rainy day graduation ...

my daughter's high school graduation is today -- well this evening actually -- and it looks like its going to be a rainy one.

one thing you have to know is that the high school that she goes to does not have an auditorium. until we came here, i had never heard of such a thing. all three high schools that i attended have their own auditorium and when i graduated from the third one, it was in the auditorium. my brother graduated from high school in an auditorium as well. so the fact that this school didn't have an auditorium was just so foreign to me.

for drama plays and musicals and any awards ceremonies they always used the local opera house, but its not big enough to accommodate all the ppl who come for a graduation. its barely large enough to accommodate the graduates and their parents, let alone all the family and friends who would come to a graduation.

so the high school sets up two places for graduation -- the gym and the football field. obviously, everybody prays that the weather holds so that the graduation can be held on the football field because it can hold so many more ppl -- thus, lots of friends and family can come and watch the ceremonies. however, if its a rainy day, they will move the ceremony indoors into the gym -- which then means that each graduate is given 4 tickets for their family members. this might be ok if there were not a lot of siblings or two sets of grandparents and u know in this day and age of divorce, there r lots of mixed families so then we have step parents, etc. even in our own family -- four tickets means that her father, me, and her brother and grandfather r for sure, but her grandfather's girlfriend has to stay behind. although ppl might want to come, they can't and those that can get to sit on backless bleachers for 2 hours listening to speeches and waiting for the opportunity to see their loved one receive their diploma.

so here we are. graduation day. the kids r at the high school right now rehearsing outside in the rain and cold just in case that the rain breaks and the ceremony can be held on the field. they had the inside rehearsal yesterday when the weather was really nice, which left me scratching my head and saying, why didn't you do the outside rehearsal on a day when the weather was nice so the kids were not standing around in the cold and wet and have the inside rehearsal on the rainy day, but then i'm not the principal, so that's not my decision to make .... and of course, the forecast for tomorrow is sun ... so you know there's this part of me that thinks -- just postpone it a day ... but they won't because they hold this huge project graduation party for the grads from 10pm to 4am of the evening of graduation ... so yeah, postponement won't happen...

this aside, i have to say that the school goes through this EVERY year at graduation time. 4 years ago when my son graduated it was the same deal -- and we sat in the spitting rain for 2 hours because ppl wanted to make sure they could accommodate all the family and friends who had showed up for the ceremony and that was ok -- not great, but at least everybody could come. so knowing that at least for the last four years (and i'm guessing more years prior to 2006) they have had to deal with this very same issue -- it kinda makes u wonder -- how come they haven't made moves to try and fix this issue?

all i know is that my daughter -- my baby -- will be graduating tonight and i will either be sitting with the ex, my son, my father and his girlfriend in the rain and cold trying to protect my digital camera so that it will still function when the time comes to get pics of her walking in and getting her diploma or we'll be sitting on hard backless bleachers in the gym with one less person (the girlfriend) and hoping that we're near an end to even get any sort of picture at all... it should be interesting, but either way -- my baby is graduating .... and that is cause for celebration no matter what mother nature throws at us ....