Registration

I swear, weeks like this it would just be easier to homeschool everybody. Back-to-school stuff is just hell.

Ok, ok. The "supply list" is not so bad for high schoolers. I will probably be on the hook for calculators and that sort of thing in a bit when the teachers get 'round to telling the students what they need. But most of Patrick and G's school supplies are the result of my insistence they not throw away last year's notebooks. Just rip the used paper out and voila! a new, smaller notebook. Cheap is "green," ok?

Oh, and I made them clean out their entire closet while I was at it. I made some lame "we want things neat for back-to-school" excuse. Not sure if they bought that argument. Once I used the even more persuasive, "we want things neat for back-to-school and there will be no video games if you don't," somehow it got done in pretty good time.

But back to registration. Registration is the process in which parents have to stand in several different lines and pay lots of money. I marvel that children who are enrolled in a given school district should have to be re-registered each year. But if you don't, they'll tack fines on you and your kid will not get his diploma.

These schools DO NOT allow you to get things done in decent order. ONLY seniors can get their registration process done on one day. Wait in 10 different lines, pay "fees" (what a ripoff, after all the tax money they commandeered), take pictures, get lanyards and blah blah blah. Do the same thing the NEXT day for your junior. And at another time/place for your middle schooler. Yet another for the preschoolers.

And goody, on top of all that, after the first week of school? It's "back to school night" for each of the kids! Because you really had nothing else to do! And no, they can't get all this stuff done on one really long day. You must return to each school several times during the first few weeks classes are in session or you are a bad mom. On back-to-school nights, teachers tell you that they have 39 cents to spend all year on class supplies, so please grab a post-it apple from my wishing tree and buy me the stuff listed...

I wish I could just call the central office during this whole process and say, "Here's my credit card. Surprise me." Might as well. But no... the fee place wants checks, and you have to walk across the building and wait in another line to give the cafeteria people their checks. Nurse's station to update medical forms. Want to join the PTA? The "Diversity Club?" Buy a school T-shirt? Look into theatre? Bla? Bla? Wait on a separate line for each thing and ponder the fact that one needs a "Diversity Club." I don't get it. It's an oxymoron, right? Is there some deep symbolism I'm missing?

Patrick is taking pretty much all AP classes next year, except for some Honours Spanish Level 5 thing. Oh! And we just got a letter stating that he needs one more PE class to graduate. Does "Body Sculpting" sound like a dopey class to you? Guess if he has to take it, he'll take it. But the kid has the "body" of a six-foot tall stick bug. "Sculpt" too much more away, and he'll be skeletal.

The GOOD thing is, I think I'm done with the three older children. Yayyy... but... I still have to buy all kinds of stuff for Elf for middle school. Can you believe that TINY LITTLE ELF is going to be in middle school? Yes. And he has a locker. And he can open it himself. :)

School starts on August 17 here... how about where you live?