School's Back In, and This is a LOT of Work

Apparently, the school systems out there believe strongly in education: book-learning for the students and an unprecedented level of home-study in web-savvy for the parents. The kids start school tomorrow (seriously? August 3? What?) , and they have their lists of school supplies that the need every year (and routinely destroy every year so that none can be used again the next year... apparently three-ring binders are only meant to have a life-expectancy of around four months or something even though I have several dozen that I've been using for almost a decade). The state hooks us up with a few "tax-free" days to get supplies, which is awesome because our state sales tax is just a hair short of 10%, except it turns out that that day is next weekend. Of course, the kids "have" to have their supplies on the first day, or else they get in trouble, or should I say, "yelled at," to quote the kids (I don't believe that for even a second). Thus, this weekend has been a circus of getting that crap.

The younger child is in middle school. A list was mailed. It's very convenient, although there's a lot of junk on there that probably just isn't going to be purchased because everyone knows good and well that nobody in eighth grade really needs those things and that they're just going to sit around forever (e.g. highlighters) or be used to color pictures of Japanese girls looking like semi-whores (the only thing the children like to draw -- copying the styles of their favorite manga, Japanese comic books). The older child starts high school. No list was sent or mailed or obtained or available. The individual teachers' websites had to be consulted. Unfortunately, the school's website is crap, total crap. The teachers' websites are also not that useful... most included useful statements on course materials like "standard classroom materials" with an expectation that "all appropriate materials must be with the student on the first day and every day thereafter." Crap, crap, crap. Some teachers don't mention their materials lists. Some teachers require things that no student in high school will use, like dividers in a three-ring binder. Organized fourteen-year-olds? SHYeah, right. I'm uber-organized in academic things (I'm finishing my Ph.D. now... I have to be), and I don't use dividers or highlighters. Give me a break. It took me almost an hour and a half and some serious cleverness in using their website to find everything... I can't imagine how long it would have taken the child. What a freaking waste of time.

The children are full of stress over this, which is filling us with stress. It's been a long weekend dealing with it, in fact, because the younger, anal-retentive child is freaking out that she doesn't have all of her things. The older child, who is a walking disaster (think Pigpen from Peanuts... make worse), seems completely unphased except that she keeps making underhanded comments about how she's going to get yelled at, it's going to be our fault, and how she hates how we always set her up for these disasters (Emo, seriously!). I guess saying that she's "unphased" is incorrect. The right thing to have said would have been "unwilling to do anything to help the situation -- unless complaining and taking another unnecessary nap counts as "helping" -- but completely stressed out and moody over it," though I don't know one word that means all of that. Thus, I'm here, making dinner (it's simmering as I type) while my wife takes them to the circus that is the store on the day before school starts. I don't envy her in this exchange, although it's nearly always my job to listen to and diffuse the boiling-over children, so I kind of already had my share of the excitement... that and it makes life at times like this much easier to manage if someone else is taking care of the "feeding us" portion of the list of eleven billion daily things to do when you have teenagers.

I don't mean to make this a blog about ranting and raving about the trials and tribulations of life, but today it is. If I need a "good man" lesson, it's this: at times like these... put aside some of your busy-ness and help out. I'm supposed to meet a fairly serious deadline with my dissertation tomorrow, and it's not happening now, but life goes on; my wife's sanity at times like this is that valuable.