There is something gloriously stressful about September. Back to school supplies, new clothes, crisp fall evenings, rotty plants in the garden that you should do something about.
I love it.
Being behind in life, as I have been for quite some time, this year I decided that I don't care if we have a thousand pencil crayons and pencils at home, I am buying everything new because it was easier.
My craft area in my house (which is less of an area and more of a random assortment of things in eight different places), is disorganized. I have Pinterest dreams of having a beautifully organized craft area with tidy rows of paint bottles and drawers of the same sized paper and pencil crayons in the original boxes (all sharpened). The ideal craft area also includes felts with their lids and none of them are dried out. This is not my reality. Our felts are (mostly) in a mandarin orange box that is precariously stacked on top of a variety of partially used scrapbook paper that I keep in the vain hope that I will eventually complete a scrapbook for my kids of the first five years of their life (they are currently eight and almost six years old so I am a bit behind).
The wax crayons are an assortment of peeled and broken horrors that live in an old perfume box and also on my living room floor.Occasionally, I also find crayons mashed into the fabric in the minivan. Restaurants should not let you bring crayons home as they never seem to make it into our house but are dropped into a million pieces like a colourful bread crumb trail.
Such as it is, it was easier buying the school supplies new than it was to organize my existing shame. So one evening in late August, I asked my mom if she wanted to come school supply shopping with me. She said something like, "Boy, do I ever!" with no small amount of sarcasm and we went school supply shopping, without the kids.
It was amazingly easy.
When you don't bring the kids with you, they have no opinions and therefore, you can buy whatever you want.I always enjoy shopping for school supplies and when browsing the rows of binders, I always feel a little bit nostalgic for my old Trapper Keeper binder - it was dark purple with a giant tiger on it. It was amazing. I am fortunate enough to be teaching a couple of classes this term (more to come on this in later columns, I'm sure), so I was also able to pick up a few things for me.
From our family to yours, happy back to school.
I wish you great joy in shopping for the right kind of glue sticks and the correct amount of sharpened pencils (don't forget the 100 boxes of tissue paper).
