I am hosting a grad party for Arabella this weekend in two days. Two days! I just spent the morning cleaning the house and spent 5 hours this week weeding. I think there is going to be a point where it is just going to have to be good enough. That’s the thing about weeding. Everyone notices if you don’t do it but no one really realizes how tedious of a chore it is if you do.

I’m feeling a little stressed about the party. All of my closest friends will not be able to attend. My best friend has the funeral of her uncle/godfather out of town. Most of the other people that are coming haven’t seen my daughter since before COVID. So in other words, before she really started to struggle with mental health issues.

There are two questions I am dreading. The first one is why isn’t your dad at the party. I can only hope no one notices since he wasn’t the most involved before. I am sure I am going to have at least one person ask me that though. I’m not much of a liar. Perhaps I should say that my dad is a pedophile and was not invited. Maybe I should just say that he is sick. But then they might think he has COVID since I’ve been having a lot of questions about that as well. What are my chances of getting the Delta variant if I come to the party? Will there be any of those unvaccinated people there? Really, how should I know who is vaccinated or not?? I’m not going to be checking vaccine cards at the door. I told those people to make whatever choice they feel most comfortable with.

The second question might even be harder. Arabella has extensive cutting scars on her arm. Almost everyone coming has not seen her since before COVID meaning that they are not used to seeing her wounds. Now she could cover her arms but she probably won’t. She recently got a semicolon tattoo on her wrist. It’s really quite moving that she wants to be authentic and remove the stigma of keeping mental health issues and suicide attempts hush hush. She can’t undo the scars. Is she supposed to spend the rest of her life covering it up? She is not ashamed of her struggles, but her arms are a painful reminder of what she and all of us went through. I have mixed feelings about whether she should cover them or not but it is not my decision to make. I should probably warn her about comments though.

I’m sure I will get questions about it that I don’t want to answer. I can pretty much guarantee that my niece Gracie will say something blunt and rude. Right now I am happy that my daughter is still alive. But I am afraid of the comments she might get because her arms are really shocking. She also cut up her legs but you can’t really see that unless she wears a swimming suit. Plus she grew a couple more cups sizes since residential so her appearance is very attention grabbing.

Also, today my mom is getting a heart monitor. Her anxiety medicine is giving her tachycardia so she has to wear the monitor for 2 weeks. She is going to love all the attention she gets at the party. Tomorrow is her birthday and she wants us to take her sailing. I thought having the party the weekend of her birthday would be a good opportunity to get together with my brothers for her birthday. But the only brother able to go is Matt and he is disabled and has a hard time getting around. My mom is also afraid of water but she wants to go. It is supposed to rain and she can’t get the heart monitor wet. We’ll see how it all goes. It really couldn’t be worse timing since I have so much to do for the party.

I really hope the party goes well. I am a little worried about it. Well, I better get back outside to do more weeding. It’s kind of funny because yesterday after weeding my husband saw a rather large snake by a bush I just put my hands under to grab weeds. As if I don’t have enough to worry about. Now snakes!!