School Shopping

I'll start by saying how lucky I am that my Mother in Law bought my child all new clothes when she was in California in June. New jeans, tops, underwear, bras, socks! The kid has clothes, and I am grateful.
My child is grateful too, because believe me, I'm not buying her bright blue 60 dollar Skeetchers, ever.

Payless

Went to Payless Shoes today for a new pair of Ugly Work Shoes!
My old pair of UWS were too small ( though they were my size) and hurt my back as well as my knees and feet. They were really bad on the knees and feet.
So bad that after I took them off each day , I hobbled around like I was walking on sharp stones.
Everything hurts my knees these days, walking, sitting, laying in bed, but last years pair of UWS were the worst.
So I bought a new pair in a different style ( 3 ugly styles to choose from!) and a half size larger than my regular size 9 1/2.
Yes, for those of you with Math Skills , that does mean that my new UWS are a size 10!
I'm 5 foot 4 inches tall, so I pretty much look like a hobbit, a clown , or a child wearing her Daddy's shoes.
My feet are freakin' HUGE!
( One day I will share the pain of being told my entire childhood that I would be tall, because my feet were so big, not that I'm still bitter about being lied to or anything)

Found the cutest pair of leather sandals for the KatieBug!
Really cushy soles, very cute, brown ( every year I try to talk her into neutral brown shoes, most times I fail, but really the child can't keep wearing blue shoes her whole life) very stylish, will look so cute with jeans. $18 shoes on sale for 4 bucks! FOUR DOLLARS!
Had to buy them. Had to talk her into them.

Because I liked them she suspected there must be something wrong with them. Afterall she is 13 and her mother is like , well , somewhere over 30 *mumble*41*mumble* and totally not cool ( or whatever the new word for cool is these days, what do I know ? I'm older than dirt)
I made her walk around the store in them , and asked other people if they thought the shoes were cute.
They are, and she needed them, and she needs something to tell a therapist someday.
She agreed! I love the little victories!
So I make the purchases and we go on to the next stop on our shopping day list ...

WalMart

Let's just start by saying I hate Walmart as much as the next person, but it's there, and in my small town it is almost all that's there.
So there! Hate me,I have to shop there! * hahaha*
We need to buy School supplies.
Hate this! I hate this every year.
First I would like to say that for those who don't know me well, I'm pretty easy, I'm a patient sort, I roll with the flow, but this mess is wrong!
Every year there is this list of supplies they have to have by the first day of school.
Okay, give me the list I'll buy it.
Noooooooooo, not that easy. And it should be easy.

There are 28 items on this list. Some years it has been a struggle finacially, ( it's a good 45 bucks worth of stuff) but this year, thankfully, it is just a matter of filling the list.
So we need 4, three ring , 1" binders. Not a problem you say? That's what I thought.
We need one red, one blue, one black and one gray. All fine, I understand the instructions.
The gray binders are only available in 3". There are NO gray 1" binders, they don't exist. I grab a white one, and my child begins to stress that she won't have the right binder. I tell her it's okay , everyone will have a white one.

2 red pens. This is no problem, usually they come in packs of 5 or 10 ( never 2) , but I'm okey dokey fine with it.
No red pens. There are NO red pens in the entire frickin WalMart! NONE!
( I looked! I asked! It's on the fucking list!)
For some reason they have lots and lots and lots of purple pens stocked this year, but purple pens aren't on the Damn list, and red pens don't exist.
I started to ask my child if maybe the purple..... NOPE, the list says red and she is a conformist on the subject of pens for school. She didn't even let me finish my sentence , she already knew what I was thinking. ( Luckily I found some red pens left over from last year when I was forced to buy 10 when I only needed 2)

The next item on the list is 3 spiral notebooks, 70 count paper , WIDE RULE ( in bold)!
Seriously, the list said WIDE RULE, the words " No College Rule" were underlined.
There was no spiral wide rule paper in 70 count to be found. There were no wide rule spiral binders at all.

Okay , so that isn't exactly true, because although they had college ruled spiral notebooks in all paper counts you can imagine, there was one tiny box , in the back of the shelf, of wide ruled paper. It was in 100 count ( I can deal with that) but it had a FEAR FACTOR theme!
No way am I going to make my child take a notebook that neither one of us can stand to look at,
to school ( even if it is the right ruled paper!) Pictures of people eating worms and calf eyeballs , and roaches, and bloody stuff.
I have my limits, even when it comes to school supplies.

We gather the other stuff, markers and colored pencils and rulers ( " Dont you have like, 5 rulers?") and binder dividers, and highlighters ( the list says 3, they only come in packs of 4) .
Packs of 10 blue ball point pens ( the list says 12, they come in 10 packs, FUCK THE LIST!)

We travel to the stationary section of the store with the other school supply list refuges, with no
luck on spirals or red pens there either. I look at the list a final time and see that we need tissue, Kleenex ( for those of you without kids, they need lots of it, and the allergy mom's are making out like bandits because I know my kid doesn't use that much)
They want me to buy 2 packages of 200 count tissue.
And that is when I remember that the person making the School Supply List, is fucking with me.
They do it every year.
It doesn't come in 200 count boxes.
Go look!
Tissue comes in 80 count, 180 count, and 220 count. Oh there is a special package marketed for school use, but that one has 3 boxes of 150 count.
So I bought a weird box of Puffs, 218 tissues.
182 tissues short of what the School Supply list requests .
FUCK THEM!!!
I told my child to blow her nose at home.
And we still have to find wide ruled spiral paper somewhere before next week. Blah!

So I'm writing my check at the WalMart, and I think how weird it is that I spent more at the Payless for 2 pair of shoes , when I realise that I wrote a check for $53 bucks for 2 pair of shoes!!
OMG! Payless overcharged me!
So I run to the car to check my Payless receipt, and sure enough they charged me twice for the UWS. Twice!
If you saw these shoes you would barf at the unfairness of this.
I don't even like shoes, and even I know how ugly they are.
So we go back to Payless, where they can't cancel the transaction and give me back my check, and let me write a new one for the actual amount of my actual purchase.
They refund me my money in cash, which I then spend on super weird tacos at the Jack in The Box.
I love those weird Monster Tacos!

So we still need to find some wide ruled spirals before next Tuesday, and I need a hair cut, but mostly, we're ready for School!

Kate starts the 17th, I start back the 12th.

I think it's gonna be a good year!