What a fantastic 2 days at Shelley's. Kim is visiting for a month so I got to see her on Wednesday and then we all went to see Jake inducted into his high school's honor society. Jake is 16, brilliant, and hasn't seemed to have gotten himself organized to do his best at school work so it was a surprise to find he's finally hit the mark.
Yesterday we decorated the yard with flowers and tables for the evening's party. Shelley had hired a restaurant owner/cook to come to the house to cook dinner for 30 guests and it was one of the nicest parties I've ever seen. The ladies who had graduated with her just amazed me with their accomplishments.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. All was going perfectly until the moment when we were to leave for Shelley's nurse practitioner graduation ceremony. John was in the shower and Jake hadn't come home from school. Shelley was frantic, thinking he'd gone off somewhere with his friends and we would be late for her ceremony. It didn't get much better when she found out Jake had gone for a haircut! A lot of angry yelling went on in the privacy of their bedroom until John emerged with a hang dog expression on his face closely followed by Jake's arrival sporting his new haircut. We all waited patiently for Shelley to emerge, wondering if she would.
We al quietly waited in the car for about 5 minutes until Shelley, stone faced, climbed into the car. Now I love my son-in-law, John, with all my heart but I'm not crazy about his driving...even when he's calm. He raced through city streets, around corners, cutting off various vehicles, in an attempt to get to the university as quickly as possible. The atmosphere was chill plus terror as I kept my big mouth shut but thought a lot!
We were among the first people to arrive at the ceremony.
There were 14 nurse practitioner students who had worked their butts off for 3 years to achieve their goals and they all looked joyful and thankful their day had come. The ceremony was lovely and Shelley even won an award for her outstanding pediatric care. John went up with her to receive her pin and he kissed her full on the lips. All was well in the world again.
The drive back to their house was much less stressful and a good sized crowd awaited us. Classmates and their families had been invited back for dinner and the party and the atmosphere reflected the happiness that comes with their reaching a sought after goal. Apparently they had all been badly treated by one of their professors and Nicole printed out a photo of her and placed it on the pinata for the graduates to whack as hard as they could with a lacrosse stick. Cheers rang out when the pinata bit the dust and the elegant graduates stomped the crap out of it! That professor must have been pretty darned horrible!
Kim and I escaped upstairs a little early but we were tired and her poor foot was badly swollen as it usually is at the end of the day. We watched a few cooking shows on the T.V. in her bedroom because I couldn't figure out how to turn on the one in my (Lisette's) room. Remember when we only needed to press a button to turn it on and off??
I got up early this morning and tidied the kitchen...the livingroom and yard had been cleaned up the night before. I took my coffee out on the patio and gloried in the perfect Florida morning. How fortunate to be able to spend the winter in Florida!
Shelley and John went out with friends for breakfast so I tried to turn on their monstrous family room T.V. to watch the news. What a laugh...I couldn't figure out how to do it! Nicole's boyfriend, Sam, wandered in and I asked him if he knew how. He's an engineer (like Nicole) and he had a difficult time figuring it out but finally managed to do so. I'm left wondering why we needed a well educated engineer to figure out how to turn a T.V. on. Hmmm!
Now I'm back at the trailer and thinking of taking a nap before going over to play Bingo tonight. Life is good!
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