Last night Jordan graduated officially from high school. We were up quite late, dropping people off, fetching Noah and Sophie from in-laws, went to bed about 2:00, relieved that It Was Over With.

At 5:30 AM, Debby got up to pick up Jordan from the school sponsored all night party. At 5:35 Noah came into our bedroom. “Dad. (Mmmh.) I sort of forgot to build a float for today’s state fair.” (Each student was supposed to create a “float” representing a state–starting with a shoebox or something similar.)

So, from 5:30 to 7:30 AM, we sat down in the dining room with construction paper, laptop (to look for images), and a vacant ice cream box  (former home to 2 half-gallon cartons from CostCo God Bless America), made up a state flag, and created a diarama of cows grazing against a sunflower meadow inside the box (which had cutouts on each end). For good measure, we found a drawing of a cow (zilla) looming over KC (Noah’s state was Kansas) and pasted it atop the flag. I was pretty darn proud of my float. If it wasn’t for him crying, I would have brought it to work to show off.

Seriously, it never ends. And if Noah wasn’t such a great kid who does apply himself, I would have went back to bed and let him deal with the consequences. But there’s a family name to uphold, too.

It’s not over with. It’s never over with. Just in case anyone with kids reading this thought that they had something more peaceful to look forward to.