I almost always try to post something on my birthday. This year coincided with my son's high school graduation; it made for quite the weekend.

I was up early on the 30th in order to arrive early enough to play chauffeur for my step son Jimmy, his girlfriend and John's girlfriend's mother and brother. Not that I minded but it meant getting up at 5AM. This will be an important fact as the weekend goes on.

It was nice to have interaction again with Jimmy. He has had a tough adolescence and I always feel as thought I carry part of the guilt due to what happened to my marriage to his mother. We had the opportunity during the day to talk some of that out.

I sat with my ex and the rest of the family which gave her and I time to talk. We talked, laughed and gossiped about family and friends. It is good to know that we can be friends after all we have been through.

And then there was the star of the day, John. Each move he made during the ceremony I flashed back to what I was thinking and feeling 29 years ago. As if it were yesterday, I could see and hear everything around me at the Warwick Musical Theater. The excited nervousness of each conversation around me. The way we looked at each other almost as if it were the last time. The smug smile I had on my face as I pulled my diploma from Ed Miley's hands, walked a few steps, crouched down in a "Chorale victory - Yessss" and then leapt over the three steps off the stage in a single bound.

15 years earlier, as Jimmy went off to his first day at school, me, John and their mother stood on the curb watching him drive off for his first day of school. My ex was weeping while I smiled at waved goodbye looking forward to 6 hours of peace and quiet. Now, I was the weeping parent as my son strode across the stage and took his diploma.

Afterwards there was a party where he was piled on with gifts. We had originally planned on heading off for our next day at Disney but we ended up at a 10:30 showing of "Up". Never one to miss seeing a Pixar movie, I had no problem with the change in plans. Not even considering that I had been up since 5AM. It was until just recently, when I went to see the movie again, that I realized that I had fallen asleep not 15 minutes into the movie. John swears I didn't snore.

We got to my place in Jensen Beach around 2AM and got as much sleep as we could for our next day at Disney. More on that in tomorrow's post.