last highway I needed. Took me over an hour to go that distance. Got home just in time to change and pick up my friend, Jami, who had come up from Philly.

By the time we got there. . .my head was so stuffed that I could only half hear and climbing the bleachers was so much fun! I so do not recommend climbing metal bleachers when your equalibrium. . .oh, wait, drunk spectators do it all the time. Nevermind. I got to see my great niece, Grace, (Anne's daughter) for the first time and she is adorable. Looks just like her momma.

The ceremony was just as boring as I remembered from when I'd sat on the other end 16 years ago. Damn, saying it like that makes me feel old. They haven't changed the format any though there are a lot of scholarships, etc., that we didn't have. The speeches were painful. . .couldn't help but grade them in my head (I teach public speaking). There were some good parts but mostly I wanted them to stop. lol At least none of them said, "20 years ago. . ." and then proceed to tell us about what happened to them for almost each of those twenty years. That was our guest speaker in 1989. The chorus was so off key. I turned to Brenda (my sis-in-law, John's wife) and asked if we had sounded that bad back then. She pled the fifth. Great.

The ceremony started a little after 6p. We managed to get out of the parking lot and to the restaurant (chosen by my aunt) by 9:30ish. She so should have chosen a different place because it was packed. Food was good but took forever. Sat next to my aunt (who is 83) and she did her usual routine of getting my name and my niece's backwards. Been doing it a long time. There are some things that Anne does which echo things that I used to do so we're used to it. But I could only let it go on so long. Why? Well, at one point Sissy (my father used to call her Sis so we adopted this nickname since she didn't want to be Aunt Gladys) looked at me and said, "Where's your mother?" She was referring to Brenda, of course. I looked at my brother, John, and we had a moment of understanding. Now, I could have pointed out to her for the billionth time that I was Lynn and not Anne but that never seems to work. So I went for shock value. I replied, "My mother is dead. That's Brenda." She paused, looked flustered, but then it sunk in. A little brutal but hey, the message got through. She did keep referring to Grace as an it though even after I asked, "Why do you keep calling her an it? She's a her. . .a she. . .she has a gender! She is out of the womb and there is no more puzzlement over the sex?!?" She didn't have an answer for that. lol

Anyway, I survived it. Kicked the other niece, Cynthia, out of her bed so I could have somewhere to sleep. Invoked the right of the elder relative. lol She didn't mind. Slept ok but woke up with an active brain and wrote some poetry. Friday was a pretty bland day. . .rainy and cool. Jami returned to Philly but I stayed the night at the farm. Didn't do much but write an essay and rest. Oh, and we had a girl powwow around the tv and watched Gerry interviews and Phantom of the Opera. Cindi wasn't going to but she got hooked. I think that I have turned her into a tart. lol That's cool. We can be insane together. Oh, wait, we're Kramers, too late.

next installment. . .Philly tart convention