Meet the teacher

Yesterday afternoon, we met Aidan's teacher for the coming school year. It started at 4 pm but Aidan was so excited that he started asking to leave around 2 pm! I managed to hold him off until the reasonable departure time of 3:50, although we still got there quite ahead of James, who was coming from work.

The school was the usual Meet the Teacher chaos of parents, children, bored and/or crying siblings, teachers and staff. We found Aidan's class easily and met Mrs. Corley, who will soon be our darling's new favorite person, at least until the first time she disciplines him. Mrs. Corley seems like a good combination of warmth and steel. Aidan was delighted to find that three of his classmates from last year will be in this year's class, and I was delighted to find that one child in particular from his class last year is NOT in his class this year.

We delivered the bag o'supplies, filled out the requisite paperwork and took home more paperwork to complete. At the transportation desk, we were thrilled - ECSTATIC, really - to learn that the World's Greatest Bus Driver, Mr. Kemberling, will be Aidan's bus driver again this year. Mr. Kemberling is punctual, reliable, watchful and careful, all wonderful qualities to find in a school bus driver. He is also friendly, an added bonus.

James and Aidan then left, and I went to help sell school spirit wear: t-shirts, pencils, jewelry and those ubiquitous car magnets.

Side note: There are enough things about my station wagon that scream "mom!" without adding a stupid school magnet.

I enjoyed chatting with a few people and seeing some of Aidan's classmates, but our table stayed quite busy the whole time and we had to hustle to keep up. I am amazed at the amount of money that some parents dropped to outfit their children in school t-shirts! Six pm was a happy sight; we packed up the goods, stored them in the PTO workroom and I was free to go home and enjoy that well-deserved cocktail.

And thus begins another school year.

News

The good news: James has accepted a job offer in another state! We have been living on his reduced salary for over a year - 80% since spring - so going back to a full salary plus a raise will be lovely. He will be the General Manager for a freight forwarder and we will get to move away from Georgia...

The not-so-good news: The job is NOT back in the Triangle (North Carolina), which we would have loved. We wish we had never left Raleigh back in 2005, but the fates right now do not have us moving back.

Good news to us: The job is in Syracuse, NY. We are looking forward to living again in a small city with a strong university presence, and it is a lovely area of NY. Yes, I know that they get A LOT of snow each year, it will be very cold in the winter and it will be a major, major adjustment.

More not-so-good news: While the hiring company is paying to move us, they will not buy the house. James starts his new job on 1 September and will live in a small apartment, but Aidan and I will stay here until the house sells. Let's hope it doesn't take too long to sell the house; the idea of living apart is not appealing, but we don't think that leaving a house empty to sell is a wise idea.

James resigned yesterday and, surprisingly, his current employer handled it professionally (it was a concern, believe me). Our lives are going to be absolutely nuts for some time, but we are thrilled that James has such a good opportunity in a lousy job market and that, in the long run, we will be out of Georgia. Georgia is not a bad place, it is just not a good place for us.

So...anybody want to buy our house?