School Daze

Okay, I have pulled myself out from under the pile of school documents I need to have filled out tonight, and the checks I needed to write for various collections, field trips, etc. to write this. Every year I forget, in my eagerness to send the kids back to school, of the mountain of paperwork that must be filled out each new year for each kid. After the 45th form I find myself filling out my daughter's birthday (Thing 1) with my son's birth year (Thing 2). Yikes.

Organized though we were, having all listed school supplies safely purchased two weeks before school started, nevertheless, we faced the inevitable school supply crisis this afternoon. This consisted of the crucial and immediate need for additional school supplies that absolutely have to, positively must, be purchased for Thing 1, if her life is meant to be any sort of success. You see, since she isn't an eighth grader (she is in seventh), she didn't get the eighth grade school supplies list, or else, she would have known that she (read me) needed to buy a bound composition book for Spanish (she is a year ahead of the other kids as she took the language in the UK for three years). This obviously is crucial for tonight's homework and cannot wait another minute.

So, off I go to Staples (is there any other choice? sad really) to get the composition book while she does her homework before she has to go off to soccer practice and I have to figure out dinner. Small window of opportunity here folks. So I race into Staples, half crazed, searching madly for the composition books, and encountering no less than 769 people there. At this point, I am hoping there are any left. Eureka, composition books. But wait, do I go for the clinical "TV screen at 2 am" looking cover, or the cool hot pink and black tiger stripe? The cool one looks like it is on sale for 99 cents. But the other doesn't appear to be marked down. Ugh. What the hell? Who has time for this, I get both and then lap through the aisles frantically trying to predict the next item that Thing 1 or Thing 2 will absolutely positively have to have tomorrow, or else they will definitely turn out to be degenerate adults down the road.

By the way, Thing 1, being a law and order, compliant, don't want to stand out in a crowd or I might have to kill myself kind of gal, picked the very traditional "TV screen at 2 am" looking cover. The small ray of luck was that it cost 99 cents too.