everybody all friendly n sh*t
The baby started fourth grade today, which is of course blowing my mind. He has this year and next year at his current school and then will move to a 6-12 school, which I’m just kind of not thinking about.
The things that I remember most about my fourth grade year are getting glasses and taking up the flute. Clearly, I was gunning for the title of Coolest Kid Ever. (Spoiler: I lost.) My kid, however, just might have a shot. He wore the Kangol that he got in New York and the Adidas shell toes that we purchased last week. He’s going for a Run DMC/Grandmaster Flash vibe. I couldn’t be more pleased.
I don’t have the traditional first day of school picture on the porch to share because the school bus was 30 minutes late today so I didn’t have time to take pictures off of my camera. While waiting, we got to enjoy the sight of other kids getting on their school buses without difficulty and took in a torrential downpour or two. My shoes are still damp.
Despite having a new bus company this year (I called and complained about the old one as “unreliable” would be too kind of an adjective), I still had to call and get an update on the bus and got the, “Well, there’s traffic and it’s raining,” rigamarole. Sorry. Unacceptable. Saying that there’s traffic and rain in Pittsburgh like it’s some kind of unique set of circumstances is like saying, “Gee, it’s a bit sultry atop this volcano.” We almost gave up after waiting for so long but it seemed somehow important to me that the baby and the bus driver meet on the first day. When the bus finally arrived, I had to do the whole, “Here’s my one and only child. If you could now cease being an idiot from this point forward, that would be aces!” hand off. I’m pretty empathetic to people messing up at work, seeing as how I do it ALL THE TIME. But this has been a constant issue and I am getting pretty fed up.
ANYWAY…what else? The husband and I spontaneously tackled our third floor on Sunday night. It’s served as a repository for anything and everything the past five years. It’s a perfectly liveable space and it’s being wasted right now, so we started pawing through the various bags and boxes that we’ve been toting around with us since our late teens. There’s lots of just random stuff that gets shuffled when you move a lot and also lots of meaningful stuff that I’m really glad that we kept. I found a pros and cons list that I composed while determining whether or not I should go out with the husband (mostly pros, the only con being that we were good friends and I didn’t want to potentially ruin that) and a few of our angsty, early emails that essentially serve as our love letters. He found the scrap of paper that he wrote my phone number on. We don’t seem like the most romantic people, but I guess we are.
I think the start of a new school year has that unavoidable feeling of a new start, and we are, of course, going through some transitions. We’re trying to figure out what we’re doing with our life from here and I think getting the house more in shape is indicative of us finally moving forward, even though things don’t look like we thought they were going to.
If nothing else, I got to laugh at stuff like my old Venus razor.
LOLShaving
September 2nd, 2011 at 9:59 am
I YELPED when I saw that old Venus razor. Holy fucking shit. HAAAAAAA. Why is that so funny?!
Your 4th grader is adorable. I remember being so stoked about 4th grade because it was technically no longer a “primary” grade, and my teacher was a man (PROGRESSIVE!). Here’s to an awesome year for all of you.