Day One

First day of summer vacay! Woo Hoo! I asked L what she wanted to do on her first day of freedom, and she said, "stay in my pajamas and watch TV." No problem! Its noon, and she's in her PJs watching Kung Fu Panda with her bestie, and I am doing laundry and straightening up. I made her a bacon and peanut butter sandwich for breakfast, per her highness' request, and she is happy as a clam. A clam in pajamas, watching TV.

For my part, I slept in, chatted on the phone in bed, got up at 9:30, threw laundry in, and started cleaning up this disaster I call a house. I am now facing the annual challenge of what to do with all the crap she brought home from school. Her artwork, clay projects, writing journals, math workbooks, etc. I am not one of those moms that sentimentalizes every piece of paper my child has ever written on. I keep less that 1% of what she makes, and the rest goes quietly in the recycling bin. But when these kids are home on summer vacation, they're around all the time, and I can't just got through her stuff and weed out the one or two things that I want to keep, and toss the rest while she's sitting right in front of me.

Here's the other thing. Every school year, parents are asked to contribute to a fund for school supplies. We don't have to go to office supply places and stock up on things (we did one year, and it was super annoying) so we just hand the school $40 and let them take care of it. But when I went through all Leila's notebooks and workbooks and stuff, most of them were at least 2/3 empty. Lots of blank paper and math exercises. And, she came home with all he crayons and pencils and glue sticks and stuff, which is fine, but she also came home with the plastic container to hold all the stuff, and I'm thinking, Really? She needs three notebooks and a number of file folder thingies, and two math workbooks and a plastic container for her accouterments, and she can't reuse any of this stuff next year? She can't take her empty notebooks to fourth grade? The teacher can't put some other kids name on that container and not send it home to clutter up my house?

I don't get it. I am all for abundant resources for children, but this is a little silly. I will give them my $40 and be done with it anyway, but Jeez!