The kids are back to school -- so where's my productivity?

It’s bothering me that I’m not getting more done.

The days just after the kids go back to school should be full of quiet, uninterrupted work hours. My productivity should soar in the weeks that follow Labor Day.

But of course, school isn’t the only endeavor that gets under way in early September. There are new community projects being launched, new writing assignments to attack, new clients to cultivate, and all the local friends I didn’t see all summer to catch up with.

Plus the house is kind of a mess, post-summer vacation, and I’d love to do a serious fall cleaning.

So I wake up too early in the morning – or in the middle of the night – thinking about all I’m not getting done: thinking about upcoming deadlines and unanswered correspondences.

Yesterday, for example, I seemed to get nothing done at all. There were just too many distractions. I called the plumber to fix a leak, chopped potatoes to make clam chowder for dinner, went for a run, picked up the mail, finished organizing the school library volunteer schedule, researched some information related to our insurance policies, did a phone interview for an upcoming column, and pitched a story.

And all the while I felt frustrated that I wasn’t getting anything done. Not anything I’d lain awake at night thinking about, at least.

But then I realized what I had in fact gotten done: all of the above. It was one of those times that I needed to turn my focus from my To Do list to my Did list. Yes, there were a bunch of items I didn’t get to, but everything I had managed to address surely didn’t count as nothing, did it?

Sometimes I think I need to get more organized and other times I think I just need to be more realistic about what I can do. Everything I accomplished yesterday needed to be done. To my mind, so did a lot of other things that didn’t get done.

But somehow it all works out, and when I get too frazzled, I just remind myself that by some standards, I’m actually keeping up just fine.

 

Back-to-school, 2012

As I keep reminding myself, I’m not going back to school. They are.

And if they don’t seem concerned about it, I needn’t be either.

If they’re not lying awake at night thinking about it, there’s no reason for me to be.

My kids have never yet had a bad year of school, so on the face of it, there’s no reason for me to worry. But instead of thinking “Will this or that unpleasant thing happen to them again?”, it’s the opposite: I worry “Will this be the year? Other parents tell me of teachers their children didn’t get along with, terrible homework burdens, difficult relationships with other kids, unfair run-ins with the administration. I never have similar stories with which to counter. So I can’t help wondering: is our number up? Will this be the year?

But so far, no. Minor heartaches typical of preadolescence for Tim; minor inexplicable misunderstandings with friends for Holly, last year. But nothing so challenging that it kept any of us awake at night.

So I tell myself now is not the time to start worrying. The kids feel just fine about going off to school today. Yesterday they rummaged through their newly purchased school supplies to check off each item on the prescribed list and fit it into their backpacks (an old one for Tim, which he’s had – and loved – since fifth grade; a new one for Holly, brown with bright pink polka dots), and after dinner last night, at my insistence, they even packed up their own lunches: stuffing and leftover steak for Tim, yogurt and Pirate’s Bootie and cheese slices for Holly. Seltzer bottles for each.

Neither of them gave much thought about what to wear today. I remember tremendous excitement over first-day-of-school outfits from my own childhood, and judging from the photos my friends have been posting today, the tradition still holds true among many families, but my kids can’t be bothered. Holly chose a clean and neat but unspectacular outfit that she used to wear a lot last spring. Tim appeared in a familiar Hershey’s Park t-shirt that he wore more days than not last year. Long ago, we had a rule about no t-shirts with words on them for the first day of school, but it’s one of those things that just stopped seeming so important after a while.

This is Tim’s last year of middle school, and it’s also the last year he’ll attend a school with which I’m familiar. I attended his current school from kindergarten through eighth grade myself, just as he is; but next year he’ll go off to the public high school, whereas I attended private school after eighth grade. So next year I’ll be even more anxious about the unknowns, though Tim will probably once again be the picture of complacency.

I remind myself that they are in clean clothes, they know how to find their homerooms, they’ve packed nutritious lunches, and they have a full set of school supplies; there’s not much else I could have done this morning to send them off prepared. In an essay about parental involvement at schools in Sunday’s New York Times, Bruce Feiler attributed Dan Levin, a founder of a charter school network that runs 125 schools across the country, with saying, "If [a] kid is coming well rested to school, with his homework done on time, and is behaving well, the parents are doing their job."

Well, I know my kids are well-rested; they weren’t lying awake last night while I was. And they’re usually fairly reliable on the other two points as well. And so. Good for them not to be anxious, and silly for me to be. It’s a new school year, and I’ll just trust and hope that it will be as good as all the ones that preceded it.

Room for improvement

I admit it: the bus arrived at our stop yesterday morning before we did.

This is absolutely antithetical to how the first day of school is supposed to go, according to my personal code of conduct. I’m appalled that Holly and I were late to the bus on the first day of school. The third grader next door was already boarding as I drove up, and Holly was not ready to hop spryly out of the car and run to the steps of the bus. She was still trying to get her little hands around the three bags of school supplies she needed to bring in for the first day of school.

Speaking of school supplies, let me just state that there is not a single white two-pocket folder with three prongs for sale in any office supply store in Massachusetts. In fact, there appears to not be a single white folder of any number of pockets and prongs for sale in Massachusetts. I know this because I’ve checked them all; it was the only item on Holly’s list of back-to-school requirements that I couldn’t find. I found the black two-pocket three-prong folder, the green one, the orange one, the red one, the purple one, and the jewel-toned paisley one. Okay, I’m making that last item up, but it would not surprise me one bit if that description were to appear on next year’s school supplies list. I’m absolutely fine with the number of binders, reams of paper, boxes of Kleenex and size of ruler on the list, but is it really necessary to have six different colors of folders specified? Wouldn’t it be sufficient to just by six folders?

But all of that happened over the weekend. Yesterday morning, up to about 8:10, I thought we were in fine shape. Tim ate a hearty breakfast and left for the middle school bus on time. Holly ate a smaller breakfast, took a long shower, carefully dressed herself in the outfit she’d selected the night before, combed her hair, brushed her teeth….and then somehow the minutes started to elude us. She felt the need to re-do her pigtails. I wanted to take a photo, and Holly wouldn’t stop making hand gestures that I didn’t want in the picture. (Nothing obscene, just annoying hip-hop gestures that have no place in a first-day-of-school scrapbook.) She had all her school supplies together but had left her summer journal on the kitchen table. The sandals she’d planned to wear wouldn’t do in the unanticipated rain.

All of this cost us only about five minutes, but those five minutes were the difference between waiting for the bus and having the bus wait for us.

This was particularly frustrating since just yesterday, I challenged myself anew to make punctuality a priority in the nascent school year. It’s not that I make this resolution over and over again with futility; every year I improve a little. But over the weekend, two consecutive events caused me to want to redouble my efforts.

On Saturday, I drove up to our friends’ beach house at 1:24, after I told them we’d be there between 1 and 1:30. And on Monday, I sauntered through the door of another friend’s house at exactly 10:00 in the morning, having agreed to meet her for a walk at ten. These are both events I would more typically arrive to a little bit late, but the sense of vindication my timeliness gave me was intoxicating, and I resolved to make this my year of punctuality. (Again.)

If I can maintain a daily running streak successfully for over four years now, I thought to myself, maybe I can do a punctuality streak as well. This weekend makes it two for two; maybe I should see how long I can go without arriving anywhere late.

My neighbor, Carol, who had clearly arrived with her grade-schooler at our bus stop well before the bus was so much as a glimmer on the horizon, could see how embarrassed I was yesterday morning. “Don’t feel bad!” she reassured me. “It’s only the first day of school!”

Yes, I thought to myself, but the first day is the day you should do everything right. The first day is supposed to be the flawless one.

Well, I replied to myself, now you know which area to target for improvement. Carol’s attitude is right: Not “It’s the first day of school!” but “It’s only the first day of school!” You have 179 more just like it to get to the bus on time.
Here’s hoping for a 179-day streak, starting tomorrow.

This will be the year

Like the Red Sox fans who surround me, I’m perpetually telling myself: Maybe this will be the year.

Only for me, that sentiment reverberates through the air not on Opening Day at Fenway Park but on the eve of the first day of school.

This will be it, I tell myself. I’ve had seven years of training in How to Make the School Year Run Perfectly. This will be the year it all comes together.

This will be the year that everyone gets up on time and leaves the house punctually. In fact, so smoothly will our morning routine run that dishes will be washed and crumbs wiped up by the time the door closes behind us. No returning after my morning run to a kitchen-ful of breakfast clean-up: this year I’ll figure out how to get it all done at the same time the kids are preparing to catch the bus.

This will be the year the kids remember to sort their backpacks not just once a semester or even once a week but every day. They’ll come home and remove paperwork, lunch detritus, unwanted snacks, notes from friends, and (in Holly’s case) pet rocks, leaves, twigs and flowers accrued throughout the day.

This will be the year we all remember to get to bed on time every night.

This will be the year I make good on my resolution not to pester anyone about homework. Tim has already proved to us that he can be trusted to keep up with his work: we stopped reminding him last year, and his quarterly report cards made it clear he was holding up his end of the bargain. Now it’s time to make the same pact with Holly. She’ll do her work or she’ll learn the embarrassment of going into class empty-handed. I’ll save myself the daily lecture. We’ll all benefit.

Except that there’s always the nagging worry for me that she won’t get her homework done. After all, she hasn’t yet finished her birthday thankyou notes – four weeks after her birthday. Maybe I’ll pester just a little.

This will be the year I make the absolute most of my work time, too. As soon as I get back from my morning run, I’ll start writing, and I won’t stop until it’s time to meet the elementary bus. That’s more than six hours of focused, uninterrupted work. I should have a remarkably productive fall.

Well, uninterrupted: that’s the catch. That means no scheduling meetings or appointments or coffee dates or errands during work hours. But it’s fine. This is the year I realize that I’ll just have to find other times to get all of those peripheral responsibilities tended to: work time is for work, and I’m going to break the habit of letting it get adulterated with other duties.

But having said that, this will also be the year I find more time to walk in the woods. The trails of the state park beckon from just beyond the edge of our yard, and in the six months we’ve lived here, I have yet to learn more of the trails system than the one that leads to the ice cream stand at park headquarters. Well, that’s the only route that interests the kids; fair enough. But with them back at school, the dog and I are resolved to start exploring more of the trails. True, I just said I was going to work an uninterrupted six-hour work day Monday through Friday. But a half-hour walk in the woods now and then surely will only serve to fuel my creativity.

And in the interest of fueling that creativity, this will be the year I redouble my efforts to read more Thoreau. At the beginning of the summer, I bought a beautiful new volume called “The Quotable Thoreau,” clearly meant for people like me who need the Cliff Notes version of the great naturalist’s work. So far, I’ve dusted the book several times, but have yet to actually read it. With the kids back at school, this will be the year.

I know we’ll succeed in all of these resolutions because we’ll be so well-nourished. You see, this will also be the year I succeed in putting a three- or four-course meal on the table at the same time every evening, featuring a well-balanced menu of proteins, vegetables and starches, with just the right amount of leftovers (and continuing appeal) to pack up for the next day’s lunches.

This will be the year. Just like the Red Sox fans who surround me, I can hope, despite all evidence to the contrary. It could happen. And either way, I’ll keep trying.

Summer on the fall solstice

I tend to read too much symbolism into the weather – the pathetic fallacy, I believe it’s called – but having a one-day blast of 80-degree weather yesterday felt reassuring. It reminded me that even though we’ve had crisp, cool weather after since the week school began, fall is still very, very young. In fact, despite the heat, it began only yesterday. “Fall arrived on a summer day!” Tim observed, amused. But he’s right, and for me it served as a comforting reminder that we’re only a little way into the new school year, and it’s okay if I don’t quite have the routine down pat yet.

For us, school has been in session for only two weeks and two days, after all. It’s tempting to start off with firm resolutions and expect everything to fall into place, but it’s helpful to remember that when it comes to establishing good habits, you actually do get second chances. In fact, if the common neurological lore is true and it takes three weeks to instill a habit, we still have at least another week to go before we can expect the patterns of the new school year to be set in stone.

I suppose it’s obvious that I’m building up to an excuse. Well, not an excuse, exactly. More like an explanation. An explanation to myself, as to why the few guidelines the kids and I agreed to at the start of the school year in theory are still taking shape in practice.

It was a simple back-to-school contract. I wrote these rules: Homework must be done before any screen time (TV, video games, computer games) takes place. No arguing about whether it’s a take-the-bus or pick-up-at-school day. No wearing the same shirt on consecutive days. Oh, and have fun.

We’re doing really well with the second one. Holly enjoys being on the bus because she sees friends who are not in her class; Tim’s not crazy about it but recognizes it’s brief enough to be painless since he’s the last one on and the first one off. And the fourth rule is falling into place beautifully: both kids love their teachers and classes, and are definitely having fun. The others? We still have a way to go.

The homework rule has stayed in effect but not without a lot of vigilance on my part. The kids argue that they want a break from schoolwork when they come home from school, and if anything, they point out, it would make sense to get screen time first and then hit the books later, once they’ve had a chance to refresh their minds. It’s a compelling argument, but common sense tells me to ensure they get their necessary work done before they lounge around playing video games, no matter that there’s a certain logic to doing it the other way around.

And the shirts on consecutive days? For some reason, that’s one of the toughest. It used to be just Tim; now Holly too has narrowed her clothing preferences down to two or three items. I try to beat the system by putting what they’ve worn immediately in the dirty laundry – even if it doesn’t really seem dirty – just so there’s no chance they’ll wear in the next day, but then I frequently end up running the laundry and it’s clean again. And yesterday I let Holly convince me that the prohibition against wearing the same shirt two days in a row wasn’t operative if one day she wore a sweatshirt over it and the next day she didn’t, since to observers it will appear that she was wearing two different tops on those two days.

I was starting to feel like I was losing my grip on the starting-the-new-year principles we’d agreed upon. But then this one-day summer blast hit us yesterday, and I felt exonerated. It underscored for me the fact that the school year is still young. Why, we’re barely even past summer yet: just look at the thermometer! Third and sixth grade are still new to us. The ink on the back-to-school contract is barely dry. We’ll work out the details soon enough. It’s only just becoming fall now, and there’s still plenty of time to instill good fall habits.

Three, two, one, zero, BLAST-OFF: It's the first day of school

Earlier I wrote about the two-week countdown to First Day of School and then again about the six-day countdown to First Day of School, and now here we are at zero days. Blast-off.

Yesterday I kept thinking of December 24th. I had that same sense that I get the day before Christmas of wanting everything to be perfectly organized and in place before the Big Event. On December 24th, it’s a matter of having every present wrapped and labeled, every Christmas Day delicacy prepared and ready to be baked or sliced or steamed; yesterday the issue was having both kids’ backpacks packed, crossing off every school supply on the list, snacks wrapped, water bottles chilled. And yesterday as on Christmas Eve, I wanted it not only all organized, in place and ready to go but I also wanted all the mess that our frenzy of activity created cleaned up. I wanted surfaces bare and supplies put away where they belonged.

And yesterday, as on Christmas, that was an unrealistic hope. On Christmas Day, despite my best efforts, we so often leave the house with rolls of wrapping paper on the dining room table and dirty cooking dishes stacked in the sink, despite my dreams of a picture-perfect home, clean and tidy, awaiting our return on Christmas night. Yesterday, too, I managed to get through all the important tasks as far as having the kids ready to leave for school today, but I didn’t get all the laundry folded, I didn’t get their rooms tidied, I didn’t have the mail sorted. The first day of school feels like a fresh start, and I wanted my home to reflect that fresh start, but this morning that’s not exactly the case. I still have plenty of picking up to do while they’re off at school. But then again, I also have more than six hours in which to do it.

I think what both experiences – Christmas and First Day of School – serve to remind me is that unless you work for NASA, you cannot expect to execute a perfect countdown. Zero blast-off is never immaculately conducted, leaving nothing but a wisp of smoke in its wake. There will always be wrapping paper and dirty mixing bowls left behind, or plastic packaging from new binders mixed up with empty shoe boxes and sandwich makings. Focusing on the task at hand – school supplies, lunches, leaving the house on time – should be enough for the first day of school.

It just doesn’t matter that much if I don’t hit every goal exactly on the head at the moment the kids leave for their first day of school. There’s still time to pick up after they leave. And there are other years ahead to improve upon the first-day-of-school countdown, too.

Besides, realizing every task can’t be scratched off the list by nine o’clock the night before school starts helps me remember to focus on what’s important: that we had a happy, healthy summer, that the kids had a lot of fun during their time off from school, and that both of them seem primed and ready to start the next grade level. And if I need further reminders of what’s important, I have a treasured image from yesterday to clue me in. In the middle of the afternoon, Tim and Holly collected money from their piggy banks and, with my permission, rode their bikes together to the ice cream stand down the street. Together they sat there drinking their chocolate frappes, and then they biked back home.

More than anything else, this image will stick with me from the last day of summer vacation: the two of them being resourceful and happy and independent together, enjoying each other’s company, biking, savoring a treat. Never mind the messy house. With the countdown down to zero, we accomplished everything that really matters for today.

It's tradition -- or not

Last week, Holly and I went to Staples in Bedford and plowed our way through both kids’ school-supply lists. (Tim wasn’t interested in coming with us.) This afternoon, on our way up to Maine for the weekend, we plan to make a quick stop at Old Navy to buy her a few new school outfits and try to pick out something for Tim as well. (He’ll be with us but says he plans to read in the car. A shopper he’s not.)

This is not how we usually buy our school supplies and fall clothes. Ever since they reached school age, I’ve taken the kids individually for a special late-summer evening excursion. I planned it all out the first time the week before Tim started kindergarten, and we’ve done it that way ever since: we pick a weeknight the week before Labor Day to leave in the early evening for the mall a half-hour a way, buy school supplies, go out for dinner together at Friendly’s, and then continue through the mall to buy some clothes.

It was a tradition. And those have always been sacred words for me.

But as the kids get older, and as I get older, I am beginning to concede that not every tradition has to be carved in stone. This is not an easy admission for me to make. I have often said that I am unusually attracted to traditions, rituals and routines; I like being able to rely on certain habits and events to recur year after year. I love the children’s book Over and Over, in which the little girl goes through a year’s worth of holidays and then at the end says to her mother, “What’s next now?” and her mother says “Now it all starts over again.” That book comforted me when I was a young child looking at the pictures; it comforted me all over again as a parent, when I would read that book to my children and feel reassured that I was creating certain traditions for them as well, including the one related to back-to-school-shopping.

It’s just that at a certain point, I had to admit that tradition wasn’t all that much fun. We always got too late a start at the end of the day and ended up still at the mall at 9 p.m., which I wasn’t happy about. And the mall itself was overwhelming to me. There were office supply stores just as close to home, so I wasn’t sure why it was so important that we go to one a half-hour away. And dinner always took too long compared to the errands we needed to accomplish. Plus, you know…Friendly’s?

So this year we decided to do it differently, breaking the shopping into two separate trips, staying closer to home, going in the afternoon instead of the evening, skipping the dinner part.

Maybe this tradition will turn out even better. There’s something rather romantic about stopping for back-to-school clothes on our way to the coast for Labor Day weekend, after all; much more so than just heading to the department store and then turning around and going home afterwards. And I certainly won’t miss the tuna melt and French fries at Friendly’s.

On the second day of our trip to Colorado last month, we bought tickets to the gondola that ascends Aspen Mountain, just as we do on our second day of our Colorado vacation every year, and once we’d reached the top, the kids stood in line for their turn at bungee jumping, just like they do every year. As always, I enjoyed watching them tumble against the bright blue sky, and they thanked us for the excursion, but none of us got much of a thrill out of it. It just felt like something they’d outgrown.

The next day, we went whitewater rafting. Rick and I had been before, but the kids never had, and initially the plan was for just Rick and Tim to go. We thought Holly was too young and would be scared in the raft. But she watched a video of rafting at the outfitters’ shop and assured us she wanted to do it, so we went. We had an amazing time. Before it was over, the kids announced they absolutely wanted to go rafting next time we’re in Colorado – and do a more challenging course next time.

“Sounds good,” Rick and I told them. “Next time, less gondola; more rafting.”

And I admitted to myself that I’d be fine with skipping the gondola next time. It was great for a few years; now it doesn’t matter to us so much anymore. And the same is true with the back-to-school tradition.

So this afternoon we’ll make a quick stop to pick out some school clothes and then we’ll head to the beach if the weather clears up. Maybe we’ll do that again next year at this time; maybe we’ll do something else. Traditions are wonderful, but so is being able to recognize when it’s time to end an old one and start a new one. Or even try something just once and try something else the next time. Judicious decision-making can be a tradition in its own right. It’s taken me a long time to be comfortable with that idea, but I think I finally get it.

Six-day back-to-school countdown

Last week I wrote here about the first stage of the back-to-school countdown. Somehow eight days have gone by and we now have less than a week to go before school starts. I figured I’d better re-evaluate how we were doing with our school-year preparedness.

On the plus side, I crossed off the last three items on the required school-supply list yesterday: a box of Kleenex and a roll of paper towels for each kid, plus a 70-page spiral notebook for Holly. (This is in addition to the 120-page spiral notebook and 100-page bound composition book on her list which I’d already purchased. Don’t get me started on those lists. As I’ve stated before, it’s not the volume of required items; it’s the arcaneness that gets to me.) On the minus side, Holly decided this morning that she was writing a story that absolutely could not be recorded anywhere but in a 70-page spiral notebook, so out came the one I’d just bought so that she could use it and back it went onto my shopping list. Why Holly felt this story could be recorded only in a 70-page spiral notebook, and not any other kind of paper or any other size notebook – such as one we already owned and didn’t need to save for next week – is unclear to me. But she might have a future as a teacher, particularly one responsible for making up required school-supply lists.

Tim’s haircut hasn’t happened yet. No big surprise there. Maybe tomorrow, he assures me.

The earlier wake-up times have been moderately successful this week. I’ve scaled the kids back to eight o’clock, which is an improvement over last week but still an hour later than Tim needs to be up. Realistically, it will be a trial-by-fire situation. He’ll start getting up at seven on the first day of school.

Tim’s making his way through the last section of the math packet. If he stays on course with a page or two per day, he’ll finish toward the beginning of Labor Day weekend. It’s not quite last-minute, but it’s not a model of time management either. Well, I suppose if he finished it too early in the summer, he would start to forget all those math skills by the time school was starting.

Holly still needs to draw her favorite scene from her favorite summer-reading book. She’s gotten as far as identifying in her mind what scene she plans to draw. Unfortunately, it’s two characters having an argument. I’ve suggested that might not be the easiest action to sketch, but she’s made it clear she has too much integrity to choose a feasting scene or a fishing scene just because they’d be easier to draw. Last night she packed up markers and paper to take with us when we head to Maine in a few days. She’s hoping to feel more creatively inspired up north.

So, admittedly, we’re still not quite ready. And I haven’t even approached that most dreaded subject of all: what to pack for the kids’ lunches and snacks. But we still have six days to go. As the pressure builds, we’ll surely grow more productive. And if we don’t? Well, school will begin anyway, and my kids will be there. Ideally with completed math packets, beautifully sketched scenes from summer reading, and healthy snacks tucked into their backpacks. Six days? It could happen. I’m optimistic about it. A new pair of shoes, a good night’s sleep, and they’ll be good to go.

As for myself, I’m still working on getting into the fall spirit. But the first step is getting them ready. Then maybe I’ll find myself full of autumnal energy. It’s possible. It’s even possible I’ll actually get Tim in for that haircut. It’s a new school year, and anything could happen.

The two-week back-to-school countdown begins

Very gradually, we’re beginning the ramp-up to the start of the school year. I figure two weeks is a good amount of time for this. It feels early enough not to be rushed, but late enough not to be shortchanging ourselves of any of the summer. It’s certainly earlier than I’ve ever started before, but after five years on a public school schedule, I’ve learned that getting everyone back into the school year routine takes more planning than I previously imagined.

On Monday morning, I took Holly for a haircut. Tim resisted; he’ll have to go later this week or maybe next. He definitely needs to go before school starts two weeks from today, but he’s still so thoroughly entrenched in summer vacation mode that he just can’t bear to think about formalities like haircuts right now. So I gave him a pass. That’s an easy one, and there’s still plenty of time for it.

Having eased ourselves in with a couple of baby steps, on Monday afternoon we summoned our courage and attacked one of the toughest back-to-school challenges: school-supply shopping. As always, after 45 minutes I was cursing the school for sending home this list of ridiculously arcane items. How is it possible that a child apparently cannot pass third grade unless she has three 0.77-ounce glue sticks (goes on purple, dries invisible!) and yet Staples carries only 0.57-ounce glue sticks? How is it that the supply list from the school clearly states that sixth graders must have white plastic three-pronged folders and yet Staples carries every color in the spectrum except, that’s right, white? Is there any way whoever makes up these lists could actually be required to walk the aisles of an office supply store and prove that these items exist before listing them? (This is one of these days I sincerely hope my children’s teachers are not reading my blog. I love my children’s teachers and I know they take these lists seriously. I also know they are parents themselves and have to deal with similar aggravations from their own children’s schools. I’m just cross because ninety minutes of my life was spent today in a state of frustration at Staples.)

It’s a relief to be done with the school-supply shopping, but there are still enough back-to-school preparatory tasks to last us for the next two weeks. One of the biggest is getting the kids used to waking up early again. I’m determined to start waking them earlier by ten-minute increments throughout this week until I’ve backed them up a full hour, to a time approaching their school-day morning wakeup call. The same goes for me, too, of course. As diligent as I’ve been this summer about avoiding the temptation to sleep in, I need to get up 45 minutes earlier on school days than I have been recently.

Tim still has some pages in his math packet to do; he’s promised to spend at least three mornings this week on it. Holly needs to update her summer reading list. They both need to draw up a list of brown-bag lunch menu ideas they promise they’ll eat and not complain about.

But for me, the challenge is more mental than practical. I feel like it will take me far more than two weeks to feel ready to see a new school year begin. It’s not that summer has been so wonderful – some parts of it have; others were more mixed – but just that I don’t feel ready to summon the energy and initiative that the school year seems to require of me. I’m not ready to start running into everyone I know at end-of-the-day plaza pickup. I’m not ready to send out the room parent communications. I’m behind in organizing the publicity arm of the Sixth Grade Spaghetti Supper, and I’m barely ready to start putting together a plan for the October Walk-to-School Day event I’m heading up.

Even in a small town, summer gives me the chance to hide. So many people leave town, and without our regular school- and church-related events (being Unitarians in a small congregation, we’re church-free all of July and August), there are fewer opportunities to run in to those who stay. I love being part of a tight-knit community, but somehow it’s useful to have a couple of months of invisibility as well. I’m not sure I’m ready to launch into social mode quite yet.

Well, I still have two weeks. And I’m going to need it, even if the kids don’t. I feel like I need an Advent calendar, like the ones the kids have in the weeks before Christmas. Each day I could open a tiny paper door and see a different image: the haircut, the school supplies, the school snack choices, the Back-to-School Night reminder. For now, the temptation is to put off thinking about it, to focus on two more weeks of summer fun instead. But the start of school looms, and I know I need to be ready. So I’ll stop cowering behind my beach towel and get out there, new shoes polished and pencil case in hand. Wish me luck.