School Prep

Every single August, I wonder where the hell I put the scissors Olivia used the previous year in school.

And I can never, ever figure out where they went and so we end up buying a new pair of scissors along with the twenty pencils, the two erasers, the bottle of school glue, the five folders (plastic, because they hold up better than paper, at least in O’s backpack,) the four one-subject notebooks, the dry erase markers and the new lunch box, because the one from the previous year smells REALLY bad.

Where are those scissors from the past five years?

I mean, seriously?

As I labeled and packed Liv’s new school supplies into two plastic WalMart bags, I reminded her, “You only cut paper with these scissors. You do not cut your hair or your clothes!”

She rolled her eyes at me and told me, “I only did either of those things one time, and they were both in first grade.”

Okay, fair enough, but I feel like if I didn’t remind her that scissors are for paper only, she’ll claim to have ‘forgotten’ that rule the next time she comes home with a shirt sleeve in tatters or one chunk of her bangs suddenly an inch shorter than the rest.

Each fall I tell myself that next year, when school lets out for summer, I will find a bin and label it “School Supplies” and into that bin, we’ll dump everything the girls bring home from their lockers/desks on the last day of school.

But then that day finally rolls around and we’re all so glad it’s finally SUMMER that the bin never materializes, it never gets labeled and the school supplies get strewn about the house until the disappear into the piles of clutter that accumulate around our house until I can’t stand it anymore and purge everything, only to have to buy more freaking scissors come August.