Back-to-School Shopping – Part Two

26Aug/09Off

Back-to-School Shopping – Part Two

I love shopping for school supplies. Hundreds of spiral notebooks, thousands of pens in every color imaginable. Gadgets for fastening, adhering, sealing, flying, pushing, pulling-- Maybe I should stop there.

Yay! School Supplies!

If you're responsible for hiring at somewhere like Office Depot or Staples, you'd be wise not to process my application, I'd go out of my head being surrounded by all these yummy things day in and day out!

So when the kids are getting ready to go back to school, as much as I try to get them to give me very specific lists in an earnest attempt to curb my overwhelming need to take all those homeless items back with me, the kids don't quite get the importance of being specific. And whose to blame them? The lists they come home with from their teachers seem to grow to a ridiculous size whenever the budgets go wonky.You can probably imagine just how crazy the lists are now, given how strapped the school's resources are with the massive budget cuts.

This year my husband stepped in to save the day, offering to grab up what they needed provided they came up with a list. Did I happen to mention how they're not very good at that? Yeah, I think a bit of my adoration for the stuff has rubbed off on them, too. You'd have thought they were writing out their wish list for a birthday or Christmas by the time they were done!

I thought it was way too much and began comparing what was on their list to the list their teachers had handed out and what I knew we had on hand. It went something like this:

Stuff on Their Lists	Stuff on Teachers' Lists	Stuff We Have on Hand	A Glimpse of Mom vs. Son Conversation
Notebooks	Journals/Notebooks and/or Loose Leaf Paper	Notebooks, Loose Leaf Paper	"Mom, I am not going to take that Tinkerbell notebook into class!"
Scientific Calculator	Scientific Calculator	Scientific Calculator	"I haven't seen it since Christmas last year." -Z. Dude
Pencils - lots (Ry-guy)	Pencils and/or pens	Pencils, Pens, Crayons, Markers, Sharpies, pin to prick finger so you can write with your blood	"You keep stealing our pencils, Mom." Me: "I have straight pins if you prefer."
Graph paper	Graph paper for later in the first quarter	Rulers and lined paper for a fun, DIY project	"You can not be serious." (If you're envisioning a roll of the eyes at the end of that, you've nailed it!)
Locker Buddy stuff	Three scans later, nothing at all was said about locker "gear."	Drawers full of fluffy pom-poms from a 2nd grade project, glue sticks, colored wooden popsicle sticks from a 4th grade science project, beads and string from some Christmas gift projects a couple of years ago, and much more.	"I'll use my own good grade money you still haven't coughed up and buy my own." Momzilla's response: "Negatory, rubber ducky, that 'good grade money' was lost when the bad messy room didn't become sparkling clean."

They came back with notebooks, mechanical pencils complete with extra 'lead' and erasers, and I believe I saw two bright yellow highlighters. It was just the silly string that kept me from permanently assigning the hubby to the task next time.

But I might reconsider. I got these:

Eight New Notebooks!

from their trip to the store.

Happy back-to-school supply shopping, y'all!

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About Kathie

Regular participant in National Novel Writing Month (November). Write 50,000 words in 30 days. Winner in 2003, 2005 (x's 2!), 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010. Entrant in 2004. For more about the author, visit the web page here. To return to the main page of eJourn.net, click here.