Mildly Embarrassing Monday: School Supplies

When Ironflower entered kindergarten, I discovered something that had eluded me as a teacher: buying supplies is a huge pain in the ass. When I was a teacher, I often bought extra supplies - many of my students came without. But I bought the supplies early, usually before anyone else was really thinking about school supplies. And since I usually just asked for whatever I found at my local Target, it didn't occur to me that my students' parents might have a hard time finding what was at my (on the other side of the city) Target in early July.

Also, I didn't know what the stores were like the weekend before school started.

But I quickly found out, that first kindergarten year. Every store was packed with obnoxious people. The teachers were VERY specific about brands and types of supplies. Instead of this being fun (I love office supplies in a way that might be a little disturbing), it was awful. We got everything on the list for the lowest prices; but I felt like we'd been through a war zone.

The following year, when Lovebug was entering kindergarten. I discovered that the PTA had a deal with School Toolbox*, where you paid a fee and they assembled the supplies for you, then shipped them to the school. I may have left lipstick kisses on the check, I was so grateful that I wouldn't have to go through the store thing again. 

The next year, for reasons I can't remember, we had a different company. Which shipped the supplies to our homes. Which also was late with many of them, necessitating a trip to get folders anyway. There were so many (justified) complaints that I think the program is over. 

And now we come to this year, with Ironflower entering third grade and needing things likeyellow lined post it notes. But I'm not doing the store thing again. In fact, by the end of the week, I'll have all of my kids' supplies. . .even the 3x3 yellow lined post it notes. I don't know if I got the very best prices, but since I'll have everything approximately 6 weeks before school starts, I don't really care. 

It started when the local grocery stores started putting out school supplies. Every school around here starts after Labor Day, but you wouldn't know it from our local stores. Anyway, I was looking at the supplies to find crayons and extra notebooks for their summer notebooks when I realized that the Crayola crayons (did I mention the teachers here are very brand specific?) were on sale. I knew crayons were on the supply lists, so I bought them. Then I noticed that the appropriate folders (plastic with pockets) were also there, so I bought those too. Two supplies down and I hadn't had to make an extra trip. 

That's pretty much one of my personal philosophies; avoid extra trips. Especially when they involve duking it out with more ferocious moms in the aisles at Office Depot. But then I remembered that I spend all day on the interwebz. And that Office Depot, like Staples, Target, KMart, Walmart and Amazon, has a website. Problem solved. Especially with a lot of them offering free shipping right now.

The mildly embarrassing Monday part of this is that it took 4 years for me to figure this out. Oh, and I am really excited to get our school supplies box. Like, looking forward to organizing it all and stuff. 

*This might not be the name of the company, but it was something like that.

Mildly Embarrassing Monday: I Might Be A Swim Mom

When we signed up for our pool's swim team this summer, I was assured by everyone that it was a pretty casual affair and that it was totally okay to miss practice and whatnot. You could easily miss meets, as long as you emailed the coach by a day or two before. Hell, I signed them up late, even.

But.

My kids kind of love going to swim practice. Especially to the morning swim practice - which has like 2 other kids at it. They want to join the diving team now. I think Lovebug enjoys it more than Ironflower, but Ironflower has her best friends on the team so she's pretty enthusiastic.

After the meet last week, we took the kids for ice cream. More as a reward for Hugmonkey, really, who hung out at a pool he couldn't go in for three hours with very few complaints (unless I was talking to another adult, of course). As Hot Guy chatted with the ice cream guys about not taking the whole swim thing seriously and not expecting them to swim in college, I started to feel bad.

You see, when Lovebug won his race (heat? event? I so have no idea about all this swimming stuff), I did start thinking about him swimming in college. I thought about what swim class he should take in the fall so he'd be ready to try out for the very serious swim team at the Y next summer. Apparently, there is a latent nightmarish sports parent in me, just waiting to come out.

Hugmonkey sensed it immediately. 

Did I mention that I want to buy them better goggles? And that I started talking to Hugmonkey about how he can be on the team next summer, provided he learns to actually swim? 

At least I didn't yell anything inappropriate at the meet. 

This time. 

Mildly Embarrassing Monday: I Failed At Doing Nothing

Last summer, we did nothing. Nothing but going to the local lake, the library and the Bronx Zoo, I mean. And it was delightful. Except when the children were trying to kill each other. Or when I got so used to sleeping in that going back to school was harder on me than it was on them. But mostly it was delightful. So delightful, in fact, that I'd planned to do it again this summer. I bragged about it. I told everyone that it was my new summer plan.

But this summer Ironflower has to go to dance camp. All the dance company members have to go, so if she wants to be in the company. . .she has to be there. It's only for a week in August. But still, it's something. So of course Lovebug deserves to go to basketball camp for a week. To be fair. And since we were already doing those somethings, I let myself be talked into the swim team at the lake.

Not like it's a hardship to go to the lake. 

But I also signed the older kids up for acrobatics class. It's just once a week. In the afternoon. They're dying to go. It's only an hour a week. 

But when I look at our summer calendar now, with the swim practices and meets and the library activities and the acro class and the two camp weeks. . .it sure doesn't look like nothing. 

Mildly Embarrassing Monday: Eyebrows

"How do you get your eyebrows like that?" Lovebug asked the older woman in the grocery store line. She had been kind and friendly to the kids while they waited for me to check out, asking them lots of questions and just behaving in a grandma-ish sort of way. Which is why Lovebug probably felt totally comfortable about asking her a question.

About her eyebrows. Which, when I looked at them in the aftermath of Lovebug's question, kind of did beg a question. They were drawn on, which is not uncommon in older women. But I'm pretty sure Lovebug was not questioning whether they were drawn on, I think he was questioning why one was much higher than the other and/or why they were both so, so, so long.

Er, just note the eyebrow proportion and ignore the rest, okay? 

The woman seemed not to understand him, but instead of taking the easy out Lovebug repeated his question, in the nice loud, clear, voice that would have made his old speech therapist so proud. I realized that I would have to intervene, so I said something like, "Everyone has different kinds of eyebrows."

"But did you make one go up on purpose?" persisted Lovebug.

Fortunately it I was done checking out at this point and was able to shepherd the children out the door as they waved politely to eyebrow lady. As we walked home, I tried to explain that it was impolite to comment on people's looks, that what really mattered was that she was a nice lady.

"I just wondered if I could do that with my eyebrows," explained my son.

"Not until you're much older, kiddo," I replied.

Mildly Embarrassing Monday: An Introduction

One of the reasons I fell in love with blogging was that it let me share my more humiliating parenting moments. Not only was it liberating to turn my shame into a funny story, but it was reassuring to hear from other people that my experiences weren't any more mortifying than anyone else's.

I almost called this series, "Mortifying Monday". But honestly, turning 40 and having two kids who had daily public screaming fits during their toddler years has made it a lot harder to mortify me. But mildly embarrassed? That still occurs all the time.

Like Friday. I took the kids to the town pool (which is optimistically called a lake, but is really a chemically treated pond) after school. It wasn't too crowded, which is just the way I like it. Just because I've accepted that I must run into acquaintances while wearing a bathing suit doesn't mean I have to enjoy it.

Still, I ran into another mom I knew. The older kids took off for the deep end as Hugmonkey played with her daughter. We chatted amicably. All was well. Then Hugmonkey needed to go to the bathroom.

Now, Ironflower and Lovebug are strong swimmers. The pool has lifeguards. There was no way someone could get to them, drag them off the dock and kidnap them without 100 people seeing and caring.  But I still like to keep an eye on them. So my choice was to try to drag them out of the water while Hugmonkey and I went or to trust the lifeguards for a few minutes. I picked the guards, and the mom I knew, because Hugmonkey seemed to be in a hurry. I let the kids know I was taking Hugmonkey and hurried away.

Earlier that day.

On our way back two minutes later, it was easy to spot Lovebug and Ironflower playing their game on the dock. But then suddenly Lovebug started crying out. I began hurrying into the (freezing cold) water, because apparently the lifeguards only care if you are drowning, not yelling. When Lovebug couldn't answer me, I got Ironflower to tell me that there was a bug on Lovebug's neck.

Another mom, whose older son was on the dock too, yelled him to swat it off Lovebug's neck. She told his brother to do the same, but both of them backed nervously away. So did Ironflower. I wondered just what the hell the bug was. I made it to the water by the dock and invited Lovebug to jump in or climb down the ladder. I had no idea if he was already stung or bitten or what the bug was. Lovebug chose the ladder, which gave the horsefly* enough time to sting him before flying away.

He's fine, by the way. And was able to swim all the way back to the shallow area. And learned that next time he should just jump into the water immediately. And totally forgot the incident a few minutes later when one of his classmates showed up.

And I know, intellectually, that the horsefly could have landed on him even if I'd been watching the entire time. And that his reaction probably would have been similar, even if I'd seen it from the beginning. But mixed in with the guilt is the mildly embarrassing idea that everyone at the pool thinks I'm a terrible mother.


*We think it was a horsefly, anyway. Based on the fearful reactions of the other kids and the small bite. But we don't really know, because I never actually saw it.