the heart of rock and roll is still beating

I need to go to sleep immediately so that I can wake up in time for Graduation Round Two, but today was lovely. I slept for eleven hours last night, which was much needed, before finally getting out of bed sometime well after eleven. That left me less than two hours to get ready, which was both plenty of time to get ready and not nearly enough time to procrastinate and avoid the task at hand. But, I finally got dressed (in a black tank top and jeans that I hadn't intended to wear, but most of my clothes need washed and the remaining options were all dresses that were too nice for a casual outdoor graduation party), ate lunch, made coffee (Philz french press, which I'm sure is an abomination in this neck of the woods), and loaded [censored] up in my father's truck so that we could drive to my cousin Drewbaby's party.

Drewbaby lives north of Des Moines, which is almost two hours away. That's not really so bad, but between us, [censored] and I have probably driven to Des Moines at least ten times in the past two weeks, so we're kind of over the scenery at this point. Also, we took Gram, who asked us five times in the first four minutes about how my dad was feeling, since she's vividly remembering his surgery but is completely failing to remember that he's out of the hospital and that everything went really well. Sigh. Needless to say, spending four hours in a car with her was an entertaining/amusing/heartbreaking experience. But, we got up to the party with no issue (even though I'm still driving my dad's gigantic truck, which I find quite enjoyable -- and even more enjoyable was the look on Gram's face when she realized I was driving).

All in all, the party was really lovely. They'd cleaned out their machine shed and had set up tables inside, which was great since it was both hot and windy today. They had a baked potato bar (yum) and a bunch of walking tacos -- a delicacy that I hadn't realized growing up seems to be confined mostly to Iowa and possibly some points farther south. I'm sure I've mentioned it before, but you take a personal bag of Doritos, cut off the side, smash up the chips a little for ease of later eating, and then dump in taco fillings -- meat (usually with taco seasoning), sour cream, cheese, lettuce, olives, etc. You eat the whole mess with a fork, which always confused me, since a real taco might be easier to eat while walking than a walking taco. But the food was all great, and the crowd was never too full at any given time, but there had already been a ton of people. And Drewbaby appears to be on track to graduate, which I suppose is all that matters.

When [censored] and I both got home, we were surprised to find that the parents had visitors -- they never have visitors, so we weren't quite sure what to do. Luckily the strangers weren't serial killers; instead, they were old family friends (Clell and Leanne), and it was great to see them. And now, I'm falling asleep over my keyboard, which is always a good sign to stop -- goodnight!