I am in school supply he!! today. I think I mentioned before that we got info at the end of last year to purchase a school supply kit for the upcoming school year. We opted to do this as it was supposed to include everything that your student would need. If anything was missing, supplemental supply kits would be available or you could purchase items at the school store. I have used this option in the past and it worked very nicely and kept me from running around to 10 stores like a chicken with my head cut off trying to find the right size Post-It note pad. So we picked up Jon’s supplies the week before school started. I checked the supplemental supply list for his specific team in school and purchased the few supplies that he needed according to the list. There was a school store set up at orientation, so this worked out nicely. So the initial kit was $47. The supplemental supplies were $18. The TI-84 calculator that I bought the other day (note: this was not on the school supply list anywhere) was $80 after rebates. Now Jon comes home and says he needs red pens and book covers (you know those fabric ones that stretch and are called Book Sox). Red pens, no biggie, have some in the drawer. Book Sox, big deal. They are sold out everywhere. Staples did have some left that had skulls & roses all over them, that won’t fly with Jon. They won’t be getting any more in. Looked at Wal-mart, nothing. All sold out. School store, sold out. So last night I decided to just get them online. I was wasting lots of very expensive gasoline driving to every store in our area that would possibly carry Book Sox. I found them online (and in-stock) at Staples.com. $3.99/each. No biggie, I will be done with this ridiculous, time consuming search. I put 3 of them into my cart, then proceed to checkout. I stopped and almost choked on my water when I saw that they wanted to charge me $9.95 to ship 3 Book Sox, that couldn’t come close to weighing a pound even dripping wet!! UGH!!! I desperately searched their site for a website to store option, usually free (at least it is at Wal-mart). No such luck. So, here I sit this morning, still sockless. Aaron says that he will just make Jon’s book covers out of paper bags. That is what we always did. Then we could write all over them and if they ripped, you just made new ones. I am all for that, even have the paper bags in my pantry. However, not sure that Jon is down with that. Is he going to be the only one in school with paper bag book covers? Will he get beat up because his book covers are made from bags that carry our groceries home? Or, do I go back to Staples and get the Book Sox with skulls and roses all over them? Which do you think Jon will choose?

I hope this is the end of unexpected school supplies. Curriculum night was held last night at Jon’s school and I overheard many parents complaining of the additional supply requests that were coming home daily. You would think that the school store would continue to stock these items that the teachers are requesting, but Jon insists there are no book covers/Book Sox there. I think he enjoys seeing me run around in circles.