What's been going on (the non-medical version) part 1 of ??

I keep starting things to post here and then not finishing them because they get tangled up in my health and loss of function and fears about the future. So I'm going to try starting with some bits about things that don't relate to those. I'll try to post most of them over the next couple of days as they're all written now.

*Cordelia turned 18 in May. She was very puzzled by how Scott and I reacted with a We Did It! She doesn't feel different, and it's not like we think we're done parenting, but we got from infant to legal adulthood. Milestones. They're a Thing.

*Cordelia got her driver's license two days after her birthday. This required multiple trips to the Secretary of State because she had to have a learner's permit to test. The first one expired on her birthday and couldn't be replaced until after it had expired. Fun times with bureaucracy. Because she's 18, she has no curfew on the license.

*Cordelia graduated on June 7th. The ceremony was on the school's football field. It had rained all afternoon but stopped early enough that the seats in the bleachers were only a little bit wet. We'd brought towels and umbrellas, so we were set. Each graduate got four tickets. There was supposed to be separate seating for vaccinated and unvaccinated (or mixed) groups, but I couldn't see that. There were a lot of people because there were 330 kids getting diplomas (and some who weren't there but had to be named). The guy announcing Cordelia's part of the class mispronounced her last name.

We were lucky. It was a rain or shine event. At least one of the other local high schools had their entire ceremony in pouring rain.

*There was a post-graduation upset due to the school removing some already posted photographs from Facebook and then editing the video of the ceremony online. One of the graduating students carried a Palestinian flag with her (they searched the kids for 'contraband' before letting them put on their gowns, so someone official knew in advance). The superintendent tried to tell everyone that that footage 'distracted from' the proper focus of the occasion. The student had been allowed to walk across the stage with the flag without interference and had their official diploma; their 'right to free speech' had been respected. A week or so later, the photos and footage were restored. As far as I can tell, a handful of parents complained to begin with, prompting the removal, and then a rather larger number, including members of 'the Jewish community' (which is not small enough here to have a single opinion on anything). The superintendent sent out an email about how, after consulting with 'our Arab community leaders and our Jewish community leaders,' she'd decided that she'd been wrong to yank the footage.

I came very close to going back to Facebook entirely to express disapproval about removing the photos and footage.

What's been going on (the non-medical version) part 2 of ??

*Scott's sister hosted a small dinner on the 16th to celebrate Cordelia's graduation. It was us, Scott's parents, Scott's sister's family (minus our nephew who had to work), Scott's sister's in-laws, and Cordelia's best friend. Our BIL kind of poisoned it in the last 10 minutes by asking Cordelia's friend what her 'ethnicity' is and then rambling a little about his coworkers from India. Scott and I both apologized to her once we were in the car.

There had been two tables at dinner, one with the four folks over 75 and with Scott's sister and our BIL and one with us, Cordelia's friend, our niece, and Scott's sister's SIL (who runs youth activities at the extremely liberal campus Methodist church here in Ann Arbor.

Cordelia hadn't wanted to invite her friend because of risk of the group of 'white old people' making her uncomfortable, but her friend had visited earlier that day for movie watching and had insisted on coming.

*When I called my brother to let him know about the graduation dinner, he was in northern Wisconsin (he lives two hours away from us). He's taking a long trip, bicycling as far as he can get. He doesn't have a car with him, just his bike and what he can carry on it.

It's not a thing I'd ever want to do (even if my knees didn't hate bicycles), but he really enjoys that sort of thing.

( Cut for discussion of maternal cancer. Not detailed )

*My sister and her son are in Michigan right now. They spent an afternoon with us before they headed to Lawton to stay with our parents. Well, my sister spent the time with us; my nephew spent that time fishing in the Huron river. That's apparently become his go-to for quarantine activities.

*Cordelia sat and listened to me and my sister talk. She was kind of fascinated to discover that I actually had a childhood with Events. Scott and I don't talk much about high school because we didn't meet until mid-college. Neither of us are really in touch with people from that part of our lives, either. My sister is fifteen months younger than I am and was a year behind me all the way through school. We shared some classes, and because it was a small school, we had a lot of the same teachers.