Back to NO

Ah, it’s that time of year when most parents are exhaling in relief, dancing down the school supply aisles, and gleefully plotting how they’ll spend the day after waving their baby off in the bus in just a few short days or weeks.

Yep, it’s Back to School time.

I’m not exhaling. I’m not dancing (although I do love me some school supplies), and my baby doesn’t ride the bus because we have to leave the house way before pickup.

Yes, for a family of teachers, it is Back to School time.

And we are HARD into denial.

Back to School, quite honestly, makes me want to curl up in a ball under the covers on my bed and call in sick for the rest of my life.

It takes me an entire month after school gets out to even start feeling like a normal person – I finally have more time to read, to blog, to write, to hang out with my kid. And sure, Brandus abandoned me (AGAIN) this summer, this time to travel the Trans-Siberian Railroad for TWENTY THREE DAYS, and some of those days solo-parenting left me weeping in a bucket of ice cream, but still, we had fun. We spent time at the library, went to Michaels for their Passport to Adventure, took cooking classes at the botanic garden.

But here it comes again.

From days where my kid would let me sleep in while he went downstairs and ate half a jar of Nutella smeared onto graham crackers, his face, and the counter and we spent long lazy days coloring, building with trio blocks, and baking – to days where we bolt out the door at seven am right after breakfast with no time for Phineas and Ferb and I don’t see him again until I slide in to pick him up from daycare at six – where it’s then time to make dinner while attempting to supervise homework*, bath time to scrub the playground off of his knees, and to dump him into bed no later than seven thirty (my child is a fragile flower, and this strange thing called a “morning person.” I don’t know what to do with this most days, except getting him to bed before eight is a VITAL PART OF MY EXISTENCE), and somewhere in there I should do dishes or laundry to put patches on the fourth pair of jeans that he’s ripped this week alone.

By then I can generally manage to stare aimlessly at tumblr and watch all the pretty pictures scroll by and Thor help you if you interrupt me.

This year decided to get even more entertaining, as I’m changing schools (my old classroom was closed, and I was transferred), Brandus’ school has new extended hours, AND we’re still in three different school districts, which means three different school schedules.

For example:
Brandus returns back to school for teacher prep on August 7th.
Voldemort returns back to school for first grade on August 14th.
I return back to school for teacher prep on August 20th.

This also leads to three different holiday schedules, which was so much fun this past year, when Voldemort and I had 1 week off together, then all three of us had a week off, then Brandus had a week off. By himself. Without a child to entertain when all you want to do is lay on the floor and make dying whale noises of exhaustion.

So, no, I’m NOT looking forward to Back to School time. I’m sure as hell not dancing in the aisles of school supplies, and the next commercial I see with smiling children eagerly crowding around a teacher, I might throw something at the television.

*STOP GIVING FIVE AND SIX YEAR OLDS HOMEWORK. JUST STOP.