Sunday, August 28, 2005

Time to buy the school supplies

This is such a bittersweet time of year. Summer vacation is over, the leaves are turning colour, the days are getting shorter. All sort of meloncholy. Except, the kids are going back to school!!!!! YEAH!!!! No more day long bickering fests. No more, "He's looking at me". No more, "I'm bored!" Ahhhhhh, the joys of fall.

But there is one more task to do before we send them off to be someone else's problem for 6 hours a day. We have to go buy the school supplies. I did this yesterday, without my children. I am always amazed at the parents who take their children with them for this task. I swear they spend at least double what they need to. The child always NEEDS the Scooby Doo notebooks or the Disney Princess pencils. Not my kids. I go, I take the supply list, I get what it asks for. No where on the list does it say you NEED the Bratz lunch box. My kids never seem to be upset by this, they accept it and are fine. Of course, I usually throw in one "cool" item. This year it was the Barbie pencil case for my daughter. You would think I was mom of the year. My 14yr old son complained that he didn't get the Barbie pencil case, so I did offer to buy him one today. He is such a comedian. I should do it, just for fun.

I never have quite understood the school supply list that well though. When I went to school (my gawd that makes me sound old), the list said:

- notebooks
- pencils
- crayons
- erasers

and that was it. Now, they list the brand of pencil crayons and the size of package to buy. They specify wide ruled notebooks or white erasers. They ask for CALCULATORS!!!!! My son's teacher asked for 1500 pages of loose leaf paper. Now, I can't talk for other kids, but I KNOW my son will not take that many pages of notes in Grade 5.

As for school clothes, I have never been one to buy a whole new wardrobe for the kids for school. Mostly since they either find out the first day that everything they picked out is now out of style, or they out grow it in a month. Of course, having boys has made this much easier....since most boys really don't give a rat's petootie what they are wearing. Hell, they don't even care if it is clean. Jeans and T-shirts are pretty easy. As for my daughter, she is still young enough that she doesn't have to have the latest designer fashions. Thank you God for blessing me with only one daughter. I don't think my bank account could survive more than that. I love her dearly, but I fear that in the next few years, her full potential for Diva-hood will be revealed.

Now, what the hell do I pack in their lunches this year?

1 comment:

Monica said...

Let me help you understand... there are some brands of pencil crayons that break all the freaking time... and if a child has more than 24 colors they spend all their time picking their colors or saying yes and no to all the other kids who want to borrow from them because they have so many neat colors that the other kids don't have... as for erasers... try erasing with one of those pink ones... and don't even get me started on the dollar store glue that you can't glue anything with and it dries up by the middle of October ;). LOL LOL LOL

I hear you though... I have a list that gives great detail about the types and sizes of books, colors of erasers, size of pencil crayons (I couldn't find a 24 as the ones that were at the store had 24 with 2 extra bonus crayons so Mikey has 26... I hope that I don't get put in the bad mommy book)...etc. Personally, as a teacher, I would rather just buy it all myself and charge the parents so all the students have what you know will work... but then parents wouldn't have the "joy" of bringing their kids school shopping.

As for clothes... Mikey is finally in a size bigger then he has been for the last 3 years and he is getting a lot of new ones cause I've waited a long time for this!