Graduation? How about organization!

My daughter and her class just graduated from high school this week! For most parents, this should have been an event to remember. For me, and maybe it's just me, it's been the week from hell.

Graduation night was very unorganized. Her high school went down to our local football stadium (gee, not at the high school anymore?) and sat in chairs on the floor while we were up in the stands, supposedly gazing adoringly at our scholars. What I really wanted was to find out who was in charge of this expedition and tell them point-blank that no, my mother who is handicapped and using a cane, is not very capable of the long walk around the stadium to start with, let alone the long walk inside the stadium to get to the "assigned" area for sitting, but asking her to walk down the stairs halfway to her seat?? Absolutely unforgiveable! Most parents attending had no trouble, granted, but there were a few in wheelchairs. They got to sit at the very top of the stairs, so the only way to gaze adoringly at their graduate was through binoculars. And finding everyone afterwards? Please! There was too much confusion and conglomerating at the nearest light pole to take pictures of the graduates to make finding someone even a sane idea!

Now the next three days did pass uneventfully, thankfully, but then it started again with Friday night friends gathering, Saturday night concert and Sunday night dinner. We did have a "congratulations" stop-by-for-cake-and-say-hi event planned for Sunday, but now it has to be planned around this dinner.

I do realize that she is of legal age, no longer in high school and perfectly capable of maneuvering her pilot's chair to the fullest, richest cruise she can find, but I thought life slowed down just a bit after high school? So far I have not seen evidence to support this - including my wallet.

I just realized that with graduation, only three things actually cost more: 1) a wedding, 2) college, 3) a baby. OK, wait a minute, 4) a divorce. No, I'm not planning on that! But I have to throw that in, those can be REALLY expensive and comparable to paying for graduation.

Melting my flower petals off

O-K! For those who may not know (and probably don't care), I live in Glendale, Arizona - a small suburb of Phoenix, also know by such nicknames as "hotter than hell", "hot as hell", and "hell is cooler than AZ!". We have now officially slipped out of spring and dove right into our summer, or what I term "our five months of hell".

I'm just asking for a little help, though it may be beyond all the powers you possess: just send a small cool front our way, maybe even a little rain, for say, every couple of weeks over the next five months? That does help make the heat out here more bearable. It gets so hot at times ("how hot does it get?") that a woman sometimes has trouble telling if she's reacting to the season of heat or her menopause.

Now I know we don't have a ton of the humidity that most other places experience, but really, I don't think there's a lot of difference between 55% humidity and 105-108 degrees vs. 90% humidity and 90 degrees. Both are equally stifling, both are equally suffocating, and both make me wish I could just live in my shower - FOR-EV-ER!

Chime in, guys, everybody can whine this time: where are you from, and how hot does it get where you are?? What's the average?