Lunchboxes

Up late, up early -- it's always the same. You get excited no matter how apathetic you'd like to be about it. It's the first day of school. My classroom is mostly set up and I've got a farily good idea of what I'm gonna do the first couple of days, so that should go well -- although to be honest it's always chaos in a bottle until things settle down anyways.

But more important than another year of teaching is the fact that it's also a huge day for someone else:

My little boy officially starts kindergarten this morning.

There's really no way to tell you just how excited I am about it and yet how bittersweet it is that I won't be there to see it when he takes those first steps. It's just sort of the state of things, I suppose -- that grand naivete that makes you think you'll always be there for these sorts of milestones, only to have those unexpected clouds of reality take them away from you.

I mean, it's not like I'm not going to be involved at all -- it's just that it's kind of a bummer that I can't be as viscerally connected to the actual moment as I might like to be.

Still, I'm totally jazzed and will be there the first chance I get this afternoon to ask him all about how it went and who he met and if he liked it and if he wants to go back and all those cool things that always made it hard for me to sleep the night before a day like this.

Knock 'em dead kid
Daddy's proud of you.

[Listening to: R.E.M., "Fireplace"]