Movin' on Up...or a title that's actually good

Sooo...something went wonky with my memory card or something and this was my best outfit shot from Tuesday. 

The weather has been super meh lately and my outfits are kind of reflecting that. I forced myself to put on color this morning:

This was kind of the best I could do. It was also too cold to wear a skirt but seriously, I'm sick of having to go out in long pants and coats after the midpoint of June.

I went to the 8th grade moving up ceremony tonight because my dear friend and former babysitting charge was "graduating" to high school. I'm not sure why we have moving up ceremonies for 8th graders, and in my day it was pretty informal, but it's gotten to the point now where girls basically wear prom dresses and heels. I  can just see how that would have gone when I was that age. "Hey mom, I need a fancy dress to sit in a hot gym for two hours and then go to an awkward dance." Yeah, right. I wore khakis and, like, an awful denim button-up shirt. 

Here are some of my observations about the whole event:

1. It's been a long time since I was part of reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

2. I cannot be around middle schoolers without flashing back to all the awkwardness and turmoil of my own 7th and 8th grade experience. I find myself comparing myself to them and trying to come off fashionably and emotionally superior. All this after a good thirteen years after getting out of middle school. Oh, how much I would have done differently.

3. Speaking of fashion, the girls were very cute and dressed up and more fashion conscious than my friends and I ever were at that age. But it's a very "I just got this at the mall" kind of fashion. Not a lot of style standouts. It's all about the right brand, the right store for them still.

A few other notable parts of the night: a guy I assume was the principal kept talking too much and making the ceremony overly long (it lasted a good 2 hours, longer than the high school graduation the night before from what I hear). At one point he kept having groups of kids stand to be recognized. As in, if you played soccer, please stand. If you were in track and field, please stand. If you were in choir or band, please stand. And on and on for about ten minutes. Then after that he started talking about how emotionally difficult middle school can be, and I turned to Tori and wondered if he was about to ask anyone who had ever been tossed in a trash can or otherewise psychologically scarred to please stand up. There was also a slideshow of photos that went on for 3 1/2 SONGS. By the end no one was looking at the photos, and many of the group I had come with had started singing along to the songs, playing air guitar and generally drawing attention to ourselves by being disruptive.

At that point we were only at hour one of two hours total.

But good times were had, everyone was proud, and after two hours sitting on bleachers I became extremely weirdly hyper. Be glad you were not present to witness my antics, part of which involved walking to 7-11 with Tori to get Slurpees dressed like this:

Notice I'm wearing purple tights under my pants. As for my face, I don't even know. And that's Tori's room, not mine.