Saturday, June 11, 2011

it's party time.

it's grad party season. this means that GPS systems get a good workout, senior pictures are distributed, and everybody eats too much.

i'm not sure how to feel about grad party season.

i was so excited for my graduation party, i began to plan it in my head my freshman year of high school. that was in 2006. i graduated in 2010. i was a bit early, i think.

i did the actual paper planning in april. we set a date, we set a time, i made a gigantic list of people to invite, and i made a facebook event. and of course, i made a theme: chocolate desserts.

i honestly spent three hours dipping chocolate covered strawberries.

my cousin jessica and i spent most of the day decorating my garage with orange streamers and occasionally adding in some alma colors. mostly the alma colors were inside. my mother and i set up the dining room table with pictures of me and my accomplishments over the years, along with a little display of my musical hobbies. while setting up my cello, i knocked a peg and my A string suddenly became an F string.

i had high expectations for my grad party, just as i do with everything in my life.

it was decently ruined by a terrific tornado.

the tornado decided to come about halfway through the party and it brought along a nice big thunderstorm with severe winds and pouring rain. everybody who was planning on coming to my party later retreated back into their houses and did not venture to mine to eat chocolate covered strawberries. i was not too upset by the latter, because i have a weakness for chocolate covered strawberries. this meant more for me.

my brother and i before the tornado hit. :)


the week BEFORE my graduation party, the sunday after graduation, i went to nineteen graduation parties. sunday, june thirteenth, 2010, was the busiest, my-stomach-has-never-been-this-full-est day of my life.

i hooked up ethel, my dad's GPS, onto the windshield. i had a very long piece of paper in my glove compartment that had a list of all the grad parties i needed to go to, equipped with addesses to input into ethel, along with the party times. from there i ordered them so i could make it to everybody's during their respected hours. then i gave my mother a kiss, put on some extra deoderant, and set out.

i only went to nineteen out of the twenty-three grad parties that i was invited to. i ate all day. some of the parties were ridiculously fun, and others were extremely awkward. monte's had to be the worst; it was me, him, and his large gigantic black family. after his i went to my best friend jacob's graduation party, and i felt so terrible that i couldn't stay for more than an hour. he was number nine on my list, and it was already three thirty, so i had to get moving.

i ran into my parents at four of the nineteen grad parties, and i frequently saw the same people who would then ask me, "where did you come from?" and reply with, "oh i was there about an hour ago."

grad party season is milling around town, eating food, congratulating your friends, and seeing your other ones every where you go to eat yet more food.

going to those nineteen grad parties was intensely stressful. savannah lives in the middle of nowhere, but luckily, courtney lived decently out in that direction. brittany lived on the complete other side of town, and i could not find a place to park by adriana's house. at dylan's i happened on a bunch of people i went to middle school with and they decided that they didn't need to catch up with me and ask how high school had been, so i hovered on the backyard with some egg salad nervously.

on the day of june thirteenth, i had never eaten that much food in my entire life, and i had driven over a hundred miles and spent half a tank of gas just driving around fort wayne to eat more food and see more friends.

this year i have a few grad parties to frequent. there are about three that i'm actually interested in going to and two that i am truly excited for. i am pretty sure i was only invited to four.

i'm not depressed by this fact. grad parties are fun, and they're free food, and they have fun friends, but i don't think i could stand another day like june 13th, 2010. i'm much happier going to four grad parties spaced out throughout the month of june and having a nice feeling that i have kept my sanity.

i enjoy my sanity. i hope your enjoy yours, too.

so i'm coming to the conclusion that grad party season just is. it's fun, it's exciting, it's filling. it's also annoying, gas guzzling, and if you're the type of person who needs to get gifts, it's expensive.

grad party season is, at its best, simply grad party season.

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