Aug 01 2008
Avoiding the Rush
I hate school supply shopping. It’s kind of like embarking on a scavenger hunt in hell - it’s hot and humid, thunder rumbles in the distance and there are always a handful of items completely impossible to find. For me, fending for school supplies is up there with purchasing last minute Christmas gifts at the height of the rush or giving myself a frontal lobotomy. Yet, at the end of every summer it has to get done.
We decided to get a jump on things today while most reasonable people are at work. Our strategy was to forfeit the upcoming week’s discounts in favor of shorter lines at checkout and an abundance of inventory. We succeeded on both counts. The local Target store was blissfully empty - no glassy eyed moms clothes-lining eachother for the last jumbo sized glue stick. Everyone was more or less gracious, there were enough spiral notebooks to go around and most items were stacked near their price labels. All in all, a nearly painless outing, except of course for that monster migraine that had been building at the front of my brain all day.
Shopping with the four kids is tough enough. Trying to sort out three different supply lists, getting them to pick out and try on shoes, while keeping a tired toddler pacified, then herding the school aged kids to the fitting room to try on uniform pants, then picking out some last minute groceries, before rushing to check out because a thunderstorm was looming, then remembering we still needed eraseable red pens and graph paper and realizing it was dinner time and the whole day was gone, with my head throbbing and everyone talking at once, and no Motrin in sight, and me only being able to talk quietly through clenched teeth because if I didn’t my head might possibly explode which could lead to a horrific car wreck, then all those supplies would be strewn on the highway and we’d have to do it all over again…
We got it done. Most of it anyway. My teen queen on the scene is still searching for the perfect pair of pants…preferrably something we won’t have to mortgage our house to afford.
