nothing i can say, a total eclipse of the heart

Today was v. v. small-town-lifeish. I realized, to my surprise, that I know several dudes named Clell here, a name I've never seen or heard anywhere else -- the name distributions here are way different than what I'm used to in California, particularly since there is no one here named Vidya. But that really wasn't the highlight, although that may surprise you. I slept for over ten hours last night and wasn't woken up by a coyote yipping outside my window like I was the night before, so that was a plus. Then I spent the day engaged in a variety of small-town activities (after making eggs with peppers, onions, salsa, and avocado, which was decidedly not small-town).

First up was a Mother's Day tea at my grandma's assisted living facility. Tea was something of a misnomer, although they did have iced tea, but they also had cake, cheese and crackers, some chex mix variant, lemonade, etc. And I won the raffle for a plant, which I can't take back to California, but which will be a great regift for my mom's Mother's Day tomorrow. My mom, dad and I went to the tea, and we hung out for forty minutes or so before packing Gram up in the pickup to go to a friend's daughter's high school graduation party. Getting Gram into the truck is an entertaining bit of work, and my dad takes a stepstool for those excursions so that she can get up a little higher before trying to boost her the rest of the way up.

The graduation party was for the daughter of a couple involved with the Round Barn site, so the party was at the barn. I ended up seeing a lot of people I knew, including Ross and Lorena (our neighbors), my old band teacher and her husband, my elementary music teacher and his wife who taught me piano lessons, Bill the retired florist, Hal and Jackie (Hal grew up with my grandma and Jackie is the British woman he married), etc. So that was all lovely, and it was good to see a bunch of people so quickly. Then, [censored] and I went down to Gram's house to feed her feral barn cats, and then my sister and two of her kids came over to hang out for a couple of hours. After they left, we ate leftovers from last night and watched a DVD (shocking, I know, since we never watch movies). And now, I really need to go to sleep -- goodnight!