OK, this is pretty silly even for my family.

So Alex's graduation party, to which she has invited something like 90 people, is tomorrow. And she's painting the dining room today. We have only vague plans concerning food (after I got over cackling wildly at my to-do list, which appeared to contain the item "talk to Alex about men" - actually "talk to Alex about menu" - and then promptly lost) and I think I'm supposed to make a cake of some sort. We do appear to have a moon bounce arriving sometime tomorrow morning, however, which is a good thing...assuming the guys get the lawn/field sufficiently mown.

We had planned magnificently to impress everyone (yeah) with our new living room sofa...which won't arrive for another four weeks...and our new living room carpet...which was supposed to be here today, but in fact is still in Jersey and won't make an appearance until Thursday (when, I hope to God but am not counting on, all the guests will be gone.) The TV man is the only person I'm actually expecting to be here tomorrow morning, to fix/replace the satellite receiver that got clobbered by lightning the other week. (And if I have to listen to DirectTV's tech support "I'm sure this is very frustrating for you" speech just one more time....)

I never did get all the gardens fixed up, but the ones closest to the party (and not under threat of the ever-present bees) look good. Maybe I'll run out tomorrow morning and buy some fluffy annuals to sprucew the place up. Since the hippo pond (alas) is in the path of the proposed sunroom, it isn't even dredged for the year yet; we just hope no one notices its little algae-fied self there in the corner in the tall weeds.

Alex wants traditional American cookout fare - hotdogs, hamburgers, etc., but this is made difficult by the fact that we have no idea how many people will show up - all the invitees have massive (Catholic) families and may/may not bring them. So, dinner for 10 or 100? Who knows? I've also been informed that Central New Yorkers do not eat potato salad (wha? no potato salad at the traditional American etc.?) They apparently prefer pasta salad, which I cannot abide and certainly do not want lingering in my fridge for days because we figured on dinner for fifty and got fifteen. And there's still the cake...I guess it should say "Congratulations Alex!!", although the temptation to put something really ...fun...on it instead is quite strong.

My response to all this is to buy books on Amazon - Brian, our UPS guy, is making almost daily trips out here, between my books and Alex buying grad gifts for all her various pals. Elizabeth Goudge's three volume saga of the Eliot family, four books on pre-Raphaelite art, a book on repairing stairways, one by my friend Jack Elinsky (not from Amazon, but from Rampart Press), a missing Cannell paperback - too many, and it isn't as though we had room for more books, or even for what we already have here.

Ooh, Brian just left - wonder what that's about??

I'm hiding out upstairs, wondering if there's any possibility whatsoever that I'd be allowed to sleep for an hour, or, ideally, until the thing is over. I don't like parties in general (although I usually think the prep and cooking is fun) and I don't like parents much in any circumstance. But I suppose I ought to go clean up the living room or generate a list or bake the accursed cake or...something useful. *sigh*

Then Friday is the actual graduation ceremony (at a church - thank you SO much for that *grumble*) and yet another ending. I know, I know - endings are just inverted beginnings, or some such nonsense. It's like telling someone who's going through some form of hell that it's a learning experience they will some day appreciate. I'm sure it is, but at the moment, well, it sucks with a pretty stiff vacuum. I need time, maybe, to assimilate some of these changes before moving on to the next one (booting Joe Gunn out of the house in Media, selling the house, disposing of the goods, all that still awaits) but that just never seems to be an option. I feel like I'm going over the falls without my barrel.

*knock knock* "Who's there?" "It's not the cake."