It’s been months I realize, but this summer we scored the most excellent Summer Nanny! Truthfully, I robbed her from her place of business which also happened to be Chubs’s longtime tumble gym where we’re not allowed to poach teachers but hell. I couldn’t resist. And my intuition was on point. Summer Nanny rocks! So how does Summer Nanny result in me not updating here? Simple. I was able to crank out an insane amount of work this summer thanks to Summer Nanny raising my kids. As in, I closed more homes for clients now than I did last year for the entire year. And we’ve got 4 months to go.

Sadly, those 4 months will be without Summer Nanny. Cue, sadface.

Several weeks ago, I checked out M’s elementary school website after we had not received any mail about the upcoming school year and who her Kindergarten teacher was. There was a school supply list posted on the Kindergarten page, and then another list on each of the teacher pages. The lists were similar but not identical. So I started purchasing the items that were on both the general list and most of the teacher lists.

Well what I fool I am. Here’s what I didn’t know. THOSE LISTS CHANGE! ALL THE TIME!!!

D’oh! So finally a couple weeks before school we received mail with teacher assignments. Great! After I google stalked her teacher to make sure she was young* I then consulted the supply list. Seemed like I had done a decent job and only needed to pick up a few more items. I placed an order online, picked that up from Wal Mart and I was done. 

So I thought.

Suddenly, I was in possession of way too many glue sticks (the lists said buy 12, now they only wanted 5,) and the wrong color construction paper, and we no longer needed crayons.  What? Where did the crayons go? And some items on the “girl list only” seem to have moved to the boy list so I have the wrong gender supplies. Or something. I mean, the supplies aren’t gender related or anything. And I’m missing pencils. I’m missing Ticonderoga Primary Tri-Write Pencils. Off to Amazon only to find that those 12 pencils will cost around $20. What. The. Hell. But there was one seller selling them for $5. Great. Order placed.

And two weeks later, no pencils. I checked Amazon and it pretty much boils down like this: Since the day I placed my order, that seller received 96 1-star comments saying they were a scam artist and never shipped the item and did not respond to inquiries. I tried to place a refund order and it said the seller no longer exists on the Amazon Platform. I want my $5.00!!!! Or my pencils. Christ.

Since “Megan’s” storefront on Amazon was declared a farce, I started looking other places and couldn’t find any better pricing or selection. I decided to look in person. I went to Office Depot and they had the triangular pencils but not “My First” size which is large. I went to CVS and they had the “My First” pencils but not triangular. I went to Staples and they had them! Except they were black rubbery type of wood even though the box said wood. Shit. I can’t buy these because they need to look like the pencils in the picture which are yellow.

The funniest part of this is twofold.

1) M knows how to write with a regular pencil already and;

2) These are communal supplies, not for her specifically. So really, I’m spending all this time looking for pencils for the kids whose parents actually loved them enough to keep them home until this very day instead of sending them off into the wilds of Daycare and Pre-K where they learned, among other things, how to write. Except for the letter “E,” to which M adds many many dashes, not just the ones at the top, middle and bottom. But she gets an A+ for this because I used to do the same exact thing.

In total, there are probably about 8 hours of my life I can’t get back due to these stupid elusive pencils and the fact that I’m a complete amateur at this. Maybe this is like those secret clubs where you have to know the location and secret word to get inside. The moms “in the know” got these pencils months ago and here I am, the day before school starts, still scrambling.

I’m better at real estate, clearly.

And, because you’re still waiting for the explanation of the asterisk, here.

*M has to have a young teacher because if her teacher is old, she’s liable to call her an “old bat” which is what I call every old lady driver on the road and M now thinks this is what you call old ladies – they are either Yiayia’s or old bats.

Share