Someone Saved My Life Last Night.

Okay, so maybe I'm being a bit overdramatic, but still.

Last night was graduation at the high school where I teach. I'm a pretty emotional kind of girl, so little things like saying goodbye to "my kids", knowing I'll never see some of them again is a pretty big thing. Add to that the fact that I was also saying goodbye to a mentor who is retiring, having someone mention a memorial for a recent graduate who was killed in Afghanistan, and my being quite invested in one particular student's crossing of the stage, and I was pretty much a basket case.

In recent years, the staff has had kind of a party going on in the staffroom while a simulcast of the ceremony is broadcast on the wall. Now, you may remember that after the ice cream incident yesterday, I had absolutely no wiggle room left for the night, and almost nothing left for the week. Being in the staffroom with my friends, all of whom were offering me tonnes of yummy food, while I was hyped up emotionally ... Well, you get the idea. But I said no to everything: the sausage rolls, the cheesies, the chips, the chicken fingers ... all of it. But it was wearing me down, and by the time all of the students had received their diplomas, I had decided that I was going to give in and have a piece of the graduation cake at the reception in the gym.

All the way down to the gym, I was joking with a couple of friends about getting all the cake before the kids got there. Ohhhh, cake. Yummy cake. I was only going to have a small piece, I told myself, because graduation only comes once a year, et cetera, et cetera. Who cares that I had no points left? Gimme cake!

So I strutted triumphantly into the still-empty gym, and stopped dead in my tracks.

The woman cutting the cake was my friend and WW-meeting-pal, Beth.

We said our hellos, she introduced me to her fellow cake-cutter, and I took a couple of pictures of the cake. Finally I leaned over and said to her, "Am I ever glad to see you. Don't let me have any of this, okay?"

And so I didn't have any. Just seeing Beth there was enough of a jolt back to reality, and I smartened up.

Phew -- that was a close one.