It’s the MOST wonderful time of the year…….the kids are going back to school – SOON! I am practically giddy with excitement. It’s like anticipating Christmas when you’re 5. I am in awe – just waiting for that magical day to arrive. Does that sound mean? Too bad. I love my kids more than life itself. I like them even more than normal when I get a break from them for a few hours. I like being at home by myself when they are in school. I enjoy the solitude. Home is my favorite place to be and home with solitude, to me, is like the magic kingdom to a child. Magical!
I have been amassing school supplies. Every store I have to go to I check to see what they have on sale for back to school. I’m talking $.22 cents for Elmer’s glue, $.50 cents for a pack of 6 spiral notebooks, 6 mechanical pencils for $.50 cents. I think I might be able to get them most of what they need and a few ‘cool’ things for under $15.00 for both kids. Not bad. Not bad at all.
Both kids need new sneakers. That is no easy ‘feat’. Ha! Pardon my pun. They both have gargantuan feet. Size 12 and size 14. That will be my biggest expense. They’ll reuse the same school bags as last year. They are perfectly fine and operable. No sense buying new. They don’t mind either. They say they just got them ‘broken in’ like a favorite pair of shoes or jeans. They feel better once they’ve been slightly used.
For the past few years I have resisted the need to buy them 10 of everything for back to school. I hunt down the really good bargains like the glue, notebooks, colored pencils, etc. I make sure they have enough to get started with and then in a few weeks when everyone is back in school the stores start throwing the stuff at you to make room for seasonal items such as Halloween, Thanksgiving, and *Groan* Christmas. They want to move out all their extra stock and I can pick up additional items they’ll need for the rest of the school year and I can usually get the stuff for 75-90% off!!!!
I still have folders, glue sticks, and the like from doing this last year. It’s how you have to live when you have no discretionary income to speak of but hey, they don’t seem to mind, or if they do they don’t say anything about it. They’re too busy whining and fretting about having to go back to school to worry about not having 20 of everything to take with them.
The one thing I miss buying them is something stupid. Pencil cases! When they were little pencil cases were cool and cool pencil cases RULED. I used to search high and low to find them the neatest, coolest, most unusual ones out there. When you are 15 or 17 pencil cases are so NOT cool. They are for babies! I still look though and remember their surprise and delight when I would find the ‘bestest one’. Their little faces would light up and they would get busy in earnest arranging and organizing their upcoming school year. Now-a-days they can’t organize their own sock or underwear drawers. They don’t put anything away including their pencils. I find them laying all over – in the strangest of places. But thanks to my own organizing skills and forethought I always know who left their crap laying around because they each get one favorite color of school supplies. All I have to do is manage to remember who got what (easier to do with 2 than it was with 4) and I know who to yell at for leaving their stuff laying around. It’s usually daughter #3. Always was and probably always will be. I can’t wait to see her first apartment!!!!! I’m betting now that she’ll invite her brother over often and bribe him to clean it for her.
And I already know – he’ll go.
Hell, I can’t wait to see MY house once she gets her own place. I’m already dreaming of all the free time I’ll have on my hands when I’m not picking up after her 24/7.
Hell, maybe I’ll go visit her often, too. I’ll lay around, watch TV, mess up her place, run up the electric bill, eat all her food, and then go home to my nice neat house!
Be it ever so humble 
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Tags: cheap, going back to school, Kids, parents, pencil cases, School, School supplies, shopping
