A Solution for Back to School Shopping

A week or so ago I was asked to blog about a Facebook post I made about crashing a block party. I want you to know I tried really hard to think of a way to talk about our annual visit to The Cool Street that sounded funny not sad. But any which way you look at it, the truth is just pathetic. Every summer, our friends invite us to their block party because on our street nobody talks to us. I don’t think this has anything to do with my husband building coffins in the garage, but I can’t be sure.

So we head a few streets over with a dish to share and kinda lay low, easing into conversations and pretending we belong. But inevitably someone wrinkles their forehead and says, “Now which house do you live in again?” Yes, it’s a bit awkward, but not so awkward that we’d consider not attending.

And there you have it. See, not very funny.

But while we were there, the topic of the kids returning to school surfaced. Collective groans sounded over back to school shopping. You all know I hate buying school supplies. I’ve blogged about this before. While I think teachers truly are saints most of the time, they must experience brief moments of demon-possession when making their school supplies lists. In fact, if one approached a teacher, list in hand, and demanded to know how it was possible to buy a ten pack of washable markers when washable markers only come eight packs, I’m sure the teacher would be genuinely shocked and confused by his or her own unreasonable request.

Nevertheless, school supply shopping usually brings me to tears. So this year, my friend Andrea and I came up with a solution. We plan to have our husbands drive us to Wal-Mart late one night. We’ll sit in the car and drink a margarita and then go in to shop for school supplies. No more stress. No more tears. Just relaxed, mellow, late-night shopping in less-crowded aisles. And when we come out of the store with one eight pack of washable markers and one ten pack of regular markers, and college-ruled notebooks instead of wide-ruled notebooks, and two red folders and three green folders and one blue folder instead of three blue folders, two green folders, and one red folder, our sober husbands will be waiting to drive their carefree wives home. And the teachers won't even notice that our children don't have everything on the list because after all it was Memnoc the Horrible who made the list. Not them.

Everybody wins, right? And best of all Crayola won’t sue me for slander because I started a hate campaign about their marker packaging and quantities.

But, seriously, is back to school shopping as stressful for you as it is for me? Do you have any coping mechanisms? Do you reward yourself with chocolate or a frappucino when it’s done? Have you ever been tempted to shop drunk?