{"id":5468,"date":"2012-07-18T12:38:30","date_gmt":"2012-07-18T19:38:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/?p=5468"},"modified":"2012-07-25T03:06:35","modified_gmt":"2012-07-25T10:06:35","slug":"back-to-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/?p=5468","title":{"rendered":"Back to School."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Little and Middle went back to school this week.\u00a0 Big is at boy scout camp.\u00a0 The Other Half is at work.\u00a0 Which means me and Pretty are bored to death.\u00a0 We have been forced to go out to lunch, get pedicures, see movies, stamp soap, and make bleach stencil T-shirts.\u00a0 You know, just to avoid brain cell death from the pure tedium of life without males.\u00a0 Hah!<\/p>\n

It has been wonderful.\u00a0 It makes up for when Pretty was 4 months old and I was trying to switch her from breast to an occasional bottle and she refused to take a bottle for 2 whole days, laying listless and and teary on her blanket, forcing me to call the pediatrician every 2 hours to make him repeat that no baby had ever starved herself to death and she would take it when she was hungry enough, which she eventually did.\u00a0 It makes up for when she was 9 months old and would scream hysterically if anyone other than me tried to hold her when I was in the room, forcing me to hide around corners, out of sight, if\u00a0 I wanted to take a breather from a baby on my hip.\u00a0 It does not<\/strong> make up for when she was 3 years old, standing outside church with us in a beautiful frilly dress and sweet sunhat, chatting with other adults after service, when she dropped her Sunday school papers and emphatically yelled, “God da*% it, Jesus Christ!” in a shocking imitation of my voice.\u00a0 I mean, she had the tone and pitch down perfectly.\u00a0 I laughed at the time.\u00a0 Because there was nothing else to do.\u00a0 Also I figured my laughter would cover up whatever cuss word might come out next.\u00a0 But I am not over it.\u00a0 And we won’t be square on that one until Pretty is old enough to pay for my <\/em><\/strong>pedicures.<\/p>\n

But I digress.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The point of this story is that the boys went back to school.\u00a0 And, unlike in a lot of households, this was not a particularly stressful or expensive event for us.\u00a0 That’s because when school ends in June, the kids come home and carefully unload the contents of their backpacks onto the craft closet shelves.\u00a0\u00a0 Hah!\u00a0 Actually they dump their backpacks on the floor and, under much protest and complaining, are forced to empty folders and notebooks of their papers, put double sided paper in recycling, put paper only used on one side in the printer paper box, stack folders, dividers, and composition notebooks neatly on the shelves, sort through their pencil boxes and put crayons, markers, pencils, erasers, etc into the appropriately labeled containers.\u00a0 I am very Mommie Dearest <\/a>like that.\u00a0 Although I admit a few wire hangers slipped past me.\u00a0 Because when Middle got out his backpack to put supplies in for the new school year he discovered 8 plastic containers of trail mix that he had brought home on the last day of school.<\/p>\n

My kids are always bringing home food that other kids didn’t eat and that the school was going to throw away.\u00a0 I don’t mean the other kids’ bread crusts or anything.\u00a0 (Well, Pretty was good about bringing home food scraps when we had Papa to feed.\u00a0 And a lot of her friends that have been over here to visit the animals happily donate their scraps to Pretty to take home for the farm animals.\u00a0 Girls would give the flip flops off their feet if they thought it was going to some cute, fluffy, and loveable farm animal that wanted flip flops.\u00a0 They’re sweet like that.)<\/p>\n

On special occasions, school lunches or snacks come in prepackaged containers that the school distributes with great hope and an honest commitment to childhood health.\u00a0 And most of the apples, packages of mini carrots, raisins, or healthy trail mix (not the kind with M&Ms in it) come home in my child’s backpack.\u00a0 Because it was that or let the other kids throw them in the trash.\u00a0 And we’ve been telling our kids for years that if the school is going to throw it away then they can bring it home and we can put it in our pantry or feed it to the animals.\u00a0 Really, the waste is shocking.\u00a0 Although I bet a lot parents think my kid gathering that food from their friends to rescue it from the trash is shocking.\u00a0 Or perhaps they think the school’s attempt to feed healthy food to kids raised on snack size packs of Cheetos is shocking.\u00a0 I’m not sure.\u00a0 Once you’ve reached the stage where you are stoically butchering a pig that you named and bottle fed as a piglet, or pragmatically feeding the carcass of your last roasted chicken back to the chicken flock, it’s hard to say what is considered shocking in polite society.<\/p>\n

But I digress.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>When the kids had their school lists we went back to the craft closet and hunted through their old supplies.\u00a0 Pencil boxes can, of course, be reused–just wipe them out with a Lysol wipe to clean out the old pencil shavings and crayon smudges.\u00a0 So can composition books that still have half their pages left (just tear out the used pages).\u00a0 Any pocket folders where the pockets aren’t ripped or torn are still good.\u00a0 Just use a blank address label to cover whatever subject it was labeled for last year.\u00a0 Even better, find the one that says “Math” on it and use it for math class again this year.\u00a0 Clipboards, page protectors, and plastic dividers usually still look brand new.\u00a0 Slide on pencil top erasers that are at least halfway intact have another 3 months in them.\u00a0 If the teacher asks for 3 glue sticks, you can certainly send in some that have been opened and used, just toss in a couple extra for good measure.\u00a0 The kids don’t get new packs of crayons or markers or colored pencils—they dig through the containers of crayons and markers and choose the 10 or 12 colors that they want and toss them in the pencil box.\u00a0 There are always left over 3×5 cards since they are sold in packs 0f 250 and even the AIG classes don’t use that many cards in a year.\u00a0 Pencil sharpeners never get dull but they do need to be tossed if they are cracked.\u00a0 You don’t have to be Joan Crawford to be horrified by a cracked sharpener that spills pencil shavings everywhere!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>So, in the end all we needed to buy was a pack of\u00a0 loose leaf paper, a plastic recipe box to hold the 3×5 cards, and some pencils.\u00a0 The pencil purchase was annoying.\u00a0 We have tons of pencils.\u00a0 The school gives them away as prizes.\u00a0 The kids get them in gift bags at birthday parties.\u00a0 Every street fair or festival has vendors passing out free pencils.\u00a0 But the class list specifically requested #2 “quality non-decorated” pencils.\u00a0 I am assuming the funky, fancy pencils that are given away for free everywhere are made in China and have cheap leads that break easily or shavings that are poisonous if inhaled.\u00a0 Or perhaps they don’t fill in the circles solidly enough for the machines grading the endless amounts of standardized tests that the kids take at school.\u00a0 Ugh.\u00a0 Just another reason to hate China.\u00a0 And standardized tests.\u00a0 I hope that 20 plain yellow #2 pencils from Office Max for $1 is considered “quality” enough.<\/p>\n

Now you might wonder how my kids feel about bringing in “used” supplies.\u00a0 And you probably won’t be surprised that they don’t fuss about it at all.\u00a0 After all, they’re bringing home kids’ leftover lunch food ;P\u00a0 But the reality is we’ve done this ever since Big started kindergarten.\u00a0 As a matter of fact, ever since they were born they were taught to use stuff until it was all used up.\u00a0 To reuse supplies from one project for the next project.\u00a0 To hand down clothes, toys, and books.\u00a0 It’s not sad.\u00a0 It’s not shameful.\u00a0 It’s not poverty-based.\u00a0 It’s just common sense.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Around here we don’t buy things just because we can.\u00a0 Or because everyone else around us is buying it.\u00a0\u00a0 Around here, we reuse and recycle because if you don’t spend money on the things you don’t need, then you have money for something else.\u00a0 Like the kick balls and footballs and frisbees and jump ropes and sidewalk chalk that we sent in to the boys’ teachers to be used at recess.\u00a0 Kick balls and footballs and frisbees and jump ropes and sidewalk chalk that we wouldn’t have donated to the school if we’d had to spend that money on brand new markers and folders and glue sticks.<\/p>\n

We could have used the money for the baby wipes and tissues and Ziploc bags and hand sanitizers that the teachers always need.\u00a0 But we decided on recess equipment.\u00a0 Because apparently recess has to be structured this year and during the pathetic 20-30 minutes of outdoor recess time (if they even go outside–apparently it was too hot to be outside yesterday.\u00a0 Not even for 20 minutes.) the kids have to be involved in an organized group activity or sport.\u00a0 It’s part of the War on Obesity or No Child Can Be Left Out or Can Public School Get Any More Ridiculous agenda.\u00a0 So we went sent in some sports equipment and a printed list of fun, different group games that the kids can play together with it.\u00a0 I’m really not sure who I feel sorry for the most.\u00a0 The kids, who can’t spend some time just sitting under the trees, chatting with their friends, swinging from monkey bars, or a playing a loosely formed, pick-up game of soccer.\u00a0 Or the teachers, who can’t have a little breather from constantly directing and managing the children in order to sit on the school steps, relax, and catch up with the other teachers.\u00a0 It’s really sad.\u00a0 Much sadder than bringing used supplies to school.<\/p>\n

Actually, it’s so sad that I think Pretty and I need to go out to lunch again just to take our minds off the sadness.\u00a0 Yep.\u00a0 We’ll be thinking of the poor boys the whole time we’re noshing on our chicken wraps.\u00a0 Really, it’s the least we can do. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Little and Middle went back to school this week.\u00a0 Big is at boy scout camp.\u00a0 The Other Half is at work.\u00a0 Which means me and Pretty are bored to death.\u00a0 We have been forced to go out to lunch, get pedicures, see movies, stamp soap, and make bleach stencil T-shirts.\u00a0 You know, just to avoid […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5468"}],"version-history":[{"count":30,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5545,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5468\/revisions\/5545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}